Lifetime Creates Paranormal Psychic Reality TV Show

Lifetime Television Networks announced they will be creating a new block of paranormal themed reality programming to air Friday nights starting in October. Closing out the night will be a new reality competition series from the reality TV powerhouse of Bunim-Murray Productions, the people behind MTV's The Real World and The Simple Life, which will search for the most reliable psychic in America.

"America's Psychic Challenge" reads like a cross between "Fear Factor" and "The X-Files" as each episode pits four psychics against each other in a series of tasks to determine who is the most clairvoyant. At the end of the episode two contestants will be sent home and two will go on to compete in later rounds. The contestants are all regular people with regular jobs who feel that they have a special ability and will get the chance to prove it through tasks like finding a man hidden in a car trunk and matching up sets of married couples.

This is not Lifetime's first foray into the realms of the paranormal. The network, with a motto billing itself as "television for women", ran the original series "1-800-Missing" (later re-titled "Missing") which followed a psychic who helped the FBI solve missing person cases. Lifetime also is the home for re-airings of NBC's Emmy Award winning series "Medium" which follows a wife and mother who communicates with the dead. "America's Psychic Challenge" will be followed on Friday Nights with a new season of "Lisa Williams: Life Among the Dead," another original reality program. "The success of 'Lisa Williams: Life Among the Dead' proves that our audience is keenly interested in this genre of programming," said Susanne Daniels, Entertainment President of Lifetime Television Network in the press release.