Twitter coming to television in form of series
Last Updated: Monday, May 25, 2009 | 12:19 PM ET
CBC News
Twitter founders Biz Stone, left, and Evan Williams. Their website is bound for TV screens in an upcoming series. (Jeff Chiu/Associated Press)Twitter is migrating from computer to TV screens.
The micro-blogging website will partner with Reveille and Brillstein Entertainment to produce an unscripted television series, a project that was announced Monday with few details.
Based on the website Twitter, content for the show will come from the site's 140-character "tweets," updates that answer the perpetual question, "What are you doing?"
Producers call the upcoming series the first to bring the immediacy of Twitter to television.
The show's contestants are "ordinary people put on the trail of celebrities in a competitive format," said a joint release from Reveille and Brillstein. The show appears to be a reality-TV series, though no further details were given.
The series concept comes from novelist-screenwriter Amy Ephron, who will act as executive producer, along with Reveille's Mark Koops and Brillstein's Jon Liebman.
Brillstein, formerly Brillstein-Grey Entertainment, backed films like Scary Movie 2 and Happy Gilmore before picking up TV shows The Sopranos (HBO) and NewsRadio (NBC), among others. Reveille's entertainment roster includes The Office (NBC) and Ugly Betty (ABC).
Twitter, based in San Francisco, was launched in 2007 and has since sprouted into a web phenomenon, as one of the internet's fastest-growing sites.
A recent Nielsen report found that unique visitors to Twitter skyrocketed from 475,000 in February 2008 to seven million only one year later.
No details were given about the Twitter show format or when it might hit the air.
With files from The Associated Press
