IT'S PRODUCED BY KIDS, BUT IT'S NO KIDDIE SHOW.

Byline: Bhavna Mistry  Staff Writer

NEWHALL - They may not be giving away a million dollars, but this game show has it all - from winners to a studio audience to a quirky but funny host.

But there's a catch: From contestants to camera operators, from the director to the sound engineers, ``The Placerita Challenge'' is the only show in town that stars and is produced by junior high school students.

``It's not every day that kids get to go into a television station and take it over,'' said Michaela Chapman, 12, of Valencia, who operates one of three cameras during the show. ``I think it's really cool.''

The show is produced by 13 of the 25 members of Kid Flix, an after-school video production club based at Placerita Junior High School. It stars student contestants who are chosen by their teachers.

``This is really a great way for us to see everything that there is out there,'' said eighth-grader Blake Visin, 13, the director in charge of the 13-member production crew.

Sitting in the control booth, Blake goes nonstop giving directions to camera operators, telling them which camera to air, to move in or out, go left or right. He cues the sound and manages the technicians.

``I'm pretty much in charge of making sure that everything is running smoothly,'' said Blake, who served as technical director last year.

Blake said directing the show is giving him great insight into what it would really be like behind the cameras. He's thinking future career.

``I've been looking into this a lot,'' he said. ``I want to do this as a profession.''

The students have practiced putting together their own show by putting on a news program.

The daily ``Miner Morning TV'' stars two anchors who read morning announcements and school happenings from a TelePrompTer, which are broadcast throughout the school. The three- to six-minute show begins with the Pledge of Allegiance.

The show is put together by students who arrive at 7:30 a.m., 45 minutes before the first bell.

Blake said the news show proved the perfect practice for the game show.

Filmed at the Media One Public Access Television studio in Newhall, the 30-minute ``Placerita Challenge'' is cablecast at 5 p.m. Fridays on Channel 20 for Media One and Time Warner customers.

The cable station is showing reruns from last year's eight episodes and will begin its new season March 24.

``It's the closest thing to a live production you can get,'' said Susan Shapiro, community programming manager for Media One. ``This channel is here for exactly this kind of thing.''

School officials worked with Shapiro to formulate the idea for the show. The school had initially planned to do a live homework hotline show starring teachers, but later changed to a game show format.

The way the show works is that teachers from the school select students to be the contestants. Wanting to give every student an opportunity to be on the show, teachers select A, B and C students.

Each team will have six players and will play three rounds. In rounds one and two, three of the contestants try to answer 15 questions. In the final round, all the contestants are brought together to jointly answer one question.

The game is point-based, and the team with the most points is asked to reappear on next week's show.

Seventh-graders will compete against seventh-graders and eighth- graders will compete against eighth-graders until a match brings the top two teams together.

The winners of that match will then go on to play a group of teachers.

During last season's matchup, the winning seventh-grade team beat the teachers in the final episode - a prize worth more than a million to the winning team.

This year, Kid Flix plans to produce eight episodes and take a short break, then continue with another eight episodes.

All the questions used in the game show are written by teachers and come from course material or pop culture. The question pops up on the screen as the host, retired assistant principal Bob Giblin, reads it.

Questions include anything from which two colors make up an Oreo cookie to which American author wrote ``The Catcher in the Rye'' to how do you change 1 3/8 into an improper fraction to how did the Chinese use tea to how many feet are there in a mile.

For the final-round question in the first episode of the season, students were asked to put the following shapes in order from the fewest sides to the most: septagon, dodecagon, hexagon and octagon.

The students write down their answers and present them to the host within a given time.

Between rounds, student-produced video clips are shown of activities that have taken place on campus. Such clips include a geography night in which students displayed their work and a tree-planting event in conjunction with the city of Santa Clarita.

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Photo: (color) Kid Flix member Blake Visin, 13, directs an episode of ``The Placerita Challenge'' at Media One Public Access Television in Newhall.

David Crane/Staff Photographer