That one time I was on TV

Back in the 90s and early 2000s, student quiz shows on TV were a thing, the most famous ones being Battle of the Brains and The Digital LG Quiz. For some reason our school never gunned for these two shows. Instead, we joined a lesser known quiz show called TechnoWars. I love watching quiz shows and I have never heard of this one.

Our team consisted of me and my classmate James. One of our teachers (Sir Payumo, RIP) asked us to read about computers for a week, then we went to FEU to take a written exam. Our combined scores made us qualify for the televised round. That was also the first time I learned that there was a televised round.

From what I remember, the show aired on a Saturday, but we didn’t see it because we were practicing for something, possibly a play or a report. Back in high school, we hung out a lot, even on weekends, but it’s usually to prepare for something we had to present when the class resumes.

Anyway, since I didn’t get to watch the show, I didn’t know how long it aired but it was probably less than an hour, like all the other game shows. But let me tell you this – the taping took an entire day! It ended so late that we had to spend the night at our teacher’s house. And we didn’t even bring a change of clothes or a toothbrush.

The show was taped in a mostly empty auditorium and the only people sitting audience were the coaches. From what I remember, there we three rounds and a certain number of teams are eliminated after each round. So why would a quiz show, airing for only an hour, take an entire day to shoot? Sometimes, the host makes a mistake and we had to do a retake. Most of the time, however, we had no idea. The director would just ask for a retake of an entire sequence, including the buzzing and stealing and the volley of wrong answers by different teams, even though we thought nothing went wrong. It was weird. We felt bad for giving the wrong answer, and yet we had to perform that mistake three or more times. There were also long down times between questions. All the while, even when we weren’t filming, we just stood there on the stage. There was no resting area. The AC was on full blast and we were only wearing our thin school uniforms that work really well in our AC-less classrooms but not in a freezing auditorium. The lights in front us were also blindingly harsh.

Sadly, after all that effort we only made it to the second round. We were then ferried backstage, in an area surrounded with black curtains and another set of harsh lights. We were asked to react to being eliminated, and even though we only said a sentence of two they made us do so many takes.

A week later, the crew went to our school with their huge cameras and asked us to reshoot what we said backstage. It seemed that the director wasn’t satisfied with the things we said. I think I said something like, aw we feel bad , sayang, but good luck to the other teams, but perhaps I sounded like, oh geez, I’m tired and hungry and I want to go home, and I couldn’t care less that I am appearing in this show. The crew recommended us a few lines. Again, so many retakes.

Then maybe a week or two later, the show aired. We were too busy to watch it. And even if we weren't busy, I was actually not interested.

So yeah, that’s the story about that one time I was on TV. Ang hirap pala maging artista.