While broadcast networks continue stirring more reality into their primetime skeds, MTV -- home to the longrunning "Real World" and the genre's pioneer -- is brewing a new reality strategy.
"I love 'Joe Millionaire,' but across the board reality is getting louder, sometimes meaner, and certainly more outrageous," MTV & VH1 Entertainment prexy Brian Graden told
Variety when he announced a slate of upcoming reality programs on MTV.
"You can either top it or tap into a different direction," Graden says. "We're moving in a different direction, with a message of empowerment and docu-realness. Our promise to our core, 12-to-24-year-old audience is to give them the most honest reflection of their life anywhere."
The new shows, which Graden dubs "the antidote to 'Joe Millionaire,'" are designed in part to fuel the cable net's ongoing effort to launch new series every 2 to 3 weeks, catering to its 12-to-24-year-old core auds' desire for what's shiny and new.
"Made," which launched earlier this year, is probably the best example of the new sort of reality that MTV will be featuring, Graden says.
"We don't just make someone glamorous, or just make them over," he says. "We give people the tools to try something new, in giving them a coach to help reach their goal. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't."
Among the new shows in the same vein is "Surf Girls," a weekly, 30-minute reality project with surf company Quiksilver's offshoot Roxy. The show will follow 15 contestants as they tour surfing locations around the world, train for competitions and compete for a professional sponsorship deal.
Graden hopes to let celebs know "they can come to us, do what they want to do, as long as they want to do." MTV will continue mounting unique, celeb-driven vehicles, like last year's "The Osbournes," "Making the Band" with Sean "P. Diddy" Combs and the spec which documented the pregnancy and birth of singer Brandy's first child.
Coming up is a vehicle with rapper Snoop Dogg, whose show "Doggy Fizzle Televizzle," is a weekly variety show skedded to debut June 22. Also, actor Ashton Kutcher will star in "Punk'd," which he created with Jason Goldberg. The sketch comedy show, set to preem March 17, features Kutcher playing practical jokes on such celebrity friends as Justin Timberlake.
Net also will continue spinning off new projects from proven franchises, like flagship show "Total Request Live."
For example, "TRL Presents: Duets," in which a music star gives one fan the chance to record a duet with them preems May 5.
"We had a successful 2002," Graden says. "This to some degree represents an evolution on themes pursued last year to great success."
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