Comedy Central has given the green light to pair of series, one spoofing the reality genre and the other starring David Alan Grier at the helm of a fake magazine.
The pick-ups were announced by Comedy Central, president original programming and development Lauren Corrao, two weeks after the network unveiled its 2008-09 development slate.
Reality Bites (working title) satirizes the reality genre, featuring comedians in an elimination-style "reality," competition where every episode is a self-contained spoof of one of the major reality formats, whether Are You Smarter Than A Monkey?,So You Think You Can Dive!, Almost American Gladiators and The Amazing Disgrace. The winner, over the eight episodes, will end up being the "last comic standing" and win a cash prize.
The show is executive-produced by 3Ball Production’s (The Biggest Loser) J.D. Roth, Todd Nelson and Adam Greener. Dan Powell is the executive in charge of production for Comedy Central.
David Alan Grier's Chocolate News (working title) is a fake magazine show hosted by the In Living Color alum and TonyAward-nominee. The show makes no apologies for its biased approach as it investigates inherently urban pop culture topics such as an operation to save black and white conjoined twins, steroid use in Little Leaguers and a rapper’s public service announcement gone awry. The point-of-view is decidedly from an African-American perspective and everyone and everything is fair game for Grier and his team.
The series will be executive-produced by Grier (Little Man), Robert Morton (Mind of Mencia), Fax Bahr and Adam Small (MADtv) and Generate's Peter Aronson and Jordan Levin.Gary Mann is the executive in charge of production for the network.
“We are thrilled to be moving ahead with these two totally unique series that bring fresh new concepts and distinctive points-of-view to Comedy Central, which will appeal not only to the channel's core audience but to fans of David's and fans of the reality craze,” said Corrao in a statement. “David brings a new, urban outlook to the magazine-show parody that will be a perfect complement to our current programming and 3Ball Productions is the ideal partner to turn the reality genre upside down from the inside out.”
