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Headline, Industry News
CBC IQ show ‘Test the Nation’
Thursday March 15th 2007TORONTO (CP) _ Steven Sabados confesses to a serious case of the jitters as he prepares for his celebrity panel duties on CBC-TV’s "Test the Nation," the two-hour special billed as Canada’s national IQ test.
Sabados, of HGTV’s "Design Rivals," has been regularly visiting the so-called mental gym on the show’s website www.cbc.ca/testthenation, putting his brain through a rigorous workout in preparation for the show, hosted by CBC personalities Wendy Mesley and Brent Bambury and airing at 8 p.m. ET on Sunday.
"It’s actually really hard, and I’m nervous," Sabados says with a laugh. "If there are questions about design or colour or decorating or even shapes, I’ll do great, but if they throw a lot of math questions at us, I am really in trouble."
CBC’s version of "Test the Nation," already a hit in more than 40 countries, features six 36-person teams from across the country, as they compete against one another to determine which group has the highest IQ.
Tattoo artists, fitness instructors, millionaires, surgeons, radio DJs and mayors from cities as large as Toronto and as puny as Paradise, N.L. will square off against one another. They’re also pitted against an eight-person celebrity panel that includes Sabados, his fellow "Design Rival" Chris Hyndman and other familiar faces from Canadian media and television.
The players and the viewers at home will have a set amount of time to answer 60 questions in six different categories _ language, memory, logic, visual memory, math and perception. And there’s no need for any doctorates; the test measures natural intelligence.
Sabados points out, in fact, that the sharpest nail in the "mental gym" is a truck driver.
"We’re trying to challenge assumptions a little bit," Mesley says during a dry run of the show earlier this week. "People might assume there are certain groups where people may not be as smart as surgeons _ personally, I hope the surgeons are intelligent _ but you just don’t know that for sure.
"There are all sorts of different kinds of intelligence. Just because you know which is the next triangle in the sequence doesn’t mean that you’re making a great contribution to the world."
Bambury agrees, adding: "And just because you know how to fix an aneurysm doesn’t mean you know the next triangle in the sequence, either."
Jim Williamson, executive producer of "Test the Nation," says it’s the randomness of human intelligence that most fascinates him about the show _ something that will reveal itself on Sunday night, he promises.
"Test the Nation" is encouraging online, interactive involvement during its broadcast, and those logging onto www.cbc.ca/testthenation will be asked for personal information about themselves. Are they blond or brunette? Left-handed or right-handed? Vegetarians or meat-eaters?
"The concept here is to demonstrate, among other things, that IQ isn’t about acquired knowledge, it’s about innate intelligence," he said.
"We’re also going to pore over the information that comes in, and then we can come up with these statistics that say, for example, vegetarians are doing better than meat-eaters, west is doing better than east. It’s obviously for sheer entertainment value. It’s not scientific, of course, but it’s interesting _ everyone always wants to know if lefties are smarter than righties."
Mesley, who got hooked on the BBC version of the show, says it makes for riveting television.
"I challenge anyone to watch for five minutes and not carry through to the end," she says. "It’s so seductive, you cannot stop yourself from participating. I couldn’t tear myself away from the tape of the BBC show _ you get drawn in, because secretly, everybody wants to know what their IQ is."
Headline, Industry News
CBC IQ show ‘Test the Nation’
Thursday March 15th 2007TORONTO (CP) _ Steven Sabados confesses to a serious case of the jitters as he prepares for his celebrity panel duties on CBC-TV’s "Test the Nation," the two-hour special billed as Canada’s national IQ test.
Sabados, of HGTV’s "Design Rivals," has been regularly visiting the so-called mental gym on the show’s website www.cbc.ca/testthenation, putting his brain through a rigorous workout in preparation for the show, hosted by CBC personalities Wendy Mesley and Brent Bambury and airing at 8 p.m. ET on Sunday.
"It’s actually really hard, and I’m nervous," Sabados says with a laugh. "If there are questions about design or colour or decorating or even shapes, I’ll do great, but if they throw a lot of math questions at us, I am really in trouble."
CBC’s version of "Test the Nation," already a hit in more than 40 countries, features six 36-person teams from across the country, as they compete against one another to determine which group has the highest IQ.
Tattoo artists, fitness instructors, millionaires, surgeons, radio DJs and mayors from cities as large as Toronto and as puny as Paradise, N.L. will square off against one another. They’re also pitted against an eight-person celebrity panel that includes Sabados, his fellow "Design Rival" Chris Hyndman and other familiar faces from Canadian media and television.
The players and the viewers at home will have a set amount of time to answer 60 questions in six different categories _ language, memory, logic, visual memory, math and perception. And there’s no need for any doctorates; the test measures natural intelligence.
Sabados points out, in fact, that the sharpest nail in the "mental gym" is a truck driver.
