MIAMI- The next person in line for a daytime talk show from Fox’s syndication division is Kris Jenner, the matriarch of the TV-friendly Kardashian family.
Twentieth Television, a production and syndication arm of the News Corporation, said Monday that it will produce a six-week test of a talk show called “Kris.†The one-hour show will be televised this summer by another unit of the News Corporation, the Fox-owned television stations in cities like New York and Los Angeles.
Summer tests have become Fox’s preferred way of trying out new talk shows. They ran “The Wendy Williams Show†for a few weeks in the summer of 2008; now it’s a staple of stations’ daytime lineups across the country.
The Fox-owned stations also tested a talk show by Bethenny Frankel last summer; that show, named “Bethenny,†will premiere on a more permanent basis this fall.
“Wouldn’t be summer without at least one test, would it,†Frank Cicha, the senio vice president of programming for the stations, said in a statement. “In all seriousness, we go into this believing that if it works, the Kris Jenner program could really compliment what we’ve got going with Wendy, Bethenny, etc.â€
The test was announced during NATPE, a conference where syndication buyers and sellers meet each year.
Ms. Jenner brings instant name recognition to the talk show and the promise of cross-pollination with her other television franchises. She is best known for her role on “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,†the hit reality show on the E! channel. She is an executive producer as well as a star of that show. She’s also an executive producer of all the “Kardashian†spin-offs on E!. She’ll be a producer of “Kris,†as well.
Twentieth Television’s development of “Kris†may be a bad omen for “The Ricki Lake Show,†which it began to produce last fall. Ms. Lake’s show was overshadowed by a number of other talk show premieres, and
