''It's Academic'' is an Australian children's game show which is based on the long-running American version of ''

It's Academic ''It's Academic'' is the name for a number of televised academic student quiz shows for high school students through the United States and internationally. ''It's Academic'' programs have notably aired on NBC-owned WMAQ-TV Chicago, WRC-TV ( ...

'', and pits students from different schools against each other in a test of knowledge covering a number of diverse subjects including English, mathematics, science, geography, sport, music and popular culture.

History

The show originally aired on Network Ten from 1968 and 1969 being hosted by John Bailey and then on the

Seven Network The Seven Network (commonly known as Channel Seven or simply Seven) is a major Australian commercial free-to-air television network. It is owned by Seven West Media Limited, and is one of five main free-to-air television networks in Australia ...

from 1970 to 1978. In the years 2001 to 2004, Seven Perth revived the show, where it was broadcast locally, leading to a national relaunch on 17 October 2005. The last version on 7TWO featured schoolchildren in Grade 6, aged around 11 to 12 years old. The early incarnation of ''It's Academic'' was the basis for a series of sketches from '' The Late Show'' in which Santo Cilauro, Rob Sitch and

Tom Gleisner Thomas Edmund Gleisner (born 24 October 1962) is an Australian comedian, television presenter, producer, director, writer, occasional actor and author. Gleisner currently hosts Network 10's ''Have You Been Paying Attention?''. Early life and ...

, who all claimed to have gone to the same school, competed on the program with incredible but humorous incompetence. Coincidentally, their sometime collaborator actor/comedian

Magda Szubanski Magdalene Mary Therese Szubanski ( ; born 12 April 1961) is an Australian comedy actress, author, singer and LGBT rights advocate. She performed in ''Fast Forward'', '' Kath & Kim'' as Sharon Strzelecki and in the films ''Babe'' (1995) and ' ...

had actually captained a team as a Year 10 student at Siena College in Melbourne, in 1976. Hosts in the 1970s included Danny Webb (

HSV-7 HSV is a television station in Melbourne, Australia. It is part of the Seven Network, one of the three main commercial television networks in Australia, its first and oldest station. It launched in time for the 1956 Summer Olympic Games in Melb ...

),Trevor Sutton (Television Host) BTQ-7 Andrew Harwood (

ATN-7 ATN is the Sydney flagship television station of the Seven Network in Australia. The licence, issued to a company named Amalgamated Television Services, a subsidiary of John Fairfax & Sons, was one of the first four licences (two in Sydney, ...

and HSV-7),

Sandy Roberts Sandy Roberts (born 22 February 1950) is a veteran sports presenter and commentator formerly working on television for Fox Sports Australia and radio with Crocmedia. He was a long-time personality of the Seven Network for four decades, notably p ...

(

ADS-7 ADS is an Australian television station based in Adelaide, South Australia. It is owned and operated by Paramount Networks UK & Australia through their Australian holdings Network 10. History ADS-10 began as ''ADS-7'' on 24 October 1959. In ...

), Alec McAskill (ADS-7), Jeff Newman (

TVW-7 TVW is a television station broadcasting in Perth, Western Australia, wholly owned by Seven West Media. It was the first television station in Western Australia, commencing broadcasting on 16 October 1959. It broadcasts a modulated 64-QAM sign ...

) and John Bailey. In recent years, Jeff Newman once again hosted Perth's version of ''It's Academic'' while Simon Reeve fronts the national version.