"We’re trying to challenge assumptions a little bit," Mesley says during a dry run of the show earlier this week. "People might assume there are certain groups where people may not be as smart as surgeons _ personally, I hope the surgeons are intelligent _ but you just don’t know that for sure.
"There are all sorts of different kinds of intelligence. Just because you know which is the next triangle in the sequence doesn’t mean that you’re making a great contribution to the world."
Bambury agrees, adding: "And just because you know how to fix an aneurysm doesn’t mean you know the next triangle in the sequence, either."
Jim Williamson, executive producer of "Test the Nation," says it’s the randomness of human intelligence that most fascinates him about the show _ something that will reveal itself on Sunday night, he promises.
"Test the Nation" is encouraging online, interactive involvement during its broadcast, and those logging onto www.cbc.ca/testthenation will be asked for personal information about themselves. Are they blond or brunette? Left-handed or right-handed? Vegetarians or meat-eaters?
"The concept here is to demonstrate, among other things, that IQ isn’t about acquired knowledge, it’s about innate intelligence," he said.
"We’re also going to pore over the information that comes in, and then we can come up with these statistics that say, for example, vegetarians are doing better than meat-eaters, west is doing better than east. It’s obviously for sheer entertainment value. It’s not scientific, of course, but it’s interesting _ everyone always wants to know if lefties are smarter than righties."
Mesley, who got hooked on the BBC version of the show, says it makes for riveting television.
"I challenge anyone to watch for five minutes and not carry through to the end," she says. "It’s so seductive, you cannot stop yourself from participating. I couldn’t tear myself away from the tape of the BBC show _ you get drawn in, because secretly, everybody wants to know what their IQ is."
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Headline, Industry News
CBC IQ show ‘Test the Nation’
Thursday March 15th 2007TORONTO (CP) _ Steven Sabados confesses to a serious case of the jitters as he prepares for his celebrity panel duties on CBC-TV’s "Test the Nation," the two-hour special billed as Canada’s national IQ test.
Sabados, of HGTV’s "Design Rivals," has been regularly visiting the so-called mental gym on the show’s website www.cbc.ca/testthenation, putting his brain through a rigorous workout in preparation for the show, hosted by CBC personalities Wendy Mesley and Brent Bambury and airing at 8 p.m. ET on Sunday.
"It’s actually really hard, and I’m nervous," Sabados says with a laugh. "If there are questions about design or colour or decorating or even shapes, I’ll do great, but if they throw a lot of math questions at us, I am really in trouble."
CBC’s version of "Test the Nation," already a hit in more than 40 countries, features six 36-person teams from across the country, as they compete against one another to determine which group has the highest IQ.
Tattoo artists, fitness instructors, millionaires, surgeons, radio DJs and mayors from cities as large as Toronto and as puny as Paradise, N.L. will square off against one another. They’re also pitted against an eight-person celebrity panel that includes Sabados, his fellow "Design Rival" Chris Hyndman and other familiar faces from Canadian media and television.
The players and the viewers at home will have a set amount of time to answer 60 questions in six different categories _ language, memory, logic, visual memory, math and perception. And there’s no need for any doctorates; the test measures natural intelligence.
Sabados points out, in fact, that the sharpest nail in the "mental gym" is a truck driver.
"We’re trying to challenge assumptions a little bit," Mesley says during a dry run of the show earlier this week. "People might assume there are certain groups where people may not be as smart as surgeons _ personally, I hope the surgeons are intelligent _ but you just don’t know that for sure.
"There are all sorts of different kinds of intelligence. Just because you know which is the next triangle in the sequence doesn’t mean that you’re making a great contribution to the world."
Bambury agrees, adding: "And just because you know how to fix an aneurysm doesn’t mean you know the next triangle in the sequence, either."
Jim Williamson, executive producer of "Test the Nation," says it’s the randomness of human intelligence that most fascinates him about the show _ something that will reveal itself on Sunday night, he promises.
"Test the Nation" is encouraging online, interactive involvement during its broadcast, and those logging onto www.cbc.ca/testthenation will be asked for personal information about themselves. Are they blond or brunette? Left-handed or right-handed? Vegetarians or meat-eaters?
"The concept here is to demonstrate, among other things, that IQ isn’t about acquired knowledge, it’s about innate intelligence," he said.
"We’re also going to pore over the information that comes in, and then we can come up with these statistics that say, for example, vegetarians are doing better than meat-eaters, west is doing better than east. It’s obviously for sheer entertainment value. It’s not scientific, of course, but it’s interesting _ everyone always wants to know if lefties are smarter than righties."
Mesley, who got hooked on the BBC version of the show, says it makes for riveting television.
"I challenge anyone to watch for five minutes and not carry through to the end," she says. "It’s so seductive, you cannot stop yourself from participating. I couldn’t tear myself away from the tape of the BBC show _ you get drawn in, because secretly, everybody wants to know what their IQ is."
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