At The Max - NBC Unveils a Dinosaur

By TG Co-op student Jen Hill

At the Max (www.nbc.com/atthemax is NBC's new teen web site, based on its Saturday morning TV shows, "Saved by the Bell: The New Class", "Hang Time" and "City Guys". It's a big site with excellent graphics.

I started with the Mad Money Room, where visitors can get information on managing money, mostly through the Personal Money Survey. The questions are aimed at the older teens; I'm 18 and I had trouble answering them. However, the graphics and page design seem aimed at the 9-13 year old fans of the shows. The text and presentation just doesn't go together. Scrolling through the questions is another problem because they're set in a tiny box in the screen. It takes far too long - after 20 minutes and 26 questions I gave up! The questions are clearly American-based and Canadians would have difficulty answering them. Being Canadian is also a problem with entering the Grand Prize contest. Each month visitors respond to a serious or funny question. Whoever writes the best answer wins $1000, but of course, they "must be a legal resident of the U.S.A."

Next I visited the Max Chat area. In addition to the chat rooms, the page advertises boards where you could 'speak your mind'. I tried to find them, but even after filling out a registration form (First and last name? E-mail address?) and being sent to pages all over the site, I never did. I did find transcripts of web chats between the TV stars and their fans. These were interesting because the stars seemed relaxed and natural. I actually felt sorry for the "Saved by the Bell: The New Class" cast because the fans only wanted to ask about the show's original stars. The transcripts link back into a third area, which promotes the NBC teen shows. It's pretty basic, with bios of the stars and lots of photos - think 'TeenBeat' fan magazine on-line.

Overall, the site had some good ideas, but they didn't really work out. Young kids will like the TV tie-ins, but theres nothing really unique about it. It's like NBC created a dinosaur, attention grabbing, but big, slow and out of touch with real teenagers' interests.

tgmag@tgmag.ca