Profile: Alum entertains to educate

By Shane Arman '10

Matthew King ’91, calls it the greatest accident that ever happened to him. As a middle school teacher, King stumbled across a dusty old box with simple buzzer devices called “quizzers.”

King used the devices for test reviews in a Jeopardy-style format. His students were not only more eager to learn, but also their test scores improved drastically.

The game became so popular that King had an interesting thought.

“If it works for kids, why wouldn’t it work for adults?” King said.

And Game Show America was born. Specializing in game show production for corporate training, casinos, parties and fundraisers, King provides the technology and creativeness to help other businesses grow.

“I’ve taken all those things I did in the classroom and use them everyday in corporate America,” King said.

While a student at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, King gained an appreciation for educational entertainment by studying education and being involved in the campus’s largest programming body, Reeve Union Board.

Consequently King is a natural game show host and uses his knowledge and charisma to connect with audiences of any size.

“Once I had the idea, I knew it would be successful, but I didn’t know to what degree,” King said.

The growing pains were still tough for King, who risked his successful teaching career to pursue a dream.

“There were some days I woke up and thought, ‘why am I doing this?’” King said. “People thought I was ridiculous.”

Ridiculous is accurate to describe the amount of work King put in to establish Game Show America as the nation’s leading game show production company.

“It’s more work than I ever thought I would do,” said King, who has taken his show to 35 states plus Canada and Mexico. “But it’s not like work, because I love what I do.”

While King is still learning the intricacies about how to run a business, his path to running a successful business started with his passion.

“Don’t go into business just to make money,” King said. “Make sure you enjoy it and believe in it 100 percent.”