Set to debut on the Pox Television Network in early spring, Xtreme Booking promises to go “where no booking agent has gone before.” Executive producer Larsen E. Whipsnade, the creator of Pox’s summer hit, Tourvivor, and last winter’s Who Wants To Marry A Concert Promoter? mixes the traditional negotiation process of booking dates for Buckcherry and Weston, with switchblades, chainsaws and baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire. “This is a win-win situation,” explains Whipsnade. “The audience gets great family entertainment and the agents get to play out their greatest fantasies by pummeling and bludgeoning different promoters each week. How can anyone not watch?”

How, indeed? After only two special test showings, Xtreme Booking already has spawned numerous imitators, including WB’s highly anticipated Tour Bus Demolition Derby, hosted by Ted Nugent, which in turn has been cloned by ABC into Wreckin’ The Van, featuring O-Town, who must rely on a Ford Explorer with under inflated Firestone tires for transportation to their first gig.

Despite competition from these shows as well as NBC’s Napsterminator, where each week guest musicians, including Steve Vai and Dio, get five minutes alone in a locked room with Shawn Fanning, Whipsnade remains undaunted and believes his Xtreme Booking will be the winner come next May’s sweeps. “The commissions! The blood! The Black & Deckers!” exclaims an excited Whipsnade. “This is the show people are going to talk about the next day. Mark my words, the catch phrase, ‘Gonna carve you a new one,’ will be on everyone’s lips come spring.”