HQ Trivia Catapulted Host Scott Rogowsky to Overnight Fame He Admits He 'Wasn't Prepared for.' Now, He's Making His Return (Exclusive)
- - HQ Trivia Catapulted Host Scott Rogowsky to Overnight Fame He Admits He 'Wasn't Prepared for.' Now, He's Making His Return (Exclusive)
Virginia ChamleeJanuary 27, 2026 at 3:15 AM
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Scott Rogowsky
Eugene Gologursky/Getty
Scott Rogowsky is unveiling a new live and interactive game show
The former host of HQ Trivia spoke to PEOPLE about his time hosting the wildly popular game and how quickly it changed his life
His new game, he says, is focused on words, not trivia — with a twist
Scott Rogowsky still remembers getting the call to audition for a game show hosting gig. It was 2017 and Rogowsky, 41, was working as a comic, auditioning for commercials and television shows, and hosting Running Late with Scott Rogowsky, a live talk show he held at various venues in New York and Los Angeles.
"On the phone, I thought nothing of it," Rogowsky tells PEOPLE of that fateful call to audition. "I went in for the audition and booked it. I probably went on 20-ish auditions in 15 years ... and the one thing I got was the thing that changed my life and changed the world."
That "thing" was HQ Trivia, an app and trivia game that launched in August 2017 and quickly developed a cult following. Via the HQ app, users could participate in daily, live, trivia games in which they could win or split prize money — with prize pots that sometimes went over $100,000 thanks to corporate sponsorships.
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Scott Rogowsky
Matthew Salacuse
As Rogowsky recalls, the popularity of the app and the game he hosted seemingly came overnight.
"It was so fast," he says. "We officially launched August 26th, 2017. We went from 50 people on that first show to a million people by New Year's Day 2018."
The app grew viral thanks to media coverage ad social media. Once the "whole internet found out about it," Rogowsky says, his life changed.
"It was wild," he says. "Even that first Halloween, there were people sending photos in on Twitter, people dressing as me. I thought, 'Oh my gosh, are you kidding me?'" he says. "And then I would get recognized. It was so fast and so sudden that I kind of wasn't really prepared for it. People were stopping on the street for photos all the time. I couldn't really go out of my apartment without getting stopped, and it got a little weird sometimes .... nothing violent or anything, but just, you know, a lot of persistent fans."
Rogowsky left HQ in 2019 and began hosting a sports program on streaming platform DAZN. The company behind the HQ app has since been mired in controversy due to allegations of a toxic workplace environment and reported financial issues and the app has not hosted an official game since November 17, 2022.
But the live game show formula of HQ Trivia — which saw thousands of people coming together to participate — was always in the back of his mind.
Now, Rogowsky has brought it back but in a different way, with Savvy, his new live, interactive mobile game show app (currently in beta, with a wide rollout planned for February).
Scott Rogowsky
Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage
"It is very familiar to those who played HQ — the idea of seeing me on their phone, hosting a game show, giving away money — the twist is that it's not trivia, because in the age of AI, trivia is unfortunately killed," he says.
Savvy's first offering and flagship show, TextSavvy, challenges players to solve increasingly difficult word puzzles before time runs out.
"It's essentially a version of Wordle," Rogowsky says of the Savvy game he's hosting. "We put our own spin on a word puzzle game similar to Wordle and Connections."
The twist, however, is that Rogowsky will be playing, too.
"That's another wrinkle — that the host plays the game," he says. "So I'm playing the same word puzzle that you are. And if you beat me, then you win. "But it's still live like HQ was — no AI, live hosts, real people."
Those savvy enough to beat the host are eligible to earn in-game rewards and cash prizes.
The app is launching with the one game, though Rogowsky says the plan is to expand much larger.
"Essentially, the goal is to do what HQ never did, which is actually make good on the promise of being the future of television," he says. "A network of interactive content. Ideally, down the road, years from now, we'll have shows going almost around the clock with different hosts, different formats, and they'll all be interactive, with the host playing against you."
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Rogowsky says he hopes Savvy will see the success of HQ before it, noting that there's a demand for interactivity in the mobile world.
"People are hacking interactivity on TikTok, on Twitch — those platforms are not built for interactivity other than like chat, but there are some very savvy users who are finding ways to interact with the audience," he says. "And we are building an interactive platform. That is the foundation — host versus audience, us playing against each other. No other platform offers that at the scale that we do."
Savvy the app is exiting beta on Sunday, February 1, and going live every school night at 9 pm ET (for both Apple and Android users). The Season One premiere of TextSavvy is set for Sunday, March 1 at 9 pm ET.
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
