NYC PRIVATE SCHOOLS TO GET REALITY TREATMENT

[Brian Damage]

AFTER years of watching "documentary" footage of what it's like to be a wealthy California teen on series like "Laguna Beach" and "The Hills," rich kids here are finally getting a chance to say, "Welcome to New York, bitch."

Bravo - home of "The Real Housewives" franchise and "The Millionaire Matchmaker" - is in production on a reality series that'll give an up-close and personal look at the lives of the latest hottest teens on the planet - New York City's private school kids.

"Right now, 'Gossip Girl' is a hot show and Bravo wants to capitalize on that," says Marc Berman, an industry analyst for Mediaweek magazine, referring to the CW's fictional series about privileged Upper East Side private school students.

"There's always been an appetite for this kind of [reality] programming, and there's something alluring about rich teens at a private school. Populating a show with them is going to attract younger viewers, and that's what networks like to do."

Expected to air later this year, the series is launched as a "real-life" version of "Gossip Girl." It's said that the Bravo series won't be featuring any particular Manhattan private school, most likely because the schools are leery of allowing cameras inside, for fear of interrupting academics and attracting the wrong type of publicity.

Little detail is known about what the series will be like, but it's believed that it will follow the format of Bravo's "The Real Kids of Orange County" webisodes - featuring the offspring of the Orange County "Housewives."

The production company that makes "Tim Gunn's Guide to Style" and "Top Design" is doing the "Gossip Girl" series, according to a report in the trade magazine Broadcasting & Cable.

There's a tight lid on casting and even whether taping has started.

Bringing off a real-life version of "Gossip Girl" will not be easy.

Skepticism about what the Bravo series will be like and who its stars will be has already started to surface.

Nillawafer1983, posting on Buzzsugar, says, "I watch 'Gossip Girl' to see the attractive actors and actresses, the scandalous activities and Chuck Bass. There's no way a real life 'Gossip Girl' would be able to live up to the TV show."

Meanwhile, Gawker readers are questioning the provenance of the series' private school kids.

As Almostbanned says, "You probably won't get any of the truly rich, just the same tacky neuvo-riche [sic] that are already everywhere on these shows. The real old-money kids (some of whom get into

s- - - and have lifestyles that would probably blow your mind for real) are most certainly not going to be on a show like this."

BBooms observes that the featured kids "probably won't whip out their fake IDs, weed and coke in front of the cameras, so I'm kind of wondering what the point of this new show is."

Bravo isn't the first network to attempt fly-on-the-wall status at a New York City private school, though.

In 2005, New York magazine quoted a CBS insider as saying that the network was looking to the Upper West Side school York Prep to cast a "Laguna Beach"-style series about "the trials and tribulations of a senior class at a New York City prep school."

That series never materialized, but VH1 did use the school for a six-episode series called "Ice-T's Rap School" in 2006.

In it, the "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" star taught York Prep eighth graders how to rap.


http://www.nypost.com/seven/02232009...sip_156532.htm