Can a well-endowed teen make MTV hot again? The youth-obsessed cable network, seeking to stem a years-long ratings slide, believes it has found just the thing to get back on track: The Hard Times of RJ Berger, a scripted comedy about a boy with an, um, anatomical gift.

The show, billed as a cross between The Wonder Years and the R-rated comedy Superbad, is a raunchy coming-of-age tale about a nerdy teen who achieves notoriety among his high school peers when they discover that he's got a rather large penis.

Hard Times marks MTV's break from reality TV that has dominated the channel in recent years. Although MTV pioneered the format with shows like The Real World, and Jersey Shore's party-hopping Italian-Americans in South Jersey has proven to be a sleeper hit, the channel needs to make one of its periodic attempts to reinvent itself, industry executives say.

“Having lived on a smorgasbord of reality TV, they can't just serve up Jell-O. It has to be spicy,” said Brent Poer, managing director of the West Coast offices of the ad-buying firm MediaVest. “It has to make viewers sit up and say, ‘There goes MTV, breaking all the rules.'”

But if controversy is what it will take for MTV to regain momentum, it may need a big dollop of it. The network's viewership has sunk over the past few years and its average rating at 9 p.m. — the hour in which MTV premieres new episodes of its shows — fell another 18 percent to 801,000 viewers in 2009 among the channel's core 12- to 34-year-old viewers.

Audiences seem to be tiring of its longtime hit The Hills, about the charmed, semi-staged life of Lauren Conrad, which launched in 2006 and viewers fled last year after its star left the show. Dozens of other low-budget reality shows have come — and gone — without notice.

As a result of the audience erosion, MTV no longer is a must-buy for advertisers seeking young audiences, said Carrie Drinkwater, SVP/group account director at ad-buying firm MPG.

“People still flip on MTV to see what's on. The brand still has that pull,” Drinkwater said. But “they don't have the cache they used to with advertisers. Now there are countless other ways to reach young people, particularly with Web and gaming.”

The tumbling ratings and revenue — advertising brought in $820 million in 2009, off nearly 20 percent from 2006 figures, according to research firm SNL Kagan — has not gone unnoticed by MTV's bosses at media giant Viacom Inc., which also owns the Paramount film studio. MTV, and its sister channel VH-1, are one of the crown jewels among Viacom's juggernaut cable networks, which also include Comedy Central, BET and Nickelodeon, and accounted for 62 percent of the company's revenues in the first nine months of last year.

Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman throughout last year acknowledged MTV's struggles, including at a Goldman Sachs media conference in September, and outlined a plan to rebuild the channel by investing in more costly gambits — live-action shows, animated series and original movies — to build on its stable of reality shows.

Hard Times is the capstone of two years of development efforts by MTV General Manager Stephen Friedman, an MTV Networks veteran who was promoted to the channel's top post in 2008. “For me, (the show) speaks to where we need to go as a network. It's smart, refreshingly candid and really captures what our audience wants: a nuanced, multilayered portrayal of their lives,” he said.

Hard Times will air during summer, MTV's peak season, coupled with another high-profile launch Warren the Ape, which revives pompous, drunk, D-list celebrity puppet Warren “The Ape” DeMontague; the foul-mouthed character first appeared on the 2002 Fox series Greg the Bunny.