By NYU Staff

Justin Halpern and Samuel Halpern Source: Patrick Schumaker

Twitter is not just a source for the silly goings-on of celebrities and pseudo-celebrities.  Now, it’s a source of content for TV.

The Hollywood Reporter, a popular trade magazine, first reported that CBS has picked up a comedy project based on the blog entries of Justin Halpern, a 29 year-old senior editor for Maxim magazine who, after moving back home with his parents, started the twitter page–Sh** My Dad Says.

Halpern posts the daily rants of his 73 year-old dad, Samuel, a retired army veteran.  The posts are  pieces of conversation, daily observations, and especially foul language, which Halpern admitted arises from frustrations with his 3 sons.  Samuel even talks about the mysteries of technology and random actresses.  But with quotes like: “I wanted to see Detroit win. I’ve been there, it’s like God took a shit on a parking lot.  They deserve some good news” and “A mule kicked Uncle Bob once. Broke his ribs. He punched it in the face.. My point? You have an ingrown fucking toenail. Stop bitching,” some things are best left to a tweet.

But these types of posts helped the twitter page go viral almost immediately and today it boasts over 785,000 followers!

Halpern’s tweets got him a book deal with HarperCollins in September and in October, Warner Brothers put the wheels in motion for a family television sitcom, which will be executive produced and supervised by David Kohan and Max Mutchnick, creators of the hugely popular “Will & Grace” show of the early 2000’s.

Like Myspace, which has launched the careers of numerous musicians, Twitter and other text message-based sites, are rising in prominence as sources of new writing and comedic talent and ideas.  Even Fox Network is developing a show based on the Web site www.textsfromlastnight.com with Sony TV and Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison production company.

This trend is an awesome one for those looking to become comedy writers or just writers in general. What I fear is that TV will be overloaded with more…well, crap.  And I wonder how funny the show can be, given the Federal Communications Commission keeps network television more prudish than cable.  It remains to be seen if this show will be a success, but one thing’s certain, this isn’t the last we’ll see of Twitter gone TV.