STUDIO CITY, Calif., Aug. 16, 2000
After just three months of setting up the Martin/Stein Co. at Carsey-Werner, Steve Martin and Joan Stein, along with Robert Morton, have announced their first series, "the downer channel" (working title), which will be produced for NBC.

This will be Martin's first foray into producing a weekly series under the company's new banner and one of several that Morton and his Panamort company have been working on since joining Carsey-Werner in 1999.

Created by former HBO executive Michael Halpern, "the downer channel" (working title) will be a half-hour "maddening mosaic" of scripted sketches, reports from the real world and animated pieces that will take a darkly comedic view of the frustrations of modern life.

"It's everything that starts with the letter D,' said Halpern -- "depression, denial, downloading and dad."

"When Steve and I came to Carsey-Werner three months ago, we wanted people to know that we were very serious about this new venture," said Stein. "We are thrilled to have such a unique project moving ahead so quickly with NBC."

"This is an exciting project for all of us," said executive producer Morton. "It's an interesting take on life that will be something fun and different to explore each week."

Slated for midseason, casting has begun for the cast of regular players. The series will also have guest performers and writers.

Executive producers are Martin, Stein, Morton, Halpern, Marcy Carsey, Tom Werner and Caryn Mandabach.

Martin and Stein have worked together since 1994, when Stein produced Martin's play "Picasso at the Lapin Agile." They joined Carsey-Werner in May of this year to produce and develop projects for the production company under the banner of the Martin/Stein Co.

Morton and his company, Panamort Television, joined Carsey-Werner in April 1999 after a successful 14 years with David Letterman and Worldwide Pants Inc. Along with serving as executive producer on this project, he has several projects in development with the company, including "You Don't Know Jack," which will air on ABC later this season. 

Halpern is a former executive with HBO and most recently was responsible for the film "RKO 281," which recently was nominated for 13 Emmys.

"The Downer Channel" 8:30 tonight on NBC

Pasadena, Calif. --- ''I'm shy outside the camera," says Lance Krall, seated anonymously in jeans and tennis shoes around an outdoor table one early afternoon at the Urth Cafe in West Hollywood. "But turn a camera on. . . "

When the camera turns on for ''The Downer Channel," the NBC sketch-and-real-life comedy that premieres at 8:30 tonight, the Shiloh High School graduate who helped found the Whole World Theater improvisational group in Atlanta does just about anything: walks around Los Angeles' streets with a leaf blower, performs street magic without doing magic, stands in front of the La Brea tar pits and announces, ''What better place to bring your family than a hole crammed with thousands of animal carcasses?''

''They go to me for character work --- I'm willing to be fat, ugly, it doesn't matter," Krall says of his role in the four-person ensemble show, executive-produced by Steve Martin and former ''Late Night With David Letterman" Producer Robert Morton. ''And they go to me to go out on the street and do something bizarre."

Whether or not "The Downer Channel" survives longer than the six episodes NBC has picked up, Krall, 30, is this TV season's real-life TV movie.

"We saw Lance on a tape from Atlanta; he came in and auditioned, and he was great --- blew away all of the sort of professional L.A. talent," Martin says. "I love it when that happens."

"I watched his tape and said, 'What's his name? We want him,' '' recalls Executive Producer Joan Stein. "He had a sense of freedom and fearlessness. He's very much an adult with very much a child's imagination. He's a real find."

Adds Morton: "It's one of those great old show business stories."

****

At Whole World, Krall honed the fearlessness that impressed the "Downer Channel" producers. He says he was the "go-to guy" whenever the audience drifted and needed to be brought back. ''It was like, 'Go hump the floor. Something!'

"I don't necessarily consider myself a comedian," says Krall, whose influences include Jackie Chan, Andy Kaufman and Ben Stiller. ''If you asked me to tell you a joke, I couldn't do it. I enjoy finding humor in the moment."

He became a kind of unofficial leader of the group, and people kept telling him he should be on "Saturday Night Live." After eight years at Whole World, Krall says, he started thinking, ''Maybe they're right."

So he moved to Los Angeles with a tape he'd made of himself. His manager heard about the "Downer Channel" audition and sent the tape.

"My life seemed immediately boring," Krall says. But he then launched into a story about a message left on his answering machine by an ex-girlfriend. He got the job. His manager, in the business 25 years, said he'd never seen anything like it.

LOS ANGELES, Aug 08, 2001  -- Never mind eating sheeps' eyeballs or wondering who's going to be the next game show contestant to clean out the toilet with a rival contestant's toothbrush. The riskiest kind of TV now isn't gross-out reality, but comic variety.

Nothing says summer burn-off programming louder than a bunch of disconnected satiric sketches, but networks keep running them up the flagpole because sometimes audiences actually do salute.

Fox's late-night "Mad TV" remains one of the funniest shows on the air, and Comedy Central's "Primetime Glick," featuring Martin Short doing fake interviews (interspersed by commercials for fake movies) is a bizarre but solid new hit.

But can sketch comedy succeed on the big broadcast networks during primetime?

