Entertainment – MTV stocks up on reality television

Daniel Frankel

Faced with steep ratings declines in its core demos along with the declines or departures of long-running skeins including “Total Request Live,” MTV has announced major additions to the programming lineup of its flagship channel.
Music cabler will add eight original nonscripted series over the next several months from a lineup of producers that includes Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Sean Combs, Donald Trump, Nick Lachey and Johnny Knoxville.

Once fully unfurled, the new slate of shows will expand the music cabler’s primetime block of original programming from 10-11 p.m. on Mondays and Thursdays to 9-11 p.m. A primetime block will also be established on Sunday from 9-11 p.m.

Slate’s first launch will be nonfiction skein “Daddy’s Girl,” a spinoff of MTV’s “Run’s House” that will track sisters Vanessa and Angela Simmons as they leave the nest and move to L.A. Combs will serve as exec producer, along with Jason Carbone and former Run DMC lynchpin Reverend Run. Series will bow in January.

February launches will include the Johnny Knoxville-produced “Nitro Circus,” a “Jackass”-inspired stunt show featuring a more professional take on daredevil work; the news and information satire series “How’s Your News?” from “South Park” gurus Parker and Stone; “The College Humor Show,” which takes viewers inside the frat-like offices of the web’s Collegehumor.com; and “Rob Dyrdek’s Fantasy Factory,” which will feature the eponymous skateboard pro serving up pranks and fun at a 25,000-square-foot industrial warehouse.

Also upcoming: the Trump-produced “Girls of Hedsor Hall,” which will take a dozen hard-living, foul-mouthed American women and ship them off to an English finishing school for some work on their rougher edges; an as-yet-untitled nonfiction skein from Nick Lachey that will follow students at Cincinnati’s School for the Creative and Performing Arts; and “College Life,” which will feature U. of Wisconsin-Madison freshmen chronicling their own lives with cameras.