Pivot has welcomed Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Veronica Mars to its mix.
In a bid to lure its target millennial audience of 18- to 34-year-olds, the fledgling Participant Media network has acquired the rights to series from 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros., respectively. The cult hits will air together as a 10 p.m. weeknight programming block starting Jan. 13.
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“Buffy and Veronica Mars are enormously entertaining and celebrated TV shows with significant cultural and social relevance,” said Pivot president Evan Shapiro in a statement, adding: “Both focus on smart, strong, young women dealing with critical issues from class struggles to gender roles – challenges facing a great many of our viewers. Pivot will contextualize the shows, presenting them with exclusive commentary from fans, experts and academics, to both celebrate these two great series and begin a dialogue with our viewers.”
The move comes as Veronica Mars prepares to make its hotly anticipated leap to the big screen. A Kickstarter campaign for a film based on the 2004-07 Kristen Bell series about a girl who moonlights as a private investigator under the tutelage of her detective father raised $5.5 million from more than 90,000 contributors. Creator Rob Thomas is spearheading the movie as he did 64 episodes of the TV show.
For its part, Buffy ran for six seasons (1997-2003) and picked up Emmy and Golden Globe noms in the process. Sarah Michelle Gellar starred as Buffy Summers, the latest in a line of young women known as “vampire slayers,” in the long-running series from uber-producer Joss Whedon.
The new offerings will join series from Meghan McCain and Joseph Gordon-Levitt at the network, which bowed Aug. 1. Shapiro and his fellow execs at Jeff Skoll‘s Participant have been peddling the younger-skewing channel as one with a mission to “entertain and inspire activism.”
Email: Lacey.Rose@THR.com
Twitter: @LaceyVRose
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