William Shatner to interview celebrities

[Brian Damage]

After a recent career path that's taken him from Web pitchman to primetime Emmy winner, William Shatner has been signed to host a celebrity-interview show on the Biography Channel.
Shatner, currently seen on ABC's "Boston Legal," will interview a range of guests on the half-hour, titled "Shatner's Raw Nerve." Both actors and politicians will be featured, and reps for the net said producers will make an effort to book guests separately from their movie and other junkets.

Biography said in a release that the thesp "will explore life's most intriguing questions and unearth his guests' strange and unknown stories."

Thirteen episodes have been ordered by the net, with the skein to air some time next year.

Move comes as part of a larger shift by the net to contemporize both subject and feel.

Exec veep-general manager Bob DeBitetto described the new mission of the Biography Channel as "true stories about fascinating people."

Reps said the new philosophy will still involve telling the nonfiction stories of people, but the net will move beyond the more traditional format of profiles of one individual; in fact, the subjects may not even be famous.

In addition to the Shatner pact, company has made pilot deals for "Small Medium at Large," a show about a four-foot-tall psychic medium who uses Chinese meditation to commune with the dead, and "I Survived," about people who have survived near-death experiences.

The expansion is the result of an original programming boom in cable that has allowed and encouraged networks to experiment with a broader range of programming, though it has also sometimes diluted a net's mission.

Biography has also added the tagline "True Story" and will revamp its on-air look to feel more current.

The tagline is similar to truTV, the rebranding of Court TV to net with a similar focus on scripted and nonscripted takes on real-life events.

Cabler will also refer to itself as "Bio"in much of its correspondence, though it will still officially be called the Biography Channel.

http://www.variety.com/article/VR111...&cs=1&nid=2565

[TMC]

http://www.avclub.com/article/willia...remely--254256

Shatner’s Raw Nerve was a 30-minute interview show that ran for three unremarkable seasons on The Biography Channel. In it, the lovable, avuncular former Star Trek captain sat down for no-holds-barred conversations with fellow famous people like Regis Philbin, Jenna Jameson, and a whole bunch of former Star Trek co-stars. It apparently went extremely softly into that good night sometime in 2011 after 32 episodes and only one Meat Loaf appearance. It was probably, generally speaking, pretty boring.

However, comedian Joe Mande recently unearthed some edits he made to the program with comedy writer Noah Garfinkel, and they make it seem like a wonder to behold. Here’s Shatner and Ed Asner talking about the Holocaust:

[Babalu]

Originally Posted by TMC

Shatner’s Raw Nerve was a 30-minute interview show that ran for three unremarkable seasons on The Biography Channel. In it, the lovable, avuncular former Star Trek captain sat down for no-holds-barred conversations with fellow famous people like Regis Philbin, Jenna Jameson, and a whole bunch of former Star Trek co-stars. It apparently went extremely softly into that good night sometime in 2011 after 32 episodes and only one Meat Loaf appearance. It was probably, generally speaking, pretty boring.

The one really good interview Shatner did was with Walter Koenig, Chekov on Star Trek, who somewhat reluctantly told Shatner what a jerk he was on Star Trek and why everyone on the show but Leonard Nimoy hated him. It really was a great interview with Koenig being absolutely sincere and yet not gleeful relaying that everyone but Shatner could see how nasty, self-centered and inconsiderate he was.