BET unveiled its programming plans for the new season on Wednesday in New York, a slate that includes a scripted comedy about how hard it is to break into the entertainment industry when you’re a Wayans family member; a “house husbands” spoof of Bravo’s “Housewives” franchise; an “America’s Most Wanted”-ish reality series starring Judge Greg Mathis; and a late-night show starring T.J. Holmes.

A former CNN anchor
reporter, Holmes will deliver “smart, biting social commentary on significant issues important to African Americans” that “mainstream media tends to disregard,” BET said Wednesday of its new late-night strip, “Don’t Sleep!” The show will include correspondents and live music.

“House Husbands” is a semi-scripted skewering of all things “Housewives,” based on Kevin Hart’s “The Real Husbands of Hollywood” sketches that the network unveiled during the 2011 BET Awards. Hart will star and exec-produce.

“Second Generation Wayans” is a fully scripted comedy series exec-produced by Marlon Wayans, and starring Craig Wayans, Damien Dante Wayans and George O. Gore II (the guy who played Big Head Junior in Damon Wayans’s sitcom “My Wife & Kids”). The guys “struggle” to make it in Hollywood while suffering from being members of “America’s first family of comedy” — as opposed to the rest of you who are trying to make it in Hollywood while blissfully free of “celebrity relatives.”

The crime series “The Mathis Project,” starring Mathis himself, promises to “empower neighborhoods plagued by unsolved homicides” by uniting local volunteers and law enforcement to gather information — and to “get community members to do what, for some, is unthinkable: Reveal what they know.” It’s being produced by ITV Studios, which also produces Fox’s “Hell’s Kitchen” and “Kitchen Nightmares,” among other programs.

Seacrest cites Dick Clark

Before there was Ryan Seacrest, there was Dick Clark.

Today, we marvel at Seacrest’s ability to host “American Idol” while also launching “the ESPN of pop culture” network with Mark Cuban. And there’s more! Anchor E! News; produce all those Kardashian docu-soaps for E! and the just-renewed “Shahs of Sunset” for Bravo; become the newest member of the NBC “family” (and presumed heir to the “Today” show) — all while hosting his daily and weekly syndicated radio shows for Clear Channel.

But Seacrest is just taking a page from the Dick Clark playbook.

Clark died Wednesday at age 82 after suffering a heart attack.

“We can’t begin tonight’s show without acknowledging the passing of a television pioneer, and my dear friend, Dick Clark,” Seacrest said at the top of Wednesday night’s “American Idol.” “Without Dick, a show like this would not exist.”

In 1980, Variety marveled that “the self-styled ‘voracious appetite’ of Dick Clark for activity has the indie producer moving into every TV daypart.”

Among Clark’s many television accomplishments, his “Bandstand” will forever hold the record as the longest-running musical variety show in history, unless you really think “Idol” will last longer than three decades; we know “The Voice” isn’t, and we have our doubts about “The X Factor.” In the ’60s, when Clark moved “Bandstand” to Los Angeles, he created Dick Clark Productions.