When a network sends me a release about a new game show or a reality show, my first impulse is to toss it away. Well, actually that’s my second impulse – after tossing my lunch.

But for some reason, I took a closer look at a CBS release for a new Saturday night game show from Ashton Kutcher, “Game Show in My Head.”

The idea that CBS would decide to replace some of its drama repeats on Saturdays with an original game show was initially intriguing. Then I noticed that the second episode, airing Jan. 3, features Craig Scime, identified as “an entrepreneur from Buffalo, N. Y.”

The name was in the recesses of my brain somewhere, but I didn’t immediately figure out why. Then a voice in my head said, “U’s Place” – the name of the vignettes aimed at children that ran in the mornings more than a decade ago on WUTV, Channel 29.

I sent an e-mail off to a CBS contact asking if this Craig Scime was the same spontaneous Craig Scime who clowned around on “U’s Place.” I added he looks a little like actor Seth Green. No response.

But then I received a DVD from CBS in advance of the back-to-back episodes that will air starting at 8 p. m. Saturday,

Jan. 3. Sure enough, the second episode featured a Green look-alike.

When Scime’s wife, Krystal, and parents, Mary Jane and Vincent, were introduced in the audience, I had further information to go on. Sure enough, their names were included in a Buffalo News article about the wedding.

Yes, this Craig Scime is the guy from “U’s Place” and his experiences on that program serve him well on “Game Show in My Head.”

I would like to report “In My Head” is a terrific game show. I also would like to report that the Buffalo Bills won the Super Bowl. It just ain’t happening.

The hidden-camera program certainly needs a guy like Scime, who isn’t embarrassed by anything and can talk and think on his feet.

Here’s the show’s gimmick. Host Joe Rogan (who replaced the original host, Chris Kattan) is in the studio with an audience and gives contestants like Scime unusual and difficult tasks outside via an earpiece that puts Rogan in their heads. Rogan then asks the contestants to persuade citizens on the street to do ridiculous things.

Here are some of them: Scime is asked to convince a guy he has never met to go back to his home for a “bro date”; to find someone willing to dress up like a foreign leader and deliver a speech that ends with his giving the United States a present; to act like a reporter and find people willing to say they saw a UFO and then describe an unpleasant act that an alien committed on them; and to perform a bad magic trick that ends with his hoping to persuade someone who gives him a $5 bill that he should be allowed to keep it.

If Scime is able to pull off the seemingly mission impossible tasks, he gets $5,000 per task and can win up to $50,000.

I say “seemingly” mission impossible because the show was taped in Los Angeles, where UFO sightings and people who pretend to be who they aren’t can happen as often as the sun comes out.

Besides, as Rogan tells Scime’s wife, “he seems like a pretty wacky dude.”

Without revealing too much, I can say that Scime is quite impressive. The show? Not so much.

To be honest, you’d have to give me $5,000 to watch another episode. But I bet it won’t hurt Scime’s chances of landing another TV job. In fact, he’d probably make a better host than Rogan.

Postscript: According to Nick Magnini, the general manager of Channel 29 and Channel 49, Scime now lives in Hollywood.

Magnini reports that Channel 2 News will do a 10 p. m. newscast on Channel 49 at least until April 2012, after an extension between the two companies was recently worked out.

Inquiring minds want to know: When does “The Closer” return to TNT? The answer is Jan. 26.

TV Preview

“Game Show in My Head” Premieres 8 p. m. Saturday, Jan. 3, on CBS

Contestant Craig Scime, left, and host Joe Rogan in Ashton Kutcher’s “Game Show in My Head.”