Format

Original format

The 1960s–70s version of ''It's Academic'' was conducted on a per-state basis, with episodes featuring on-air contestants in teams of three, with an official fourth as a reserve, each from one of three different high schools from that state. Contestants were aged around 15 or 16 years, in Year Ten at High School. Winning teams would progress through to state semifinals and finals. In many years, state champion teams met in a national grand finals. Shows were recorded with large live audiences on Saturdays with school staff representatives supervising the contest. In early rounds, team captains would 'pick a packet' (a numbered pack of ten questions) from a board of numbered options. Teams could answer these questions with no penalties for incorrect answers, but each round was time-limited, and teams could pass on difficult questions to attempt remaining questions before returning to passed questions. All team members could respond to questions; in cases where two answers were given at the same time, the host would ask the captain to confirm the team's response. A 'beat the buzzer' segment and later a video-clip round completed the contest. In 'beat the buzzer', penalties applied for incorrectly answered questions. In cases of ties, captains would pick tie-breaker packets for their team to answer. State contestants usually received

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Parker pen The Parker Pen Company is a French manufacturer of luxury writing pens, founded in 1888 by George Safford Parker in Janesville, Wisconsin, United States. In 2011 the Parker factory at Newhaven, East Sussex, England, was closed, and its productio ...

sets as mementos, with additional prizes (often dictionaries or encyclopedias) awarded to the winning school. In the original series, cash prizes of A$500 ($2,732 to $6,505 in 2022 terms) to each team member were awarded to the state team final winners. National prizes differed but were of a similar financial value. In 1971, the national championship team was flown to Los Angeles and toured Hollywood. The pilot and first two years of the Australian series were recorded by Network Ten, on Saturdays, at the North Ryde TEN10 studios in Sydney NSW and also in Victoria. The first two NSW seasons 1968 and 1969 were hosted by John Bailey, and both series finals were won by

Marist Brothers The Marist Brothers of the Schools, commonly known as simply the Marist Brothers, is an international community of Catholic religious institute of brothers. In 1817, St. Marcellin Champagnat, a Marist priest from France, founded the Marist Brothe ...

, Eastwood. The show moved to the Seven Network in 1970 and was recorded at the ATN 7 Mobbs Lane studios at

Epping, New South Wales Epping is a suburb of Sydney, in the Australian state of New South Wales, 18 kilometres north-west of the Sydney central business district in the local government area of the City of Parramatta. Epping is located in the Northern Sydney region, wh ...

, with a new host, Andrew Harwood. Marist Brothers Eastwood again made it to the 1970 series final but were defeated on that occasion. In 1970, an "Its Academic Challenge" series, being an interstate contest involving all of the three teams from each state that competed in that state's championship round, was also recorded. In 1971, a team from Inala State High School in Queensland won the ''It's Academic'' Challenge final.

Revived format

The 2008 version features six new schools every week, with the winning schools to reappear later in the season for semifinals and grand finals. Each individual episode features five teams (green, red, blue, yellow and purple), each made up of six members from each school. There is a new feature called the ''Clean Sweep''; it only occurs when a team answers all questions correctly in the first round. A correct answer following the ''Clean Sweep'' will award the team with 20 points. The question rounds consist of a series of five, aimed at one team only. Players are given five seconds to answer, or longer for a spelling question, and may confer amongst themselves before giving an answer. As in the original series, if two students answer differently at once, the team captain is asked to select one answer. The ''Random Spotlight'' selects a member of the team at random. They are then asked a question about their chosen topic, which can be absolutely anything, ranging from academic subjects such as spelling or history, to more specific topics such as capital cities or outer space, to pop culture–themed topics. Unlike the question rounds, ''Beat the Buzzer'' is open for all teams to answer. Simon Reeve reads out questions to all contestants, who buzz in to answer. This is the most competitive segment of the show, as teams attempt to buzz in before other teams in order to score points (10 per correct question; 10 per incorrect answer). ''Beat the Buzzer'' is a speed round lasting for 45 seconds. If the team answers a question after time is up, the team would not gain or lose 10 points regardless if it's right or wrong. The information segment was introduced in Season 2. It consists of

Lizzy Lovette Elizabeth Lovette is an Australian radio presenter and TV presenter. Career Radio Lovette commenced her career in 2004 at 2Day FM Sydney as a presenter and 'Black Thunder' pilot. She moved to Nova 969 Sydney from 2004 to 2006, where in her firs ...

