Fox Stations To Test ‘Page Six TV’

The Fox owned-station group has agreed to test a new gossip series adapted from Page Six, the famed gossip page of the New York Post.

The half-hour strip, titled Page Six TV, will be tested for three weeks starting Monday, July 18, on some, but not all, of the stations in the Fox Television Stations group, the company announced today. The announcement was released jointly with the Post and Endemol Shine North America, which will oversee production of the show.

The test will include Fox’s stations in New York and Los Angeles — WNYW and KTTV, respectively, the companies said. No other markets or stations were included in the announcement. One source indicated they haven’t all been nailed down yet.

The announcement didn’t mention who would appear on the show or who would be on the production staff. There was no word on whether the reporters and editors who work on Page Six would be participating in the TV version of their gossip page.

“Page Six TV will feature panelist/contributors who will compete each evening to headline ‘The Page’ by breaking exclusive news, advancing a story, and providing opinionated insight,” the announcement said.

Page Six TV will be the first such television foray by the New York tabloid that was founded by Alexander Hamilton in 1801. “With Page Six TV, we’ll explore a new medium and grow our reach,” said Post Publisher Jesse Angelo. “It will be a true New York Post product — smart, funny, biting and entertaining, covering the people and topics that make this city, and the world, tick.”

Page Six has been a feature of the Post since the late 1970s. Though it retains its trademarked name, it has not been published on the paper’s actual page 6 in a number of years.

For the Fox-owned stations, Page Six TV represents yet another in a growing number of program tests the group has conducted. Earlier this month, the group announced an upcoming test of The Preachers, a panel-talk show featuring four ministers.

“We’re constantly looking for fresh, day-and-date strip programming,” said Frank Cicha, SVP, programming, Fox Television Stations. “Page Six has always had its own point of view, and we expect that to translate very well to the TV show.”

For many years, the Fox Television Stations and the New York Post were both part of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. But they are no longer co-owned, following the split of the company into two separate concerns — 21^st Century Fox overseeing all non-publishing assets, and a new News Corp. for all of the company’s print properties.