Bloggers Vs. The Nation on CBC Test the Nation

For viewers of CBC's Test the Nation show, you'll be pleased to know that blogTO's prayers have been answered for a bloggers team on an upcoming show.

This game show will pit a group of 36 bloggers against five other identifiable groups in a trivia contest with a 21st Century theme. You can follow along at home or online, as teams battle it out in the CBC studio for bragging rights.

Regular blogTO contributors Adam Schwabe, Ryan Couldrey and Graeme Stewart will join a team of bloggers who are up against other themed teams, including: Cab Drivers, Chefs, Flight Crew, Backpackers and Celebrity Look-alikes.

With Rannie Turingan of Photojunkie, and Amber MacArthur formerly of Webnation, we're sure to outsmart the competition. We've even got David Topping of Torontoist on our team.

Test the Nation debuted last March with a live, interactive IQ test show, which attracted 1.5 million viewers. Over 200,000 people took the test online.

I appeared on the second installment of the show last September, representing a group of Word Gamers on their Watch Your Language episode.

I found the taping of the show more of a test in our patience, but the hosts, Brent Bambury and Wendy Mesley, were entertaining enough to watch, so the time passed by easily enough in between several multiple-choice quizzes.

Trust the Dutch to develop such a show. Test the Nation first aired in the Netherlands in 2001. The format has since seen success around the world, attracting huge audiences in 40 countries.

Germany, France, Australia, Japan, Indonesia, New Zealand, the U.K., Turkey, Israel and Romania have all broadcast their versions of Test the Nation, with a launch in the Middle East and Russia scheduled.

So what do you think? Are bloggers smarter than backpackers, celebrity look-alikes, flight crews, cab drivers and chefs? I wouldn't underestimate the competition.

An abundance of Toronto's cabbies hold doctorate degrees from other countries. I don't know about the faux celebrities, but flight crews and backpackers are usually well traveled. And chefs tend to have multitasking and leadership skills too. It's anybody's game, really.

Tune in to Test The Nation: Trivia on Sunday, January 20th at 8 p.m. on CBC Television and play along. And if that's not enough for you, further upcoming themes will feature themes such as sports and Canadiana.

Photo: CBC.