The year was 2007, and Myspace was king. With more than 300 million registered users, it was the world’s largest social-networking platform by a mile and, since overtaking Google the previous year, the most visited website in the United States. Friendster had been thoroughly eclipsed. Google’s first attempt at a social network, Orkut, was a domestic flop. Twitter, founded in 2006, still hosted only a fraction of a percent of Myspace’s user base. Snapchat and Instagram weren’t even a twinkle in Silicon Valley’s eye.

When I call him to talk about the new series, This Week at the Comedy Cellar, Ray Ellin (who is known to many as Aruba Ray) is sitting in Aruba, enjoying a short break in an intensive filming schedule, right before Thanksgiving. Along with Comedy Cellar owner Noam Dworman, Ray is the Executive Producer of This Week, a new intense stand up series that is unlike any that has been televised before. The week off gave us a chance to catch up about the Comedy Central Show that Ray has been working on around the clock since it debuted in late October.

This Week at the Comedy Cellar debuted Friday night on Comedy Central. The show zeroes in on comedians performing at the famed New York comedy club and telling jokes about that week's events, just as audiences of the venue see on a nightly basis.

As Hurricane Florence headed toward the Eastern Seaboard in September, Ted Tremper, the showrunner for “This Week at the Comedy Cellar,” realized he had a problem, and it wasn’t damage from the storm. He needed jokes.

The hottest of hot takes served faster than ever. In a world where comedy is more necessary, more urgent than ever before, Comedy Central provides audiences with a groundbreaking new series during which comedians sort through the noise to deliver the freshest jokes through a topical filter. This Week at the Comedy Cellar, a new, weekly, half-hour stand-up series filmed at the legendary New York City comedy club, premieres Friday, October 26 at 11:00 p.m. ET/PT and delivers stand-up comedy as has never been seen before.

Comedy Central said it greenlit two new series and ordered five pilots as part of its 2018-2019 development slate, readying a stand-up series centered around New York’s Comedy Cellar and preparing a new showcase for Latino comedian Arturo Castro.

The year was 2007, and Myspace was king. With more than 300 million registered users, it was the world’s largest social-networking platform by a mile and, since overtaking Google the previous year, the most visited website in the United States. Friendster had been thoroughly eclipsed. Google’s first attempt at a social network, Orkut, was a domestic flop. Twitter, founded in 2006, still hosted only a fraction of a percent of Myspace’s user base. Snapchat and Instagram weren’t even a twinkle in Silicon Valley’s eye.

Documentaries from Oscar-nominated director Nanette Burstein (pictured, center), first-time filmmaker Michelle Sinclair (right) and Idiom Films’ Mohanad Yaqubi (left) are among the films set to enjoy their world premieres at the 41st Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).

Future's confidence sitting on Pluto right now. He's been in a zone for months, and it all comes out in his prolific hip-hop catalogue. Leading up to today's (July 17) release of his highly-anticipated DS2 album, Future Hendrick filmed a five-part documentary titled Like I Never Left as a way of promoting his second round of Dirty Sprite.

Future is releasing his new album, DS2​, or Dirty Sprite 2, at the end of this week, and as part of the promotion for the anticipated project, the Atlanta MC is rolling out his new documentary, Like I Never Left, exclusively on Complex. In part one of the documentary, Future sits down with Elliott Wilson to talk about his last album, Honest, and how he felt that he took too much advice from people while making the project. "I feel like I'm losing by myself," Future said.

The nominees for the 2015 Daytime Emmys have been announced and LGBT talent, characters and programming aree well represented. Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word, Logo TV’s in-depth look at the lives of young trans people in America, received a nod for Outstanding Special Class Special yesterday—appropriately enough, Transgender Day of Visibility.

U.S. cable network Lifetime has set a February air-date for the docu-sitcom Kosher Soul(pictured).

