Comedy Central Developing Weekly Sports Pilot with Norm Macdonald

Macdonald: "A 'Daily Show' for sports"

By Marisa Guthrie -- Broadcasting & Cable, 9/21/2010 6:08:30 PM

Comedy Central is developing a weekly sports pilot headlined by comedian Norm Macdonald, according to sources.

Macdonald described the pilot as "a Daily Show for sports" in an interview with the New York Times earlier this month.

Tosh.0 co-creator and executive producer Mike Gibbons is close to signing on as a producer, according to sources close to the deal. Gibbons was an executive producer on the first season of George Lopez's TBS show Lopez Tonight. Daniel Kellison, a comedy veteran who has worked with David Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel, also is involved in the project.

Comedy Central did not immediately return a call for comment.

The show is not a sure thing at the network and will likely have internal competition from a similarly themed satirical sports program that Comedy Central is developing with the Onion News Network.

Macdonald has a long-standing relationship with the network. In 2005, he created the sketch comedy show Back to Norm. But the pilot, which featured an opening parody of the 1987 televised suicide death of Pennsylvania politician Budd Dwyer, was never picked up for series.  Comedy Central Records also released Macdonald's comedy album "Ridiculous" in 2006. Macdonald has made multiple eyebrow-raising appearances on The Daily Show. And he was among Conan O'Brien's last guests on The Tonight Show, presenting the outgoing NBC host with a welcome basket.

Of course, Macdonald was famously fired from Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update" in 1997 at the insistence of then-NBC executive Don Ohlmeyer, who said that Macdonald was "not funny."