Discovery’s Planet Green Green-Lights Bergeron Series

Supper Club, Featuring Discussion and Debate Over Ecological Topics, to Begin Production in March

By Anne Becker -- Broadcasting & Cable, 1/31/2008 11:17:00 PM

Discovery Communications’ forthcoming environmental channel, Planet Green, is bringing Dancing with the Stars host Tom Bergeron on board to host a new series, Supper Club.

The show, which starts production in March, will feature Bergeron moderating dinner parties of newsmakers in discussion and debate over ecological topics. Each week, four guests -- including politicians, authors and scholars -- will meet at a home known as the project7ten Eco-House, in which Kelly Meyer, wife of Universal Studios chief Ron Meyer, is an investor and partner. The guests will enjoy dinner cooked by a celebrity chef and discuss news and trends from the “green” movement. The Meyers are prominent activists and fund-raisers for environmental organizations.

The show, which will run weekly during primetime, is being co-executive produced by Andy Friendly, who hired Bergeron to host Hollywood Squares in 1998 and for ABC’s pre-Emmy Awards show in 2004. Planet Green hired Friendly last year as a West Coast consultant to develop and produce programming leading up to its June launch.

Parent company Discovery is launching Planet Green using the bandwidth from its existing Discovery Home Channel and has pushed its start date back from January in an effort to create enough programming to launch with all-original fare. Other shows it announced for the network include a series executive-produced by Leonardo DiCaprio on the rebuilding of tornado-ravaged Greensburg, Kan.

Andy Friendly Productions and Discovery Studios are producing Supper Club. Pam Burke is co-executive producing.