The Series Follows Jewish Stylist Miriam Sternoff and
African-American Comedian O’Neal McKnight, Proving Opposites DO Attract

If Dan Gasby closes his eyes, he can remember it clearly. He was standing on the beach next to his wife, restaurateur and lifestyle ace Barbara “B.” Smith, in Bay Head, New Jersey. It was the mid-1980s, and a woman was running down to them.

Male viewers whose tastes run more sophisticated than gaming and wrestling can take heart: Hearst's Esquire magazine is getting together with NBCUniversal to launch the Esquire Network for intelligent and stylish men.

Avery Grey — a transgender woman from Long Island City who began identifying as female at 15 — was often discriminated against when she tried applying for jobs or went shopping when she started transitioning.

When she was 13 years old, Andreja Pejić googled the word "transitioning." Puberty was approaching, and she was loathe to see her body grow into something even further away from what she wanted to see in the mirror. Google helped her find the answers she needed. "I discovered it was a national community, and there were doctors, and medical help. It wasn't something 'freaky' or 'bizarre'; there was a system." She describes herself as a "geeky boy" eager to become physically female.

Andreja Pejic, who stands 6-foot-1 in stocking feet, and a good deal taller than that in heels, looks every bit the model. She is possessed of bottle-blond hair that falls past her shoulders, full lips, a wasp waist and a pair of Cindy Crawford beauty marks just north of her upper lip. (Even Ms. Crawford has only one.)

If the last page of a magazine is supposed to be a good-bye, then New York Magazine's Approval Matrix is a smack and a kiss at the same time.

The Approval Matrix, New York magazine’s weekly guide to cultural phenomena, is a systematic but lighthearted way of judging specific people, places and things in the news, such as Pharrell’s hat at the Grammy’s. Sundance TV’s new talk show adaptation takes the concept and makes it broader, looking at issues like whether political correctness is helping or hurting the public, or “has technology made us the worst people of society?”

“The Approval Matrix” is inspired by the back page of New York magazine, one of the better recurring magazine conceits of the last decade — a grid on which pieces of cultural effluvia are plotted according to their quality (Brilliant versus Despicable) and their smarts (Highbrow versus Lowbrow).

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's investigation of delays in newborn screening programs captured top honors in the annual Associated Press Media Editors’ Journalism Excellence Awards.

Lifetime is expanding its foothold on unscripted programming with four series orders: two docuseries, one reality competition from Project Runway producers and one makeover show.

With every new issue of New York Magazine, the first thing I do is turn to the back page and read the Approval Matrix to find out what’s highbrow, lowbrow, brilliant, and despicable that week. Maybe you do too. And why not? 

The transgender Orange Is the New Black actress has partnered with MTV and Logo on a forthcoming hourlong documentary, Trans Teen: The Documentary, that will air simultaneously on both Viacom-owned networks in the fall. With Cox hosting, the doc will take viewers inside the lives of four trans youths ranging in age from 14 to 24.

Male viewers whose tastes run more sophisticated than gaming and wrestling can take heart: Hearst's Esquire magazine is getting together with NBCUniversal to launch the Esquire Network for intelligent and stylish men.

To say Jay-Z has had a busy year would be an understatement, and now the rapper/entrepreneur is adding a new venture to his crowded plate: a YouTube Channel.

Six decades ago a maverick entrepreneur named Allen B. DuMont set out to establish a risky venture called a television network. His initial schedule was cobbled together with niche programming — a bowling show, a fishing and hunting show, an Arthur Murray dance show, etc. His neophyte network was actually pulling in advertisers and building an audience before the vastly better-funded CBS and NBC pushed him aside in the late ’50s.

Oxygen’s previously announced Girlfriend Confidential: LA and My Shopping Addiction are receiving fall air dates, while Hollywood Unzipped: Stylist Wars has been pushed back.

