What is it?
Consumer Guide. TV Trivia: Thirty Years of Television. Skokie, IL: Entertainment Today Magazine, 1985.
Why should M*A*S*H fans care?
This magazine has collections of trivia questions for several classic television shows, including M*A*S*H.
As a M*A*S*H fan, what part(s) should I read?
If you are only a fan of M*A*S*H, then there is only one page you need to worry about. But if you are a fan of classic television in general, then you will enjoy the entire magazine!
TL;DR Review
In the days when there were only three channels on television, some shows rose to the top of the ratings and stayed there. Publishers and manufacturers took advantage of the popularity of television by selling items related to the shows. This magazine is a collection of trivia questions for 39 shows that are important in the history of television up to the point of its publication in 1985.
Full Review
The 1970s and 1980s have been called the golden age of television because you got new, groundbreaking series along side reruns of classic shows from the dawn of television in the 1950s and 1960s. By the mid-1980s, there were a lot of books and magazines published that chronicled the history of television up to that point. Consumer Guide’s TV Trivia: Thirty Years of Television is one of those magazines, but with a twist. Instead of listing every television show created up to that point with a short blurb about each, they picked a selection shows from several genres and created a series of trivia questions for each. This would have been a fun way for television fans to test their knowledge of their favorite shows.
The magazine contains trivia questions for 39 shows that span the range of television styles and the early decades of TV history. There is trivia for sitcoms including I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Happy Days, My Three Sons, and more. The magazine includes trivia for westerns including Bonanza and Gunsmoke. Of course, family programming was important, and it was represented by The Muppet Show and The Jetsons. Other classic shows with trivia questions in this magazine include sci-fi classics such as Star Trek and Lost in Space, and variety shows including Saturday Night Live. By far, the genre that is represented the most in this magazine is the half-hour sitcom. There are series represented from the 1950s into the 1980s, so there was something in this magazine for everyone.
Of course, TV Trivia: Thirty Years of Television would not be complete without M*A*S*H. It was published two years after the record breaking finale, so it made sense to include M*A*S*H due to its popularity and the fact that it was still fresh in people’s minds. The page for M*A*S*H includes photos of both the early and final casts, and it includes 24 trivia questions. The questions cover a variety of topics from the series including character’s hometowns, the name of Hawkeye’s tent, who Margaret married, who Klinger married, the names of B.J.’s wife and daughter, why Radar was sent home, and Radar’s favorite drink. The questions are fairly easy most diehard M*A*S*H fans, but the question where you have to match up the actor from the movie and their counterpart actor from the TV show might be more tricky for some.
I reviewed the questions and the answers, and there is only questions that I have an issue with. The question is “Whatever happened to Lt. Col. Henry Blake?” The question isn’t worded the best, but the answer key says that his “helicopter was shot down over the Sea of Japan.” I can understand the confusion because we see him leave the 4077th in a helicopter, but it was actually his plane that was shot down over the Sea of Japan. When Radar tells Henry that he is going home, he says, “Tokyo, San Francisco, and then home!” But a helicopter wouldn’t have flown to Tokyo. It is likely that he flew to either Kimpo Air Base or Seoul because when Radar delivers the news of Henry’s death, he says, “Lt. Col. Henry Blake’s plane was shot down over the Sea of Japan…”
I really like books and magazines that contain information or trivia questions for a variety of shows. We forget that in today’s world with fan sites and Buzzfeed, there were few ways for fans to connect with their favorite television shows and movies. Most fans had to rely on TV Guide, their local newspapers, books, licensed products, and magazines like TV Trivia: Thirty Years of Television as sources of information about the shows they loved. In the mid-1980s, several books were published for the anniversary of television, and the majority of them were a catalog of shows that had aired up to that point. I really like the unique trivia aspect of this magazine, and I can imagine kids using this magazine to quiz each other about their favorite shows. While TV Trivia: Thirty Years of Television is no longer in print, you can find used copies online on sites such as Amazon and eBay.
The M*A*S*H Historian 