Kids Will Be the Talk of Nickelodeon

Nickelodeon, the cable channel that intends to be everything hip and new to its target audience of children, is creating as its signature show a program as conventional and as old as television itself--a talk show.

But in keeping with its reputation for breaking innovative and profitable new ground by re-casting proven TV genres into spritely versions for children, the cable network has come up with a startling spin on the formula--devising a talk show that puts limits on talk.

In “Don’t Just Sit There,” which will be seen in the Los Angeles area at 6:30 p.m. weekdays beginning Tuesday, even that holiest of talk show rituals--the celebrity interview--will be dramatically altered. Instead of easy gab, guests will be asked to reveal little-known personal interests that can then be turned into shtick. A fondness for basketball, for example, becomes an in-studio hoop session. Thus, the show’s title.

Mike Klinghoffer, the show’s supervising producer, said that “Don’t Just Sit There” took a year to devise and is, in its way, Nickelodeon’s most significant program. “Every new show we launch is important to us, but this show is even more so,” he said. “This show encompasses Nickelodeon’s attitude.”

Which is? “Us against them--kids against an adult world.”

Until now, Nickelodeon’s unofficial standard bearer, by virtue of its enormous popularity, has been the children’s game show “Double Dare,” which ends each half-hour by allowing winning contestants to collect prizes by romping through an obstacle course of mashed potatoes, giant sundaes and slime. The show was such a hit on cable that it was sold to commercial broadcasters in February.

In a way, the “Double Dare” food spree pales next to the heavy dose of Nickelodeon’s patented brand of kid-wise humor that imbues “Don’t Just Sit There.”

A 60-second segment advises children, tongue-in-cheek, how to save face in the lunch room when tuna salad drips from their sandwiches. In one experiment, dozens of helium balloons are tethered to a member of the studio audience in an effort to determine how many are needed to set a kid brother or sister aloft. There is a flippant tribute to National Baked Bean Month, which includes a brief reference to the food’s gaseous properties.

“Much of television for children is what adults think kids are interested in,” says Geoffrey Darby, Nickelodeon’s executive producer. “I think what we want this show to do is help define what Nickelodeon is, and that is to be a voice for kids. That’s easy to say, but difficult to do in programming.”

That is why the producers intensely researched the intended audience and altered the show to reflect the comments of 10- to 13-year-olds who screened the pilot in focus groups last winter.

The sample viewers, for example, wanted a house band, a la “Late Night With David Letterman,” and so a band (all teens) was added. And the set, which originally evoked a clubhouse atmosphere, is now a vivid, highly stylized montage that includes a gym locker, a broken elevator and an avant garde living room. It is furnished with two plush bench seats, covered in animal-print velour, that had come from an old Delta ’88. A pay phone decorates one wall. A videotaped aquarium scene, with a toy Godzilla bobbing in and out, plays on a TV monitor.

Each day, in addition to celebrity guests such as singer Johnny Kemp and actor David Moscow from “Big,” there is an “offbeat guest” segment. At one recent taping, the offbeat guests were The Gizmo Guys, a pair of jugglers. They were later asked to play defense when the day’s main guest, record producer and musician Jellybean Benitez, demonstrated his basketball skills.

The implicit reason for requiring guests to give something extra is the belief that children are less likely than adults to sit still for the book-album-movie flogging that is the staple of adult talk shows.

“It’s not just, ‘Hi, I have a new movie,’ ” said Gwen Billings, the show’s talent coordinator. “It’s ‘Hi, I have a new movie and now I’m going to play with you.’ ”

Billings is new to children’s television. She had been talent coordinator for CNN’s “Showbiz Today.” There is, she says, an eye-opening difference.

“There are people you assume kids are interested in, and then there are people kids are interested in,” she says. Billings was surprised to discover that celebrities who rate highly with children include Letterman and New York millionaire Donald Trump.

To Darby, the executive producer, a talk show was the next logical step in Nickelodeon’s progression.

When Nickelodeon began nine years ago, it was a cable channel that gave child viewers programs that were good for them. Since it became part of the MTV Networks, it has pursued the decidedly more commercial avenue of giving children what they want.

Besides two game shows for children, the channel has a movie review show hosted by teen-age critics, “Rated K: For Kids, By Kids” has done a pilot for a children’s court show and is considering developing a news broadcast for children.

The appeal of the talk show format, Darby says, was its versatility.

“People have come to us with ideas to make a cooking show for kids, to make an exercise show for kids. But what kind of cooking show can you make that kids will watch for half an hour? We aren’t making them into chefs,” he says. “But with this we can take a few minutes and say, ‘You hate eating spinach, but here’s a recipe you can use.’ The same with consumer topics. You can do new toys for fall but to do a half-hour consumer show every day wouldn’t work.”

Nickelodeon’s corporate parent, Viacom, struck it rich with the syndication of “Double Dare” and “Finders Keepers,” suggesting that Nickelodeon has become a handy testing ground for syndication tryouts. As it happens, “Don’t Just Sit There” tested even better with audiences than “Double Dare.”

Yet Darby says that Nickelodeon isn’t considering syndicating “Don’t Just Sit There,” because it is “our flagship show and it will define what Nickelodeon is.”

On the other hand, he adds, “That’s not to say we wouldn’t make a similar program for syndication.”