From Wikipedia: The series features children contestants competing for cash prizes as they aim to keep themselves clean while they navigate and make their way around an obstacle course which is intentionally designed to get them messy.

Take Nickelodeon’s hallmark splat and messiness, add in a voiceover that sounds like the announcer on Minute to Win It, and you have Keep It Spotless.  I’d suggest a new title: Keep It Off the Air.

The show features two teams of tweens/teens, similar to Nick’s Paradise run, in which the teams mug it up for the cameras using phrases like “You’re going down,” “Let’s do it,” and “Which way to the gym (with accompanying arm flex).”  The odd thing about the show is there is no host.  Just the voiceover/announcer.  As a result, we just see teams in competition.  We never really get to know them; they don’t interact with the other team and they don’t interact with anyone else.

The episode I watched featured two competitions.  In the first one, teams had to push their partner on a cart, through a constant spray of “paint” so that the cart landed in the sweet zone – an area between a pre-established black line and the end of the course.  If they fell short, they went again; if they hit the end of the wall, they tried again.  After being successful, the two teammates went into a chamber, where they were scanned for messiness.  This percent was converted into a score.

The second challenge featured one teammate tossing paint filled balloons to their partner through a grid.  The partner had to catch the balloon and then break the ballon to fill up a container.  Whichever team filled the container the most apparently won.  Then it was back to the chamber to be scanned again.  The winning team then got to run an obstacle course to somehow win $10,000.  That’s a big chunk of change for a Nick show.  But by the time they got to the obstacle course, I could have cared less who won and if they won the 10k.

The show has zero rooting value and zero play along value – two key elements of a good game show.  The lack of host meant there was no one there to help create empathy and rooting value as well. I would have even taken that Paradise Run host here!  Its as if the higher ups at Nick said, “Lets come up with a game show where we squirt paint at people.”

Paramount has already rebooted Beat the Clock for kids.  So why not just reboot Double Dare or Figure It Out?  I see KIS going the same way as the short-lived Web Heads.  There are too many good game shows in the Nick stable for them to waste their time on this.