NEW YORK — Even in television, where good ideas are routinely imitated, the debut of "Hardcore Pawn" tonight is enough to make you marvel.
Just like one of the year's breakout hits, The History Channel's "Pawn Stars," it's a reality series about a family-run pawnshop. Both are effectively comedies, drawing on the everyday absurdities of the workplace. Both play on the similarity of "pawn" to "porn" for their titles.
And both are in the same time slot: 9 p.m. Mondays. Coincidence? Well, yes, said Marc Juris, executive vice president and general manager of TruTV.
"Quite honestly, we did absolutely nothing different than we would have done whether or not the other show was on the air," Juris said. "We look for shows that really hit our sweet spot, and when they're right for our audience is when we put them on the air."
"Hardcore Pawn" was in development for many years, and two test episodes were aired in December, he said. "Pawn Stars," in its third season this year, has seen its viewership jump by 38 percent over the second season. The July 5 episode was seen by 6.3 million viewers, the biggest audience ever for the cable network, the Nielsen Co. said.
The TruTV series stars the patriarch of Detroit's sprawling American Jewelry and Loan, the nearly too-good-to-be-true named Les Gold, along with his son Seth and daughter Ashley.
As suggested by the title, "Hardcore Pawn" is rougher around the edges than the History series. A customer bringing in a cannon to "Pawn Stars" would trigger an examination of its history. TruTV has a customer with a homemade cannon that Gold just wants to see blow up in his parking lot.
The first "Hardcore Pawn" also features a profanity-spewing woman who threatens Gold when he doesn't hand over jewelry, and the store's purchase of a stripper's pole. Yes, several potential buyers try it out.
The show earned the same time slot as "Pawn Stars" because it's a nice fit with "Operation Repo," a series about auto repossession that airs at 8 p.m. Mondays, Juris said.
"We're certainly not going to change our schedule or our strategy because of one show on another network," Juris said. "That really isn't servicing our audience well — that comes to us on Mondays expecting a certain kind of show."
Nancy DuBuc, president and general manager of The History Channel, said she couldn't speak to whether TruTV's scheduling choice is truly a coincidence.
"I haven't seen the show," she said. "There's no mistaking the power of the show that we've launched."
