It will speak a secret language and leave behind documents not of edification but of paradox.

 Hugo Ball, Flight out of Time

In the summer of 2003 the Sundance Channel announced a "TV Lab" competition—proposals for new television series. Four projects were selected from the nearly four thousand submitted. The Ice Cream Social, David Robbins’ update of the classic variety-show format, was one of them. In October 2003, a "mini-pilot" was produced in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.