NBC's "The Downer Channel" (Tuesdays at 8:30 p.m.), which satirizes anything in life that gets you down, (withholding parents, drivers with cell phones, being put on hold) has a powerhouse of talented executive producers behind it: Steve Martin, former head "Late Night With David Letterman" writer Steve O'Donnell, and the sitcom powerhouse producers Marcy Carsey, and Tom Werner are on board, among others.

The main quartet of talented actors includes Jeff B. Davis (from "Kwik Witz," a syndicated improv show), Lance Krall ("The Cindy Margolis Show"), Mary Lynn Rajskub (a "Larry Sanders Show" regular) and Wanda Sykes ("The Chris Rock Show").

"The Downer Channel" has slipped in the ratings since the strong (and much-hyped) July 24 debut. That's too bad, because despite long stretches of skits that don't really work, there are also bits that can be very funny.

In "Cat Lassie," for instance, a deluded boy actually expects his cat to run for help; the cat strolls home and takes a nap in a basket. Real people and their reactions to ridiculous situations are brought into the show, but unlike in "Spy TV," are not humiliated.

[NOTE: You can see Cat Lassie here]

"I was on the Venice boardwalk as a product tester selling dolphin jerky," recalled cast member Jeff B. Davis at the NBC press conference. "It was really salmon jerky, but they didn't know that. There was a little circle with a tuna with a line through it: it was tuna-safe dolphin jerky. And there was a can of Lucky Yums dog food, which is dog food made of dogs, and a communist breakfast cereal called Che Chrunchies."

"I had a camera in my glasses, and it was so amazing, people's reactions. A couple of times they got a little upset, but I was able to go with it and not make it about getting them angry or uncomfortable," David continued. "It's a little more empathetic, and it makes it more fun. Then when people found out it was a joke and on TV, they were more than happy to sign the release and say that's really funny, you got me. It wasn't mean-spirited at all."

"It makes me cringe when I see mean things on television," added Steve Martin, who prefers poignant pieces like interviews with out-of-demand look-alikes. "The Al Gore look-alike had lost his income after the election, and he kept thinking of the Bush look-alike who is working and everything."

On Aug. 8 at 8 p.m., ABC is introducing "The Wayne Brady Show," starring the multi-talented 29-year-old "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" comedian and a quartet of supporting young improv actors (Brooke Dillman, Jonathan Mangum, J.P. Manoux and Missi Pyle).

Brady sings, dances, dresses up as James Brown and crashes through walls; he dresses up as his grandmother and points a camera at her surprised reaction from the audience. And he's an unabashed fan of old-fashioned entertainers like Danny Kaye and Flip Wilson.

"Even today the superior product comes from professionals doing what they do best," Brady said at an ABC luncheon. "I don't wanna see housewives from Scranton trying out to be popstars, or -- what's that thing with the guard dogs? -- 'Fear Factor.' That's a show? People eating bugs?"

"That's the television business, it's not show business," said Brady's executive producer, Bernie Brillstein, of the reality trend. Brillstein's TV hits range from "The Sopranos" to "Politically Incorrect," from "Alf" to "Saturday Night Live."

Still, he's pragmatic about it, even though he predicts one day some networks is going to come up with a reality show called "Gross!"

"I hate reality shows," Brillstein said. "It goes against everything I believe in. But you've got to fill 21 hours of programming -- what are you gonna do? Milton Berle's show did 80%; now if you get 17% of the audience you're doing well. I don't believe any of these network executives wake up in the morning and say, 'Oh, my God, I've gotta do 'Fear Factor.' They're intelligent, decent guys. But they have to come up with cheaper programming because there aren't a lot of stars like Wayne left in the business."

"What we're doing is dangerous," Brillstein continued. "The word 'variety' is death, because people haven't seen it for so long. You can't do half-hour sketches like Carol Burnett did, because the audience for that has turned away. But maybe you can have Wayne Brady; his sketches are a minute-and-a-half."

Brillstein shrugged. "Most hits, by the way, are pretty much a mystery," he added. "I didn't know 'The Sopranos' was going to be a hit. I thought the Tea Leoni show would be a hit."

Steve Martin began his career on variety shows like "The Smothers Brothers" and "The Glenn Campbell Goodtime Hour" in the '60s, when one of the hippest, funniest shows on the air was "Laugh-In."

"This is a style I'm very comfortable with," he said of "The Downer Channel." "Sort of pitching in a room and talking and writing and being on the set."

But the days of "Laugh-In" and "The Smothers Brothers" are long gone. What happened?

"I'll give you an answer, but it's not a very good one," Martin said. "It's like western movies. They just went away. It was the biggest thing in the world, then one day it just stopped. That's what happened to variety: one day it just stopped."

"Just like they don't make 'Superfly' movies anymore!" piped up cast member Wanda Sykes. "What's up with that?"

But Martin added that maybe the time is ripe for variety, now that so many years have gone by since it first faded from the scene. Besides, the current adage in the TV business is that everyone said that family sitcoms were dead, and then came "Cosby." Everyone said that game shows were dead, and then came "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire."

Enough time has passed that perhaps everything old might be new again.