It features actual crank calls made by show regulars and celebrity guests, while re-enacted onscreen by puppets for a visual aid that shows the viewer what is happening in the call. The show premiered on June 2, 2002, on Comedy Central. It returned to MTV2 on February 9, 2007, running again until March 30, 2007. On February 11, 2019, Jimmy Kimmel announced on Jimmy Kimmel Live! that the show would be revived on Comedy Central for a fifth 20-episode season and mark the first project on Kimmel's new Kimmelot production imprint. The new season includes pranks on social media and other platforms. Kimmel's brother Jonathan Kimmel serves as the showrunner and executive producer. The fifth season premiered on September 25, 2019. On March 5, 2020, Comedy Central announced Crank Yankers had been renewed for a 20-episode sixth season. The sixth season premiered on May 5, 2021. The seventh season premiered on July 6, 2022. The performers are given a basic outline of a premise by the writers, and call telephone numbers from a list of selected targets (known as "marks"). Using the basic premises, the performers improvise most of their lines, playing off of the responses of their marks, with the intention to keep them on the phone as long as possible. With the exception of a few outside sources (including previous material from Jim Florentine and the Touch-Tone Terrorists), all the calls are made from Nevada. The Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 makes it illegal in most states to record telephone calls without both parties' consent. Under Nevada law, only one of the parties has to give consent (i.e., the caller), so prank calls can be recorded without the consent of the prank victims. One result of this was the series' schedule of creating and airing new episodes was fairly sporadic due to most of the celebrities living in Los Angeles, having Los Angeles-based jobs, and so were only periodically able to go to Las Vegas to make calls. Carolla, for example, took his radio program to Las Vegas once or twice a year, and while there would record new calls for the program. The puppet designs were drawn by artist Todd James before being constructed based on the various marks' voices, and, along with a series of stock characters (such as "Niles Standish", "Bobby Fletcher" and "Special Ed") based on the performers' character voices, the calls are re-enacted for the skits. The main character puppets for the first season were constructed by Bob Flanagan's company Den Design with additional puppets built by BJ Guyer, Carol Binion, Rick Lyon, Ron Binion, Jim Kroupa and Artie Esposito. An in-house puppet shop was set up for the following seasons to accommodate the fast-paced schedule of the show and the sheer volume of puppet characters required for each episode. The puppets are puppeteered by Ron Binion, Rick Lyon, BJ Guyer, Victor Yerrid, Paul McGinnis, Alice Dinnean, Tyler Bunch, Drew Massey, Robin Walsh, Marc Petrosino and Artie Esposito. Karl Malone (voiced by Jimmy Kimmel): Kimmel's impression of then- NBA star Karl Malone.Originally, the show was titled Prank Puppets it was renamed after Comedy Central lawyers deemed that it implied malice. Gladys Murphy (voiced by Wanda Sykes): A boisterous black woman who makes embarrassing announcements, generally of a scatological or sexual nature.He regularly refers to himself in the third-person. Niles Standish (voiced by Tony Barbieri): The British Earl of Yankerville, a rich and eccentric middle-aged pervert with homosexual tendencies.Her many children do things like gluing her buttocks to the toilet and stealing money from a malfunctioning bank machine. He frequently calls various services and asks for their price, then orders them to "double it" (Once even confusing someone by telling them to "cut it in half, and double it!"). Giles Standish (voiced by Tony Barbieri): Niles' deformed twin brother. Special Ed (voiced by Jim Florentine): Bobby Fletcher's mentally challenged younger cousin who constantly repeats himself, makes random comments and shouts his catchphrase "Yay!" until the prank-victim gets frustrated.He makes a cameo in one of Bobby's prank calls, "Let Me Put My Brother on the Phone". In two prank calls of his own (one to a movie theater and one to a video store), Ed reveals that his favorite film is Air Bud. In the video-store call, he works in several references to The Shining. Ed is not present in the 2019 revival due to the character being deemed too offensive for modern audiences.
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