ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, December 9, 1996 TAG: 9612100020
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: TELEVISION REVIEW
SOURCE: LEE WINFREY KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
Count on MTV to put a new spin on the game-show genre. Fans of such warhorses as ``Jeopardy!'' will need to gear up their metabolism a notch or two to watch MTV's new entry in this venerable field.
``Idiot Savants,'' part of an image makeover unrolling on MTV this winter, will premiere at 7 tonight. Sixty-five episodes will be televised at the same time Monday through Friday. The host is Greg Fitzsimmons, a fresh-faced and hip young comedian.
As illustrated by a visit last month to the ``Idiot Savants'' set, which occupies a ballroom in the Pennsylvania Hotel across the street from Madison Square Garden, the question categories are all youthful: songs by Prince before he changed his name to something unspeakable, James Bond movies, famous dicks (Dick Clark, Dick Cavett, the two actors named Dick in the cast of ``Bewitched,'' etc.).
Four 20-ish contestants sit at desks while Fitzsimmons fires questions at them. When the first commercial break arrives in 15 minutes, the contestant with the fewest points is escorted to the dunce's corner and awarded a belled cap to wear while there. In an interview in his dressing room, Fitzsimmons joked that they once had a contestant who was stuck in the dunce's corner so long they had pizza delivered to him.
The contestants are mostly college kids, because this is where MTV recruits competitors, with Yale, Penn and Wellesley represented on this episode. ``Idiot Savants'' though they might be, they are not dumb and the questions posed to them are not simple.
An interesting category melds the names of famous people, asking the contestants to identify the two personages involved in ``Harry Truman Capote,'' ``Jason Alexander Haig,'' ``Ray Charles Darwin,'' and ``Louise Jefferson Davis.''
Although some of the questions would give Beavis and Butt-head a snicker, ``Idiot Savants'' also salutes literacy on occasion. A category called ``stuff girls read'' included a question about Pat Conroy's ``The Prince of Tides'' (1986), an excellent realistic novel.
MTV is tough and unforgiving when it comes to music, its specialty. No ``Savant'' was able to name the debut album of Hole (``Live Through This''), although one of them identified Dr. Dre's (``The Chronic'').
In the last segment of the show, the contestant with the most points is put inside the Cylinder of Shush, a descending plastic tube reminiscent of the Cone of Silence on the old ``Get Smart'' series. A ``savant'' named Richard chose the three ``Godfather'' movies as his climactic category. If he could answer 10 questions in 45 seconds, a trip to Hawaii would be his reward.
Richard is a ``Godfather'' guru: He knew, for example, the name of the Hollywood movie producer who found a severed horse's head in his bed in ``The Godfather'' (Jack Woltz). But the questions came so fast, with less than five seconds between each one, he failed to get them all. On this series, you not only have to be a savant, you have to speak at almost an auctioneer's speed to emerge a grand prize winner from the Cylinder of Shush.
The likable host, Fitzsimmons, is 30 years old but looks a decade younger, so he fits this show like a Nike cap fits Tiger Woods. Precisely aimed at its target audience, ``Idiot Savants'' looks like a series that should succeed.
The new show is part of MTV's first format overhaul in several years. The music-minded cable channel is still a cash cow, with its profits estimated at $207 million this year and $227 million next year by Paul Kagan Associates, whose tracking of the business side of cable is considered authoritative.
But ratings have been flat for the last couple of years.
Hence the revisions, including the premiere tonight at 10 of ``The Rodman World Tour,'' an interview series with host Dennis Rodman, the flamboyant forward for the Chicago Bulls. Rodman videotaped all his episodes this summer, so the series would not interfere with his basketball season.
A sketch comedy variety show starring ``Singled Out's'' Jenny McCarthy is scheduled for February.
MTV says most of the changes are still in the planning stage. But more music is at the top of the chart. The buzz in the music biz is that techno and dance groups such as Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers will likely receive more exposure, and rap music probably less.
By the way, if you're still trying to think of the last names of the two Dicks on ``Bewitched,'' they were Sargent and York.
LENGTH: Medium: 80 linesby CNB