More Americans Know That The Dixie Chicks Have a #1 Hit Than the Name of the US Secretary of Defense

More Americans Know That The Dixie Chicks Have a #1 Hit Than the Name of the US Secretary of Defense

Beginning Monday, July 10 Viewers Can Test Their Pop Culture Knowledge With VH1's New Original Series 'World Series of Pop Culture'

Interactive Show Components Include Online and Mobile Game Play and Full Episodes Available on VSPOT

NEW YORK, June 29 /PRNewswire/ -- 64% of Americans could identify the Dixie Chicks as the Country music group with a #1 hit album while only 46% of Americans knew that Donald Rumsfeld is the United States Secretary of Defense. More participants also knew that Jennifer Aniston is dating Vince Vaughn than knew that former Vice President Al Gore's new movie, "An Inconvenient Truth" is about global warming. These results are part of a recent VH1 telephone poll measuring 18-49 year olds' knowledge of pop culture and hard news.

Viewers will be given a chance to test their own pop culture savvy when VH1 and Entertainment Weekly debut the new original series "World Series of Pop Culture on Monday-Friday, July 10-14 at 10PM* Beginning July 20, the series will air Thursdays at 10PM*.

From the executive producer of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire," "The World Series of Pop Culture" is the ultimate pop culture competition designed for teams from across the country to display their astounding range of knowledge about everything music, television and film in pursuit of a $250,000 grand prize, provided by Alltel Wireless. NY1 News anchor Pat Kiernan and Inside Edition's Lisa Guerrero host the series.

The search for the country's best pop culture gurus began in March with regional qualifying competitions in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, and Atlanta. From the thousands who auditioned only 15 teams of three players each were chosen to compete for "The World Series of Pop Culture" championship. The 16th and final team was cast online where they qualified by taking VH1's very own "Pop Culture IQ Test." All 16 teams faced off at New York City's famed Ziegfeld Theater and competed in the biggest team trivia challenge ever.

Here's how the game is played: once the first category is revealed, the teams will have 30 seconds to deliberate before sending a teammate to the microphone to play for that entire category. The chosen players will each get one question per round, and each category will contain ten rounds of questions of increasing difficulty. Within a round, a player is eliminated if he or she answers the question incorrectly and his opponent answers it correctly. The first team to beat its opponents in three categories, and eliminate all their players, will win and move on to the next round. In the very end, one team will be crowned the champions of "The World Series of Pop Culture."

VSPOT, VH1's broadband channel (http://vspot.vh1.com/) will host full episodes and supplemental exclusive show content following each on-air broadcast. VH1 Games has developed an online companion game and VH1 Mobile will offer in-show trivia for viewers to participate from home via their mobile phones.

Viewers can log onto http://www.vh1.com/ learn more about "The World Series of Pop Culture."

VH1's "The World Series of Pop Culture" is executive produced by Michael Hirschorn, Jim Ackerman and Matt Hanna of VH1 and Michael Davies for Embassy Row.

VH1 connects viewers to the music, artists and pop culture that matter to them most with series, specials, live events, exclusive online content and public affairs initiatives. VH1 is available in nearly 84 million households in the U.S. VH1 also has an array of digital services including VH1 Classic, VH1 Soul, VH Uno and VH1 Country. Connect with VH1 at http://www.vh1.com/.

VH1 is a registered trademark of MTV Networks, a unit of Viacom International Inc. MTV Networks also operates and offers joint ventures, licensing agreements and syndication deals whereby its programming can be seen worldwide.

Entertainment Weekly, a winner of four National Magazine Awards (two for General Excellence, one for Design and one for Special Interest) is America's leading consumer magazine of entertainment and popular culture. The magazine is a wholly owned subsidiary of Time Inc., and has a guaranteed circulation rate base of 1.725 million reaching an audience of 11 million readers.

*all Times ET/PT

Contacts:

Toni Herron/VH1 Scott Acord/VH1
(212) 846-7528 (310) 752-8075
Toni.herron@vh1staff.comscott.acord@vh1staff.com

Tracey Bowen/Embassy Row
(212) 627-3439 x440
tlb@embassyrow.com

Suzy Berkowitz-Weksel/Entertainment Weekly
(212) 522-7827
suzy_berkowitz-weksel@ew.com

Source: VH1

CONTACT: Toni Herron, +1-212-846-7528, Toni.herron@vh1staff.com, or
Scott Acord, +1-310-752-8075, scott.acord@vh1staff.com both of VH1; or Tracey
Bowen of Embassy Row, +1-212-627-3439 x440, tlb@embassyrow.com; or Suzy
Berkowitz-Weksel of Entertainment Weekly, +1-212-522-7827,
suzy_berkowitz-weksel@ew.com

Web site: http://www.vh1.com/
http://vspot.vh1.com/

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