NTN Trivia reportedly gone from Sleep Out Louie’s

I haven’t been down there to confirm this, but other Sleep Out Louie’s regulars who I trust tell me that the popular Downtown bar has discontinued their NTN Trivia game.

For those of you who don’t know what NTN is, it’s a nationwide trivia game that is played in bars and restaurants. A typical game consists of 15 questions and takes 30 minutes. Questions appear on monitors tuned to the trivia channel, and people playing in the restaurants answer on blue wireless boxes – often called “crack boxes” because NTN Trivia is about as addictive as crack. Daytime games generally don’t have a theme, but during prime-time they’ll run themed games about celebrity trivia (which The Nuh-Uh Girl dominated at SOL), sports trivia, music trivia, etc. They also have a poker channel where players can participate in a simulated Texas Hold ‘Em game.

Some of you are probably expecting me to go off on a rant against Sleep Out’s parent company, River City Management, for taking away NTN… but I’m not going to. I learned several months ago how much they were paying per week for it, and let’s just say it’s a lot. It was a business decision on River City’s part and I can’t blame ’em for making it.

Now, if they discontinue the $1 PBR on Sundays… THEN we’re gonna have a problem.

Enjoyed some good times on NTN over the past year though. Challenging worthy competition like PDS and Tracy… hitting #1 in the nation on a game I played after consuming three bottles of champagne and several duck farts… watching Skippy gloat after FINALLY beating me… and most recently I’ve been challenged by two employees of another nearby restaurant who play together under the screen name BIATCH.

This does present an opportunity for another bar in the Downtown core to pick up NTN and get a built-in regular following. Currently the only other location in the core that has it is TGI Friday’s, and you’re never going to see a lot of Downtown locals become Friday’s regulars; this ain’t Cordova, folks. Might be worth it for Dan McGuinness to look into it – if they did it’s virtually guaranteed that they’d yank some of my drinking dollars out of the hands of the Saucer. Bar Dogs, the locals’ bar scheduled to open on Monroe in May, might want to consider it as well – NTN could lead to them stealing a lot of business away from Sleep Out’s, especially considering Sleep Out’s is rumored to be closing for a month for renovations right around the time Bar Dogs opens.

Ho hum… it’s cold and not much is going on downtown tonight… I’ll probably stay in. Look for a couple of other restaurant/bar-themed posts this weekend.