Cable network GSN has introduced Grand Slam, a new game show that pits some of the best TV quiz show contestants of all time against one another.

The show airs at 7 p.m. Saturday with another episode at the same time Sunday on the GSN Network, Channel 103 on Buckeye CableSystem.

Ken Jennings, probably the most famous modern game-show player from his 2004 stint on Jeopardy!, was featured in the premiere episode, and will appear Aug. 19 in the quarter-finals, battling a winner from VH1 s World Series of Pop Culture. Other contestants include Brad Rutter, who won the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions and will appear again Aug. 18; John Carpenter, the first winner on Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and Thom McKee, who appeared on Tic Tac Dough for a record 46 days in 1980.

Comedian Dennis Miller, a five-time Emmy award winner for his talk show on HBO, a popular former Weekend Update correspondent on Saturday Night Live, an analyst on Monday Night Football for two seasons as well as a best selling author, is hosts with Amanda Byram (The Swan, Paradise Hotel). It was the opportunity to meet the game show greats that took him to New York for the show s week-long taping in late June, Miller said.

I like brainiacs and I wanted to meet Jennings and the guy who beat him, Miller said by phone from Los Angeles. Plus, it was a one-off thing. I don t think I want to turn into Regis and turn up every week to do a game show, even though I love watching him. They said this is a battle of the champions and I said, that sounds kind of fun.

Miller and Byram host the show from a booth above the set.

I m like the guy in Thunderdome who does the announcing, Miller said. I just sat up in the booth and zinged with references.

On the stage floor, contestants stand facing one another, battling for $100,000 and a crystal trophy. They must answer questions from categories that include general knowledge, contemporary knowledge (AKA pop culture), numbers, logic, and letters.

Unlike some more recent game shows (Deal or No Deal, Identity), Grand Slam requires knowledge and the ability to think quickly to answer the rapid-fire questions; it s not a game of chance. Questions in the premiere include, How is 79 expressed in Roman numerals? and What is 84 x 40?

I was playing along up in the booth and over the course of the whole tournament, I won against a couple people, but only a couple in the early rounds, Miller said, I was beating them on addition and subtraction, which surprised me.

As it gets closer to the end, there are some unbelievable shoot-outs, he said. Your jaw is dropping.

Miller said his co-host would simply offer bemused head shakes as he went off into weird references.

I would say we were the new R.J. Wagner and Stefanie Powers. It was close to Hart to Hart banter, he joked, referencing the early 80s TV staple. We didn t have Lionel Stander as the butler, but we were trying for that.

The first round ends tonight at 7 p.m. on GSN (Channel 103 on the Buckeye CableSystem) when No. 8 Nancy Christy plays No. 9 Ogi Ogas and then No. 5 David Legler takes on No. 12 Frank Spangenberg.

The quarterfinals of GRAND SLAM on Aug. 18 and 19 will determine who survives to go to the semi-finals on Aug. 25. The final on Aug. 26 includes an extra round as well as highlights, interviews and the trophy presentation to the Grand Slam champion.

Executive producer for Grand Slam is Michael Davies, who also imported Who Wants to Be a Millionaire to American TV. At a GSN press conference last month in Beverly Hills, Calif., Davies said he hopes Grand Slam becomes more than a one-time tournament, which was news to Miller. He likes the idea of making Grand Slam an occasional, event series, but he s not as wild about following comedians Howie Mandel (Deal or No Deal) or Bob Saget (1 Vs. 100) to prime-time on a weekly basis.

I would never say never, but I would only do it if they let me be quirky, Miller said.

Davies sees Grand Slam as more than a game show.

This is sort of a quiz show as sporting event, he said. [The hosts] are not getting in the middle of the game with banter, but they are setting up each round and analyzing it because we recognize these 16 players as sort of trivia athletes, game gods to a large part of the audience who watch these guys being incredible on television.

In addition to Grand Slam, Miller is also hosting a national daily radio show (10 a.m. to 1 p.m. weekdays on Pittsburgh s WTZN, 93.7 FM), which he said he may broadcast from Pittsburgh in the future.

My callers have been mostly from the Burgh, Miller said. In some places we aren t on live so we don t get calls from there. We just moved to live in Chicago, so Chicago and Pittsburgh are the center of my calls. Both have a common-sense, working-class sensibility. I like that. I don t get all these ethereal calls about cosmic issues.

The Block News Alliance consists of The Blade and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Rob Owen is TV editor of the Post-Gazette.

Contact him at: rowen@post-gazette.com.

First Published August 12, 2007, 10:52 a.m.