HQ Trivia debuted as I was entering retirement. With a mortgage to pay and a lot of charge debt, I fell into playing it to see if I could get rich quick. It was the same reason I bought a weekly lottery ticket. And I’ll have to admit, I thought host Scott Rogowsky was hot. But then I learned how hard it was to collect on winnings, which I never had anyway. I usually crapped out as soon as they got to questions about sports or pop music. And Rogowsky wasn’t turning up as often as I’d have liked (he left in April 2019). So, I fell out of the habit. Salima Koroma’s new CNN documentary GLITCH: THE RISE AND FALL OF HQ TRIVIA (2023, Max) traces the app’s history. Although it’s been accused of being one-sided (it was produced by former executives and basically tells Rogowsky’s version of the story), it still provides some fascinating tidbits about the problems that existed even before the launch. Rogowsky and the other interview subjects — former employees, media experts and one investor who was close to co-founder Colin Kroll — are all good story tellers. If there’s a flaw as entertainment, it’s that some of the visuals are repeated too much. It feels like a made-for-TV documentary, designed to be viewed in chunks between commercials. But there are clever touches, like HQ Trivia-style questions to introduce segments and clips from classic radio and TV quiz shows. It even takes time for some sentiment, as when Kroll’s friend starts to tear up while discussing the co-founder’s sudden death from a drug overdose. It would have helped had the surviving co-founder, Rus Yusopov, participated, as Rogowsky and some of the other employees slam him badly. There’s simply a slide stating he declined to be interviewed, though he told other sources he had declined because of conflicts of interest. I guess sifting through those different perspectives could be the topic for another documentary.
