I am – Hercules!!

Comedy Central’s new “Gong Show” is mostly tedious, a creatively unhygienic hybrid mixing the DNA of the insipid “America’s Got Talent” with a watered-down attempt to rip-off "The Howard Stern Show."

And Triumph The Insult-Comic Dog (voice and hands of longtime “SNL”/“Conan O’Brien” writer Robert Smigel) seems to know he’s landed in the middle of a basic-cable abomination.

Triumph, one the three judges in the premiere episode, mostly squats in silence before the show’s parade of appalling performances, but hits the comedy bulls-eye almost every time he opens his cigar-chewing yap.

The incisively acerbic puppet-hound makes great sport of the show, the acts and fellow judges Brian Posehn (“The Sarah Silverman Program”) and Steve Schirripa (“The Sopranos”).

The bad news is I don’t think “You Don’t Mess With The Zohan” screenwriter Smigel contributes to any subsequent “Gong” episodes, and just lends Triumph to the premiere as a favor to Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions, which produces the series.

The worse news is the show’s awkward and maladroit new host, comedian Dave Attell (“Insomniac”), somehow manages to be stiffer and less engaging than original host Chuck Barris. And Attell will be back every week.

Comedy Central pairs “Gong” this summer with “Reality Bites Back,” which pits 10 f-list comedians against each other in unscripted competitions. The comics include memorably unfunny “MTV Road Rules” vet Theo Vonkurnatowski, who appears this week at the Baton Rouge Funnybone before moving on to a five-night stand at the Tampa Improv and a four-night stint at the Atlanta Funny Farm. In Foxworthy country, Vonkurnatowski’s a working comic.

The first 10 minutes of “Reality Bites Back”:

“The Gong Show”: 10 p.m. Thursday. Comedy Central.
“Reality Bites Back”: 10:30 p.m. Thursday. Comedy Central.

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