Donoho to Do Trivia on ‘Monday Night Live’

KABC-TV sportscaster Todd Donoho, who has been posing trivia questions to Channel 7 anchors Paul Moyer and Ann Martin on the 11 p.m. news since his debut July 10, is about to do the same for prime-time viewers.

Beginning Sept. 11, Donoho will be hosting “Monday Night Live,” what he describes as a “catch-as-catch can, three-ring circus of a show” following “Monday Night Football.”

The first installment of “Monday Night Live” will air at approximately 10 p.m., after the New York Giants-Washington Redskins game and a network special on the 20th anniversary of “Monday Night Football.” It will then move into its regular time slot of approximately 9 p.m. on Sept. 18, where it will remain for the entire 16-week run of “Monday Night Football.”

“Monday Night Live” was born out of the necessity to solve KABC-TV’s post-”Monday Night Football” scheduling problems.

“Because you never knew how long the game would run, you didn’t know if you needed to fill an hour, 90 minutes or whatever,” Donoho said. “We’ll be the big exception, an expandable or collapsible show.”

“MacGyver” will follow “Monday Night Live” at 10 p.m., giving “Eyewitness News” a guaranteed 11 p.m. start, something it had not had in the past after “Monday Night Football.” Last season, “MacGyver” followed “Monday Night Football,”, with back-to-back episodes of “Eye on Hollywood,” the syndicated version of “Eye on L.A.” filling the time before the news.

“Because you never know when a sporting event will end, you either have to join a show in progress, which can upset the viewer, or play it in its entirety so your news will not come on in at its regular time, something I, as news director, would prefer not to do,” Channel 7 News Director Roger Bell said. “Now we’ll be able to able to accordion ‘Monday Night Live’ to fit the remainder of the hour.”

Donoho said approximately 40% of the show will be spent asking callers’ trivia questions, with prizes going to those who answer correctly. It is a format similar to “Time Out For Trivia,” which Donoho hosted on Score, the sports arm of Financial News Network, from September, 1985, to June, 1989, before leaving for KABC-TV.

However, “Monday Night Live” will include several elements “Time Out For Trivia” did not, including live remotes from players’ homes and bars.

“If (linebacker) Kevin Greene had a big day for the Rams the day the before, we’ll talk with him and then have a question about him,” Donoho said. “The next segment might be a bar segment, followed by a baseball segment.

“The common thread will be trivia and winning prizes while getting information by talking with athletes in a loose, live and spontaneous manner.”

Bell, whose department will oversee “Monday Night Live,” has no qualms about broadcasting a telephone call-in show on the visual medium of television.

“I was involved with ‘The Tom Snyder Show’ (which ran on KABC-TV from February to September, 1986, and was replaced by ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’), which had pretty decent ratings and was pretty successful for what it was,” Bell said. “A show like this depends on the host, and we certainly know that Todd has had a great deal of success with the format.”