Sunnyvale, California — Just last week Yahoo declared its association with Tom Hanks‘ web series, Electric City, and now it is set to announce the latest effort in its growing portfolio of original programming another announcement that Yahoo Sports is forging alliance with Electus and CollegeHumor to produce Blindsided, a 10-part sports prank series featuring pro athletes that premieres on Jan. 19.
The 10-part collaboration, screening on Yahoo Sports, will showcase pranks played on athletes and fans, besides the program does not have a dedicated Ashton Kutcher-like host but each episode will run from three- to five-minutes and will probably have teammates/friends pulling pranks on each other.
The series, sponsored solely by Dr. Pepper Ten, will record every step of the way as the players — from the NFL, NBA and MLB — conceive, create and execute the pranks. This latest series will be developed by Electus, the company founded by former NBC head Ben Silverman and financed by Barry Diller’s InterActiveCorp.
“What is actually specific about it, and inimitable to the Yahoo development process, is that Blindsided marries creative concept and builds on what our audience is interested in and what they already click on from the front page,” Yahoo VP and head of video programming and originals Erin McPherson told The Hollywood Reporter.
The show, which premières Jan. 19, is part of Yahoo’s continued effort into seeking original content. Yahoo held a private event in Las Vegas Tuesday during the Consumer Electronics Show to promote its upcoming “Electric City,” an animated web series made in conjunction with Tom Hanks and Reliance Entertainment.
Among the athletes participating are New York Knick guard Landry Fields stars in the debut, with subsequent episodes featuring Baltimore Ravens Ray Rice and Bryant Mckinnie. Perhaps at some point New York Giants quarterbacd Eli Manning might be involved, since he is also known as the “godfather of pranks.”
This symbolizes another teamwork with Ben Siverman’s Electus, with which Yahoo most recently announced a comedy channel fronted by Bill Maher.
“They have great knowledge with how our network works and how we program and curate content,” said McPherson. “They understand us and we understand them. They bring great talent and we bring programing and distribution.”
New York Knicks’ Landry Fields // Getty Images
The Yahoo web series formula is simple. Get a known specialist in pranking, CollegeHumor, to help execute a series that would attract to the, oh, 50 million or so unique visitors that visit Yahoo! Sports. That is a lot of potential viewers. McPherson also stated that 2012 will find the company focusing more and more on storytelling. Just last week they announced Electric City, a science-fiction show created and voiced by Tom Hanks.
“I think the Hanks program is really inimitable in that its not only episodic, you can watch all 20 at once have a 90-minute feature experience,” she said. Those kinds of presentations that are really flexible, we are going to be seeing more and more of — not just on Yahoo, but in the medium.
And with the success of different projects, Yahoo says it is scouting more pitches than ever.
“The web is no longer where an unsalable presentations goes to die,” said McPhereson. “It is becoming a first spot for Hollywood talent, and we are seeing that more and more because we are not bound by a lot of the structures of traditional media.”
Dr. Pepper Ten, of the Coke Zero/Pepsi Max character of soft drinks, will be the exclusive sponsor, and they will be a part of an instant replay at the end of the show that highlights all the humiliation.