TBS into funny business

Los Angeles — Cable’s TBS, which already airs reruns of “Seinfeld” and “Friends,” wants to be thought of as a home for comedy and said Thursday it would accompany the June launch of cleaned-up episodes of HBO’s “Sex and the City,” starring Sarah Jessica Parker, with a new logo and advertising campaign, “tbs very funny.” The network also is developing a reality series based on the sitcom “Gilligan’s Island.”

Other unscripted projects in development at TBS are “Outback Jack,” where women vie for the affection of an Australian adventurer; a Jamie Foxx-produced hidden camera show; and a program that mimics in real life the “Sex and the City” adventures of single women.

Could have been a ‘Contender’

Essen, Germany — Sylvester Stallone, the star of the five “Rocky” movies, says he’s hoping to draw people who don’t like boxing to his latest on-screen venture, a reality television show featuring young fighters.

Stallone, 57, is the executive producer of “The Contender,” slated to start next year, finding and grooming would-be boxers.

“All these 16 fighters must have a very good story and an interesting background,” Stallone said Saturday at a fitness fair in Germany. “You’ll get to know their wives and children, their mothers. It’s very emotional.”

“What I really want is for people, especially women, who don’t like boxing, to watch this show because it’s a drama,” he added.

The winner of the NBC series is to get $1 million and the chance to become a professional prize fighter.

Actress: Playboy getting cheesy

New York — Gina Gershon, star of the IFC docuseries “Rocked With Gina Gershon,” said she would love to run Playboy magazine.

“I wish someone would buy it and I could run it. I feel so strongly about this. Because I just think especially in today’s world it could be a really great magazine,” Gershon told reporters recently, according to AP Radio. “Their pictures are horrible now. They have to make it like cool ’70s style.

“Playboy used to be amazing,” she said. “And they just are blowing it. … It’s cheesy now. I think Playboy’s really cheesy.”

Queens taps poet over rapper

New York — The new Queens poet laureate says she’s honored to have been considered alongside rap legend Joseph “Rev. Run” Simmons of Run-DMC for the job.

“Especially being a girl from Queens, I grew up listening to hip-hop,” Ishle Yi Park said Saturday, a day after being sworn in as the borough’s poet laureate.

Park, 27, was selected by an independent panel of judges to become the borough’s third poet laureate. The author of the book of poems, “The Temperature of This Water,” will have the unpaid post for three years.

But it was Simmons’ candidacy that created the most buzz, generating a debate about whether rap is a legitimate form of poetry.

Simmons said he didn’t feel the argument had yet to be settled.

“I don’t know if Queens is ready for a rapper as a poet,” he said.