‘RIOT’ a Triple Bill of Trivia, Net, Videos

“WebRIOT” is “the only game show you get to play naked!” raves the bald, bespectacled Amhet Zappa, spawn of Frank Zappa and sibling of Dweezil and Moon-Unit. Amhet hosts MTV’s eager foray into interactive entertainment, a music trivia show that airs on the MTV station and to a lesser extent can be played over the Internet.

When it premieres Monday, “WebRIOT” plans to bring together four contestants on the air with 50,000 players online and test their musical quotient with such brain-bending queries as “What was the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ original name?” (Answer: Tony Flow and the Miraculous Majestic Masters of Mayhem.)

The hipper-than-thou in-studio gamers will be called--for no particular reason--by their screen names (“flirts-a-lot” and “vidkitten” in the pilot). The studio space is futuristic techno-funky with lots of chrome tubing and a bit of a Star Trek Enterprise feel. Occasionally, the camera visits an at-home contestant.

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The on-screen ambience is much less exciting. After downloading the necessary software (at https://www.webriot.mtv.com), Web participants get to chat (ah, that riveting online conversation) and can play the game (with lame graphics and no music) any time they want to. More exciting is to play during the show, weekdays at 5 p.m., both Eastern and Pacific time (it’ll be aired twice, with 25,000 players for each time zone). The online gamers have to watch their TV to get the questions. The game is designed for Web users to play along with the TV show, and this necessitates having a TV and computer in the same room, which is great for those who do but somewhat less practical for most of us.

Zappa, with his shaven head and sassy way, bears a resemblance to the bald mascot for You Don’t Know Jack, an irreverent Net trivia game that spearheaded hip, online trivia (see https://www.won.net/channels/bezerk/jack/jack-play.html). Indeed, the program seems to be trying really hard to capitalize on Web mania. And, to a large extent, it’s a bit of a gimmick.

The online participants don’t actually compete against the TV contestants (but the high scores from the Web game do flash across the MTV game show).

TV players compete for big prizes such as trips to Hawaii or New York and home electronics, and the top-scoring Net player each week will win a Diamond Rio MP3 player. All who log on will be entered in sweepstakes to win CDNow gift certificates and, at the end of the season, a new car. Each week, the show will select one Net player who will be televised from home. But it’s not too high-tech: The segments of the kids seeming to play at home will actually be taped in advance by an MTV film crew.

During the game, seven music videos are screened while players answer three questions about the band or performer whose video is playing. Some questions may be about the music (Which artist has not been sampled by Puff Daddy?) or about trivia concerning the musicians (Left Eye of TLC was jailed for what felony?) and some questions concern the videos (Whose hip-hop video was the first to use the fish-eye lens?). During the speed round, the TV contestants compete to be the first to make out a scrambled image of a music video.

Though “WebRIOT” is not quite interactively worthy of Judy Jetson, MTV is riding the wave of the future and savvily combining the trivia trend, the Net trend and the ever-popular music video.

By the way, Left Eye was incarcerated for torching her man’s crib.

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Erika Milvy writes about arts and entertainment from her crib in San Francisco. She can be reached at erika@well.com.