With her new reality series Empire Girls: Julissa & Adrienne premiering tonight (at 9pm ET/8pm CT) on the Style Network, Adrienne Bailon chats with VIBE about what drama will unfold with her BFF Julissa and her future musical endeavors

NEW YORK – April 25, 2012 – Oxygen today announced a 50 percent increase in original programming with five new series joining the 2012 schedule, including: “Girlfriend Confidential,” a new programming franchise which will have New York and Los Angeles editions, “All the Right Moves,” “My Shopping Addiction” and “I’m Having Their Baby.”

Oxygen is taking a cue from its sibling cabler Bravo in greenlighting a multi-city reality franchise dubbed “Girlfriend Confidential,” which will bow with Gotham and L.A. editions.

Style has shined a greenlight on five new series, including skeins featuring Betsey Johnson and Bill Rancic, while moving forward on developing six others.

U.S. cable network Oxygen will next month debut Brooklyn 11223 (pictured), a reality series set in the Brooklyn, New York neighborhood of Bay Ridge.

YouTube’s new premium content push featuring the likes of Madonna and Ashton Kutcher spurred speculation that the Google-owned site is issuing a direct challenge to the television industry.

U.S. net Oxygen has greenlit the Eva Marcille Project (w/t), starring the former America’s Next Top Model winner, and LA Style (w/t), focusing on four celebrity stylists.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Under a featureless, cloud-ridden sky in early May, Michael Hirschorn was sitting in an empty room on a fold-out chair, the kind more typically reserved for unexpected dinner guests. He had commandeered a corner den in the new New York offices of his TV production company, Ish Entertainment, and was tugging on the ear cord of his BlackBerry, his head bobbing in tune to the conversation.

Rainbow Media’s WE tv has greenlit three new series and announced the U.S. premieres of two popular Canadian docusoaps for its 2011-2012 slate.

As TV Guide Network continues its transition to a full-fledged programming channel, the cabler announced a half-dozen series and minis in development.

Mildly disgraced New Zealand television “presenter” Paul Henry, who resigned from his seven-year gig hosting the morning news show Breakfast last year after a racially insensitive—albeit amusing—riff about the surname of an Indian government minister, is getting a second chance in America.

Michael Hirschorn is taking the wraps off his newly reconfigured Ish Entertainment, which already has several projects in the works at multiple networks.

Says Michael Hirschorn: "If women didn't want these shows, they wouldn't get made."

That's Michael Hirschorn, mastermind behind reality shows like Flavor Of Love, Paris Hilton's My New BFF, Gone Too Far, TI's Road to Redemption, A Shot Of Love With Tila Tequila, and Celebrity Rehab. He agreed to sit down for an evening to talk about what it all means, in particular for the ladies. (Whiskey was involved).

On the face of it, "T.I.'s Road to Redemption: 45 Days to Go" seems like the ultimate PR move. Arrested last year on federal weapons charges, rap artist T.I. (born Clifford Harris) reduced his sentence from a possible 30 years to an expected one year by agreeing to house arrest and logging 1,000 hours of community service. Much of that service was working with high-risk kids, which is, conveniently, also the theme of "Road to Redemption." Counting down the days to his incarceration -- "45" will change to "44," and so on -- T.I. attempts to scare straight a handful of these youngsters.

Lionsgate is making a splash in the reality TV world, forming a joint venture with the man who put “Flavor of Love” on the air — VH1 alum Michael Hirschorn.

Under the deal, Lionsgate will provide financial, production and distribution support to IshEntertainment, the shingle launched earlier this year by Hirschorn and Stella Stolper.

Michael Hirschorn is stepping down from his post as executive vp in VH1's programming department. He is launching his own company, Ish Entertainment, which has inked an exclusive first-look deal with MTV, VH1, CMT and Logo.

Michael Hirschorn‘s days as the executive vice president of original programming for VH1 are over. Today, VH1 announced that Mr. Hirschorn was leaving to form a new entertainment company, called Ish Entertainment, along with Stella Stolper, the senior vice president of celebrity talent development at VH1.