The Daily Show’s John Oliver Gets His Own Show on Comedy Central

Comedian John Oliver has landed a stand up series on Comedy Central that will premiere on January 8th at 11:00.

The show, titled “John Oliver’s Stand Up New York Show”, is a one hour show that will feature four of his favorite stand up comedians each week.

“It’s a great pleasure to have the opportunity to produce Avalon’s first series for Comedy Central  with such a brilliant comedian as John Oliver and so many other great stand-ups,” said Jon Thoday, executive producer for Avalon Television and joint CEO of the Avalon Group.

John Oliver has been a correspondent on The Daily Show with John Stewart since 2006. He has also recently appeared in three episodes of the NBC sitcom, “Community.”

Daniel Tosh Takes A Quirky Look at the Web in Tosh.0

Comedian Daniel Tosh delves into all aspects of the Internet from the absolutely absurd to the incredibly ingenious in this new weekly, topical series, “Tosh.0″ debuting on Thursday, June 4 at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on Comedy Central.

“Tosh.0″ goes deep into the Web, spinning commentary about blogs and vlogs both popular and obscure, tweets and pokes, popular sites and new technologies. In addition, the series will feature viral clips of the week, premiere its own original videos created by and starring well-known actors and comedians, as well as highlight a weekly “Viewer’s Choice” video chosen from among those uploaded and voted on via COMEDY CENTRAL’s flanker Web site, Atom. Each episode will feature the segment “Web Redemption,” which will give subjects of infamous viral videos (think Afro Ninja) a second chance to redeem themselves from the embarrassment with which they’ve become synonymous.

A Sneak Peak at Reality Strikes Back

Comedy Central’s reality show, Reality Strikes Back is a reality show about comedians making fun of reality shows. Let me clarify: ten comedians will compete each week, doing parodies of the reality shows we already know and laugh at, and make a more amusing mockery of them. Each week, host comedian Michael Ian Black will eliminate one comedian. The last comedian standing will win $50,000.

This actually looks pretty funny. Check it out:

Reality Strikes Back premieres July 17 at 10:20 ET/PT.

The Gong Show Makes a Much Needed Return to TV

Before we had American Idol, where we spend weeks at the start of each season being amused by the no-talents and crazies who don’t make the cut, and long before the wacky talents aired every summer on America’s Got Talent, there was the grand daddy of them all: The Gong Show.

Hosted by Chuck Barris, the Gong Show had a few talented people hoping for a good rating, interspersed between strange and horrible acts performed by sometimes marginal people. And just for pure entertainment purposes they threw in regulars like The Unknown Comic, who told corny jokes in a cheesy suit, with a bag over his head, and Gene Gene the Dancing Machine:

Comedy Central will be reviving The Gong Show, and updating it for the 21st Century, with Dave Attell as the host. The show will debut on July 17.

According to Attell, whose last gig with the network was Insomniac with Dave Atell, “Stars will be made; feelings will be hurt.”

Sounds like a winner to me.