Popmaster Live 2019

I wasn't sure whether or not to write a review given how much of a let down Popmaster Live was this year, but I thought it would be good to give some insight on what happened.

I attended Popmaster Live in both 2017 and 2018 and both were thoroughly enjoyable experiences, and certainly after the 2018 event when it seemed this would be an annual thing, I was very much looking forward to 2019.

Both 2017 and 2018 were announced the year prior and held early on in the year, but no announcement had been made at the start of 2019, or several months that followed. It wasn't looking like there was going to be an event, until the end of August.

The difference this time was that it was being run my Radio Academy as opposed to Classic Pop Magazine who ran the previous 2. Also, instead of being on a Saturday night in quite a sizeable events venue, it was being held on a Monday night at a small basement bar. I thought it may have been just for people who work in radio, but it didn't explicitly state that and I managed to buy a ticket no problem.

Our table was at the back, away from the main floor area. The format was similar, question comes up on screen and you pick a, b, c or d, except this time we had an iPad to answer with instead of a remote control.

When Ken started to introduce the quiz, it was very difficult to hear what he was saying. Like the last 2 quizzes, the first round was intros and outros. The music began, and that too was very difficult to hear. Given the objective is to identify the song from the clip, that was quite problematic. Despite this we managed 7/10, though no team managed more than 8 on that round.

Round 2 was hits from movies, a round I hate but I knew it was coming. We got 8 on that round which was good enough to put us in the joint lead with 1 other team. Fortunately one of the songs played was instantly recognisable because after the first second or so we couldn't hear a thing.

The next round was missing words, the title of the clip was displayed with one word missing which we had to get. Fortunately this one didn't rely too heavily on the clips. The first clip was played, and the iPad's weren't working. The round was halted and then abandoned.

With the iPad's out of action, we were given plain sheets of paper and a pen and told to write a, b, c or d for each question and hand in at the end. The problem was the answers to the questions were revealed on screen after they were asked, so relied on the teams being honest. The theme was songs to do with crime and we managed 9, the one we didn't get was one we knew but the sound was too poor for us to identify.

On going to hand the sheet in I noticed the sound was much better on the main floor. I pointed out we were really struggling to hear the music where we were sat. Somebody did come up and look at a speaker, but it never got any better.

They did blank out the answer reveal on the screen for the rest of the night, though sometimes it didn't work, but I guess it mostly did.

Up next was TV themes, not one of my strong points but there was nothing too obscure on there, I knew at least half of them and as a team we managed a full house. Then it was 60s in the 80s, where you had to say which act was covering the 60s record in the 80s. The questions on the screen helped more than the clips, and again we got a full house.

However, the scores of the leading teams were then read out. As we'd only got one question wrong since we saw we were leading we expected to be one of them, but we weren't. It was 10 points for a correct answer, we had 150 before the technology broke and 290 since which would give us 440, but the top 2 teams had 290 and 300.

The next round was guess the year, they were all songs that charted higher when they were re-issued and we had to get the year of re-issue. It was a tough round, but again we managed a full house. Still no mention of us near the top though. Then it was a round about soaps, basically name the soap the singer of the song was in, though their definition of soap extended to shows like Baywatch, but it was pretty straightforward and another full house. We fell at the final hurdle with the next round though, name the band the solo artist being played used to be in, we didn't know the band Jefferson was once part of.

Still, just 2 questions dropped since we saw ourselves leading the way and still no mention of us being the leading team, so one of the team members went to ask where exactly we were in the standings as by our calculations we should have 730 by now.

The following round was on 21st century hits, thought this would be the round we'd flop on. By this round we established we needed to stick our heads out over the balcony to hear the music properly and feedback to the table what it was. It proved effective and we got another full house.

We did flop on the following round, next singles. They played a clip and we had to say what their next single was. That was a very tough round, it took me till I got home to figure out how we did, I know we got 4 right and 5 wrong and the other one we had no clue about so just picked a random letter, not knowing what we picked when the answers were read out.

The final round was guilty pleasures, all novelty records and we got them all.

We'd lost count of our score by now, but as Ken revealed the Top 3 he said they were the only teams to get over 800. But as we'd lost count at 730, we clearly had more than 800. 2 teams had 810 and the winners had 820.

We went up to enquire on our score and it was something like 680. It turned out they'd excluded the first 2 rounds from the final scores, but also the scores we were given on some rounds were incorrect. I can't remember the specifics, but recall being given 40s and 50s on rounds where we got 100. I wasn't quite sure what our overall score should of been, but would have definitely been higher than that.

I've now figured it out. There were 12 rounds, the first 2 didn't count towards the total and the 3rd was abandoned, so it was out of 900. Of the remaining 9 rounds, we got 6 full houses, 2x90s and the other round was either 40 or 50. Let's assume it's 40, that gives us 820 points which would make us joint winners. However, we were joint leaders after the first 2 rounds, why they scrapped the scores from those rounds I don't know, nor do I know if it was the eventual winners who we were joint leaders with.

What I don't know though is how they were marking other teams. There could have been a team that got 900 who they didn't mark correctly, so I'll never know whether we should have won or not. That's the problem.

The previous 2 Popmaster Live events I went to, we didn't win, but that didn't matter as we were beaten fair and square by better performing teams on the night, and given the room layout I'm sure everyone could hear the sound loud and clear.

This time we had what could have been a winning score had it been marked properly, despite sitting where the sound quality was poor. Maybe we put the wrong round number on the paper, it's certainly hard to keep count when you're doing it and maybe we couldn't hear Ken say what round number it was, but we handed the sheets in after the rounds so they shouldn't have been mixed up.

I'm not annoyed that we didn't win, the prizes were crap anyway. I am annoyed though that I leave a quiz where our official score isn't our true score. I know that technology can go wrong, but a well established quiz like Popmaster should have adequate back up and there is no excusing the sound quality. For £15 a ticket I expect a quiz not to have the sort of annoyances you may have at the free to enter quiz down the local pub.

Would I go again?

Well like I said, the first 2 were great and I don't want to let one bad experience stop me going again. If it's at the same venue though, probably not.