Recent developments indicate that, in addition to inheriting crushing debt and increasingly strained foreign relations, kids these days have also been tasked with keeping the reality TV competition fires burning. From the gridiron to the griddle, the younger generations have been stepping up to fill in the TV competition ranks that are emptied based on the whims of “viewers at home” and people like Paula Abdul. Now Variety reports that Spike TV wants to feed its ratings machine with the blood of innocents, i.e., launch a kid-centered version of Lip Sync Battle.
The new series, Lip Sync Battle Jr., will be a joint venture between Spike and Nickelodeon (which are both owned by Viacom), and will be soft-launched as a special edition of the flagship series. The show aims to “celebrate kids’ love of music and comedy, featuring similar lip sync battles to the flagship show, but with new variety elements designed to let youngins [sic] shine.” Lip Sync Battle executive producers Casey Patterson and Jay Peterson will also oversee the kid-friendly musical duels, which will almost certainly be the kind of competition these kids will want to engage in, and not just be their parents’ desperate attempts at finally living their dreams of pantomimed stardom. After all, surely there must be a few kids out there who want to give Channing Tatum’s “Frozen” performance a run for its money.