Thom Beers Preps Late-Night Series for Spike

NEW YORK: Thom Beers’ Original Productions, majority owned by FremantleMedia, is developing a late-night series for Spike, and has been commissioned for a third season of the cable network’s popular show 1,000 Ways to Die.

Spike TV is partnering with Thom Beers, Philip Segal and Original Productions for a weekly half-hour series that will be a combination of talk and comedy with a focus on "manformation." Guests could include a convenience store clerk who defended himself against would-be criminals, or a former stock broker who quit his job to join the Green Berets in Afghanistan. George "Maddox" Ouzounian, author of the The Alphabet of Manliness and I Am Better Than Your Kids, and Dax Herrera (a/k/a Dick Masterson), author of Man Points and Men Are Better Than Women, are attached to the project. 

"This won’t be your typical late-night series with typical celebrity chit-chat," said Sharon Levy, the senior VP of original programming for Spike TV. "This show will come with that distinctive and irreverent Spike voice and point-of-view our viewers have come to expect from us. We are looking to provide our young male audience with water cooler chatter for the next day."

Thom Beers, the CEO of Original Productions, added: "Guys crave to be informed and entertained in an authentic voice. There are lots of options in late night right now, but none directly tailor-made to the hard-to-reach young male audience as our show will be."

Spike TV has also ordered a third season of Original’s 1,000 Ways to Die, the second highest-rated original series in the history of the network.