maniaTV Resurrected, Struts ‘Celebrity Rush’ Out

After shutting its doors last spring and then being resurrected by original founder Drew Massey (who bought back the company from investors), maniaTV is ready to get back to its roots: producing original celebrity-driven content. “Our focus is really on helping original personalities in Hollywood unleash their creative energy online,” said Massey, who chatted with Tubefilter via e-mail. “We were the first to do so with Tom Green Live and Dave Navarro’s Spread TV and we’re continuing that focus.”

“While MTV sadly continues to sell its soul with shows about Guidos, rich kids’ cribs, well-hung guys and raunchy puppets, maniaTV is unleashing the creative energy of Hollywood’s most original personalities to deliver a new lineup of Live and Original Celebrity TV Shows,” continued Massey. “Although we’re a gnat compared to MTV, and we’re still in the early days of TV online, we have dozens of personalities wanting to work with maniaTV. Celebrities appreciate the fact that maniaTV is a creative show factory for Internet TV that empowers them to produce their own shows and to work directly with top youth brands as sponsors—effectively cutting out the bigwig red-tape and overhead.”

The site will be releasing at least three new original series this summer starting with frat-brother friendly Celebrity Rush. Hosted by ExtraTV star Jerry Penacoli, he describes it as: “imagine Animal House meets Inside the Actor’s Studio. That’s Celebrity Rush.” The show is a weekly interview series taped live on the UCLA campus and will feature live audience participation. It is scheduled to being airing in August.

Some other projects in the works include Comedy Club Live, which will feature known as well as undiscovered comics and hosted by celebrity comics such as Jamie Kennedy, Wee-man’s Wrecked, a 10 episode series featuring Jackass star Jason Acuna, as well as new seasons of Tom Green Live and Navarro’s SpreadTV.

maniaTV is also developing some original concepts, including action sports show the Next Tony Hawk as well as several other of their special brand of celebrity-headed talk shows. “We broadcast on maniaTV and distribute as well,” concluded Massey. “We are big believers that the market needs one big network for original premium shows created for this medium. So that’s our core focus.”