The good folks at the basic-cable network the New TNN are so fucking good they have three names—”The New TNN,” the “First Network for Men” and, starting Friday, “Spike TV.”
It's about time. Womenfolk have all kinds of choices when it comes to programming specifically for them. Let's see, there's Lifetime. And Oxygen. And Women's Entertainment (WE). And did I mention Lifetime?
But what do we men get? Bupkus. Well, bupkus and supreme control over the remote. And the couch. And a couple hundred all-sports channels.
Spike TV fills that vacuum with still more sports—that is, if anyone considers American Gladiators, car racing, pro wrestling, Most Extreme Elimination Challenge and SlamBall (basketball on trampolines) real sports.
Men love their wheels, and Spike TV's rolling out Trucks!, Horsepower TV, Car and Driver Television and The True Racer's Edge—not to be confused with OC Weekly's The Imitation Racer's Edge. There's even a show that blends the auto- and video- and music-loving lifestyle, called Super2nr TV.
Super2nr bitchen!
Hey, did somebody say “reruns”? Spike TV's got 'em in droves: The A-Team, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Highlander, MADtv, Miami Vice and Star Trek: The Next Generation.
But what's especially great about Spike TV is how it's tilted toward titillating—titillating if you're a straight guy, anyway. That's noteworthy because other than Access Hollywood, Chappelle's Show, Charmed, Doggy Fizzle Televizzle, Entertainment Tonight, Erotic Confessions, Extra, Getting Naked, Howard Stern, Insomniac With Dave Attell, Jenny Jones, Jerry Springer, the Man Show, MTV Making the Video, MTV Spring Break, MTV Sunrise Beachhouse, Nearly Famous 2: Vegas Showgirls, Paradise Hotel, Poorman's Bikini Beach, Real Sex, Sorority Life, Star Dates, Surf Girls, Taxicab Confessions, Wild On …, Women: Stories of Passion, reruns of Married…With Children and Saved by the Bell (the Elizabeth Berkley years), late-night soft-core porn on HBO, Showtime and Skinemax, infomercials for Bowflex, Bloussant breast-enhancement formula, Girls Gone Wild, Vegas After Dark and other phone-sex lines, Galavision's Cuanto Cuesta Este Show?—oh, and don't forget Mama's Family—other than those, there's really nothing on TV tilted toward titillating straight guys.
In fact, should Spike TV tire of calling itself the “First Network for Men,” it oughta consider going by “The First Network for Everything Pam Anderson Has Put to Film With the Exception of a Certain Home Video Because, Hey, This Is Basic Cable.” The New TNN's brimming with Pam, with repeats of her jiggling exploits in Baywatch and VIP. But that's not all: on the animated Stripperella, the former and perhaps future Mrs. Tommy Lee gives voice and curvaceous inspiration to Erotica Jones, an exotic dancer by night and sexy crime fighter by day.
On a recent Stripperella, whose animation brings to mind the dark Batman 'toons from a couple of years back, Erotica hunted down an evil criminal hiding on the hidden island of Clitoris. No one can find Clitoris—get it?
Such subtle humor became even more delicate by that episode's end, when the animated versions of Kid Rock and the real Pam Anderson, who was drawn to look exactly like Erotica, appeared. The show-ending joke? Erotica, in Anderson's voice, mentions how some say she resembles Anderson, to which Anderson, in Anderson's voice, says she doesn't see it. Such a hoot!
Spike TV is available in 86 million homes, according to the network's overlords at MTV, which also owns VH1, TV Land and Nickelodeon. Whether shows like Stripperella, Super2nr TVand SlamBallcatch fire with men—and advertisers—remains iffy. But at least horndogs now have one more place to switch over to when Stern and the Man Show cut to commercials.
SPIKE TV PREMIERES FRIDAY WITH A LAVISH SPECIAL HOSTED BY L.L. COOL J. CHECK LOCAL LISTINGS FOR TIME.
BUH-BYE, COREY
I wrote a couple of weeks ago that an acquaintance named Corey had made it onto the CBS reality dating show Cupid. Well, lovely Lisa gave Corey the boot on the July 23 episode. So, Corey's 15 minutes of fame really did last that long.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.