Jesse James, founder of West Coast Choppers, hosts custom-built auto show Monster Garage starting Jan. 4 on Discovery Plus. The show initially ran on Discovery, ending in 2006. 

Each episode will feature five builders who are given five days to transform a street vehicle into a “one-of-a-kind monster machine,” said Discovery Plus. Winners get $5,000 worth of tools and losers get their build blown up. “James, along with a new crew of maverick mechanics each week, set out to continue his legacy and inspire a new generation of builders,” according to Discovery Plus. 

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“I’m very thankful for Discovery CEO David Zaslav for keeping the Monster Garage candle lit for the last 10 years,” said James. “We always knew we would eventually bring it back. I also knew when that day came, I needed to be ready. More skills in my toolbox and a clear mind and schedule. Ready to put my head down and work as hard as possible to push the limits of TV again.”

Monster Garage is produced by Fremantle’s Original Productions. For Original Productions, Brian Lovett, Jeff Hasler, Ernie Avila and Sam Wasserman are executive producers. For Discovery Channel, Kyle Wheeler and Gretchen Morning are executive producers. 

James exec produces as well.

Burbank, Calif-based Original Productions has developed several of the most successful unscripted docuseries — History’s Ice Road Truckers and Ax Men, Discovery Channel’s Monster Garage and A&E’s Storage Wars among them — over nearly a 20-year span. Founded by Thom Beers, the FremantleMedia-owned production company also has cast the net with several shows in the fishing genre, the biggest being Discovery’s Deadliest Catch. This fall the studio and Discovery will spawn a spinoff, Deadliest Catch: Dungeon Cove, set among fishing families on the Oregon coast. Original Productions CEO Phil Segal spoke with Multichannel News programming editor R. Thomas Umstead about adding again to the Discovery Channel series, now in its 12th season, and about the future of reality TV.

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MCN:After 12 successful seasons ofDeadliest Catch, why did you feel this was the right time to create this spinoff series?

Phil Segal: We’ve done spinoff s before — Storage Wars was one of our shows that successfully spun itself off into Storage Wars New York, Texas and Miami, and of course L.A., as well as internationally in Canada, France and South America, so I think that’s an example of a really powerful format that equally had some good characters.

Deadliest Catch is uniquely different. While over the years we’ve done many shows that feature different forms of fishing, Catch is one of those shows that we were looking to expand the universe in terms of giving the audience a much richer, immersive experience, but we never thought about spinoff s because we were always concerned about damaging the brand. What we found with Dungeon Cove is an incredibly organic opportunity to celebrate crab fishing, but from a uniquely different perspective. This is the Oregon coast, featuring small towns and very prideful people, and their fishing grounds are rich and complicated. It’s an incredibly unique opportunity for us to celebrate our world through a very different lens. I don’t like to think of it as a spinoff but rather an organic extension of a world that hopefully the audience will embrace.

MCN:From a production perspective, what criteria do you need to meet before extending a popular reality franchise?

PS: It’s a very delicate process and one that’s not taken lightly, not only on our side but on the network side as well. The negative side of an unsuccessful splinter obviously could be damaging to a brand. The object of the exercise is never through the lens of “more is better.” It’s always through the lens of whether the audience’s experience is literally going to be expanded. The question always is, “Is this a legitimate story and is this going to have a benefit to the audience?” We always take that very seriously. For us, it’s when you have a unique opportunity to tell the story of a character, but because of the prism you choose to tell that story in, you have to make a decision whether or not going off and seeing what these other characters do or what’s happening in the world evolving around them is added value and not just a special or a B-story, but a world that can add value to the brand.

MCN:How do you see the reality genre evolving given the changing content distribution marketplace?

PS: It’s a complicated question: On the one hand, never in the history of television has there been so much content available for consumers on so many different platforms. When Original Productions launched, there were 20-plus competitors; today there are over 750. So for us we continue to look at what the storytelling worlds are for us going forward. I also think on the other hand it’s a challenge because as these distribution changes evolve there will be shifts in how we do business.

I think over the next 18 months, we’re going to see a continual evolution of the distribution system and we’re going to have to get a better handle on the economics of our business. What is the price of entry? What is it going to cost to produce? What can these networks afford to pay for their content and can we remain competitive? That story has yet to be written as we continue to look at the competitive landscape and learn on a daily basis how to compete in it.

ITV Studios America has expanded its non-scripted development team with the appointment of Hildie Katibah as director of development for its West Coast office and the promotion of Noah Korn to director of development on the East Coast. Bruce Robertson, EVP creative strategy, heads the team on both coasts. Katibah (oictured) and Korn will create and pitch non-scripted projects across a range of genres for all networks and continue to grow ITV Studios America's already extensive development slate, the company said in a release.

Katibah was one of the original producers of the Discovery channel hit Monster Garage, starring Jesse James, and then launched James’ production company, Payupsucker Productions, where she went on to direct and executive produce multiple series and specials including Jesse James Is A Deadman, Outlaw Garage and Iraq Confidential.

Since joining ITV Studios America as development coordinator in 2012, Korn has developed series including Animal Planet's Rocky Mountain Bounty Hunters, as well as upcoming shows on Discovery and Science. Prior to joining the company, Korn worked in production management for shows including VH1's I Want to Work for Diddy and the syndicated Dr. Oz Show.

ITV Studios America is the U.S. production flagship of ITV Studios in the U.K. and generates non-scripted and scripted programming for U.S. networks.