Spike TV Details New Pilots

Spike TV is looking at greed, death and war to help attract its young male audience.

The MTV Networks-owned cable channel is working on a slate of nonscripted (or, in one case, semi-nonscripted) fare, with pilots ranging from non-death-defiers to treasure hunters to surviving nuclear winter.

Spike’s new pilots include: 1,000 Ways to Die, from Thom Beers (Ice Road Truckers, Deadliest Catch), about, well "the real ways in which people die"; Caught in the Action, a hoax show where unsuspecting people are put into the middle of a car chase, bar fight or hostage situation; The Deadliest Warrior (about historical warriors pitted against each other in a CGI battle); Declassified from Tom DeSanto Productions (X-Men, Transformers), a documentary/scripted hybrid that features special-ops missions from Navy Seals, Green Berets and Delta Force; Dive for Treasure, a treasure-hunting show from Ricochet (Supernanny); and Surviving Terror, about how to stay alive after a nuclear attack or biological-weapons attack, or eating tips for nuclear winter.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.