TELEVISION REVIEW; Think of a Reality Show, Then Ask Questions
Virginia Heffernan www.nytimes.com virginia-heffernan
Virginia Heffernan reviews WB's new game show Studio 7, hosted by Pat Kiernan; photo (M)
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Fans of Pat Kiernan, the sage of NY1, the New York all-news channel, and host of CNNfn's ''Money Gang,'' will watch in wonderment as he tries to refashion himself as a game show host on the WB tonight. Nothing that Mr. Kiernan does should be considered a failure, and the show, ''Studio 7,'' deserves credit for introducing him to a wider audience. But this noir quiz show is labored and boring, and it all but stifles Mr. Kiernan's charm, raising the worrying possibility that his marvelously amused understatement might not quite translate to prime-time network glory.

On the news Mr. Kiernan strikes a perfect balance of New York sentimentality and New York cynicism. He has, in other words, a deadpan gift to rival Greg Kinnear's, but he has heart, too. While reporting the news on Sept. 11, 2001, he was tremulous at times, but he maintained the only-in-New-York-kids equanimity that serves him so well when reading daily tabloid news. As he knows well, that's often the only tone in which local tragedy can be made bearable.

But on ''Studio 7'' Mr. Kiernan appears to have been asked only to play it cool. His role is to ask ''Jeopardy''-caliber questions of young people who have spent a week studying together, possibly forming alliances or getting on one another's nerves. (This reality component of the show is overhyped; not much seems to have gone on during the ''Survivor'' week.) The show flashes back to the period of preparation, but it's otherwise a straight quiz, with questions about politics and pop culture, enlivened (barely) by the contestants' option to call on one another for help. The participants are said to come from all over the country, and the show gets a briefly promising start when the first few introduced are from Manhattan, Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. Perhaps Mr. Kiernan is making one of his little jokes. As a sweet-faced guy from Edmonton, Alberta, he is always skeptical when it comes to New York chauvinism. His quiet sendup of that chauvinism, in fact, is another one of his strengths.

But as soon as contestants from Montana and Ohio make appearances tonight, it becomes clear that the show is ordinary. We get more than the usual back story on the contestants -- each has a tape as a saber rattler (''I went to Yale; there's no chance I'm not going to win'') -- but none is especially striking except one person, who seems distinctive. Predictably, that person wins.