The awkwardly titled “Monsters & Money in the Morning,” debuted on WBBM-TV Ch. 2 this morning. The ensemble production consists of the former WSCR-AM duo of Mike North and Dan Jiggetts. They are joined by Terry Savage of the Sun-Times and former CNBC correspondent Mike Hegedus. Mary Kay Kleist is handling weather duties while Susan Carlson reads the news and delivers the traffic reports.

The program, described by Ch. 2 chief Bruno Cohen as a, “sports and business information program,” is clearly a work in progress, but some of the program’s fundamental flaws emerged on day one.

Jiggetts acts as the maestro of this misfit orchestra, trying to direct the flow of the conversation, launching new topics, and handing off to Carlson and Kleist for the information elements. Unfortunately, as affable as Jiggetts may be, he lacks the gravitas to effectively wrangle the personalities seated around the table. All too often, North would chime in at inopportune times, clearly derailing the program’s flow. The role of moderator would be better handled by a veteran TV broadcaster who has experience handling this type of situation.

In many respects, North has been the show’s selling point since its inception. The boisterous former sports jock apparently didn’t learn his lesson when he tried to expand his intellectual portfolio on The Score. North can talk sports with the best of them, but once he steps out of those bounds, he gets lost. It came off as creepy when North began ogling Beyoncé during the Grammy re-cap portion of this morning’s show.

Both Savage and Hegedus seem a little shell-shocked by their participation in their gabfest. When called upon to offer their expertise on financial topics, they both performed admirably. It was the transitions to each of them that continued to sound forced and contrived. It’s hard for North and Jiggetts to feign any interest the Dow Jones or foreign markets.

Carlson seemed a little too enthusiastic to be a part of the show, which can probably be expected for the first day. However, Carlson will, in many ways, need to act as the glue that holds the whole thing together, since she has the most television news experience.

Perhaps the worst part of the new show is the aesthetics. Much had been made of the elaborate set built at Ch. 2’s new studios for the show. The cast sits around an enormous seven-foot table, painted to resemble a dart board. A rotating “Monster Cam” has been dropped in the center of the table, and it spins around during the show for strange, low-angle shots of the show’s participants. This rotating camera looks odd in just about every shot, as it protrudes from the center of the table like some kind of weird retro sci-fi set piece. Its presence requires that all the other shots have to be too tight in order to crop it out, which means that just about every shot is an uncomfortable close-up.

It’s also worth nothing that the shows graphics are all green, rather than the traditional CBS 2 blue. I guess this is because green is the color money … and monsters.

It was clear today that the show’s crew was woefully unprepared for the freewheeling nature of the format, as too many times the wrong camera was on the air or Carlson didn’t have her copy loaded into the teleprompter or mics weren’t properly mixed.

After one day, the jury is still out on both the concept and the execution of “Monsters & Money in the Morning.” The concept may be viable with the right participants and the right production values, but it’s still too early to tell if any of those pieces are in place.

Phil Rosenthal offers a more generous review — and running commentary — of the show’s first day here.

Rob Feder also gives the show a lot more credit than I do.