and later Sally Stanton giving a brief report on a particular topic. Teams are asked a 10-point buzz-in question on the topic to make sure they were listening. Initially the team who correctly answered the question also won the right to be the first team to get their question round, but this was later dropped. No points are lost if a team answers the question incorrectly, but they would be locked out in the next question. Should this happen, another question would be asked by Reeve for the remaining teams. In ''Watch This Space'', contestants are shown a one-minute video clip on a certain subject, about which they are then asked three to five questions. All teams compete on the buzzer for the right to answer the questions: 10 points for a correct answer, 10 points off for a wrong answer. In later seasons, after each question, a screenshot from the video clip is shown to the audience that answers the question. In ''Unscramble this Picture Puzzle'', a 3-by-3 or a 4-by-4 sliding puzzle is shown on the screens; later, it became a 5-by-5 sliding puzzle. The puzzle can be a person, a place or an object. When a team buzzes in, the puzzle freezes. The first team to identify the puzzle gets 10 points for their team and the puzzle is instantly revealed to the audience. If they get it wrong, no points are deducted; however, they get locked out, allowing the other teams to answer it. If all three teams fail to identify the puzzle (scrambled or not), no points are given out and the answer is revealed. The team who answers the ''Unscramble this Picture Puzzle'' question on the buzzer has the right to choose one of three topics for ''Fact or Fiction,'' a new round in 2006, and get five seconds to make that decision. Reeve then reads five statements about the topic for which schools buzz in to answer. These questions are simply true-or-false questions.

Scoring

*Each team begins with 100 points. (When the show first returned in 2005, it was impossible to lose points at any time during the show; this made these 100 points rather useless.) *In the individual team question rounds, 10 points are awarded for a correct answer; no points are deducted for a wrong answer. *If a contestant correctly answers his or her Random Spotlight question, 20 points are awarded instead of 10; once again, no points are deducted for a wrong answer. *In any buzzer rounds, 10 points are awarded for a correct answer, and 10 points are deducted for a wrong answer. When the show was introduced in 2005, no penalties were given for incorrect answers. The school with the most aggregate points at the end of the week is the winner, progressing to the semifinals and then the grand final. The winning school on any one day does not compete for more points or prizes, and should there be a tie it need not be broken. However, should there be a tie after the week, a tie-breaker would be given out for the Friday's teams. The team that gives the correct answer gets 10 points for their team and goes through to the next round. An incorrect answer would lose them 10 points, and the opposing team goes through instead.

Episodes

The following is an ''incomplete'' list of episodes broadcast, participating schools and winning schools from the show. At the end of each season, winning schools from prior episodes are invited back to play in the finals.

Season 1 (2005–06)

Season 2 (2006)

Season 3 (2006)

Season 4 (2007)

Season 5 (2007)

Season 6 (2008)

Season 7 (2008)

Season 8 (2009)

Season 9 (2009)

Season 10 (Summer Series) (2009)

Season 11 (2010)

Season 12 (2010)

Season 13 (2011)

Season 14 (2011)

Season 15 (2012)

Season 16 (2013)

Season 17 (2013–14)

Season 18 (2014)

Season 19 (2014–15)

Season 20 (2015–16)

Notes

*Heat 3 of Season 2 ended in a tie. A student from Quakers Hill East Public answered correctly so they made it to the semi-finals. *Heat 5 of Season 3 ended in a tie. A student from Kings Langley answered incorrectly so Patrician made it to the semi-finals. *Heat 1 of Season 6 ended in a tie. A student from Rockdale Public answered correctly so they made it to the semi-finals. *Heat 5 of Season 6 ended in a tie. A student from Hazelbrook Public answered correctly so they made it to the semi-finals. *Heat 4 of Season 11 ended in a tie. A student from Burwood answered correctly so they made it to the semi-finals. *Heat 3 of Season 12 ended in a tie. Harring Street Public answered correctly to progress to the semi-finals. *Semi-Final 3 of Season 20 ended in a tie. A student from Pacific Hills Christian School answered incorrectly, so International Grammar School Ultimo progressed to the grand final.

References

External links