'Studio 7' a boring imitation

LOS ANGELES — If you took "Who Wants to be a Millionaire," crossed it with "Survivor," aimed it at the WB's young viewers— and made it pretty much a big bore — you might end up with "Studio 7."

That was certainly the plan. Without, of course, it turning into a bore.

"The WB came . . . and asked us to create a game that could be sort of a 'Millionaire' for the WB," said executive producer Michael Davies, the man who translated the British version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" for American audiences.

The set-up certainly looks like "Millionaire." Even the set looks amazingly (and intentionally) similar. Seven young contestants (most between the ages of 18 and 24) compete in a contest that requires them to answer a series of questions. A wrong answer makes you vulnerable to being voted out by other remaining contestants as they're eliminated one by one. The show debuts tonight at 8 p.m. on Ch. 30.

Before they get to the set, the seven spend a week living together and preparing for the show — a week in which friendships (dare we say alliances?) and rivalries develop and are revealed in taped bits and interview segments that are inserted into the show.

"This is the thing that makes this show very different," Davies said. The players have a relationship with each other at the point where they come into the studio. People will make sort of alliances and say, 'Hey, I'm going to help you' . . . and those alliances collapse on show night."

Each contestant has one chance to ask another contestant for help, requiring more "Survivor"-like strategy. "Sometimes people help . . . because they want to buy a favor for later on," Davies said. "Sometimes people help because they think it looks great to the rest of the group that they can be trusted, so later on they can hurt someone. Sometimes they say they're going to help and then they give them the wrong answer."

So, to win, you have to be smart and calculating. Like when it comes to voting people out. "Do you vote out the person who you don't like or do you vote out the person who you consider to be the greatest threat to you in the game?" Davies said.

Despite some surface similarities, this is not exactly "Jeopardy!" The questions are mostly pop culture and recent events — very recent. All the information in Round 1 is from the years 2000-2003; Round 2 is just the year 2004 to date; Round 3 is just the past 30 days.

"You can't ask a young person about something that happened in 1897," Davies said. "You can't really even ask a young person about . . . things that happened in 1982 that were before they were born." (Well, you can't ask relatively dumb young people. . . .)