BBC3 controller Danny Cohen wants to find the next generation of comedy talent with a modern day successor to Saturday Night Live and the 11 O'Clock Show.
Mr Cohen said a live, studio-based comedy show would be one of the cornerstones of his new schedule as he seeks to attract a slightly younger audience.
He is also upping BBC3's drama output and overhauling the channel's 60 Seconds news bulletins.
"There are no shows like Friday or Saturday Night Live or the 11 O'Clock Show. They generated a golden age of talent," said Cohen.
The BBC3 controller said he wanted to unearth a new generation of performers who would move into mainstream entertainment in five or 10 years time, following in the footsteps of Ricky Gervais and Sacha Baron Cohen who both appeared on Channel 4's 11 O'Clock Show.
"BBC3 started out with some studio entertainment programmes and some of them didn't work. It was a rather bruising experience and it moved away from it. We have to give it a go again," he told the Media Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival.
"If you do a live show you can't say every bit is going to be brilliant. Some bits of the 11 O'Clock Show were less good. But if you don't take those steps you don't find these people."
Both BBC3 and its website will be overhauled next year so that it "operates on multiplatform like no other channel", said Cohen. At the moment he said the channel and the website operate in "separate silos".
BBC3's news coverage is also being reviewed. "Having the same 60 Seconds news bulletin every hour five hours a night is probably not the best use of that resource," he said.
"We could be more ambitious. On the budget we have is there a kind of extra richness we can bring in which we don't currently have?"
The BBC3 controller said he wanted the channel to be more "glossy, shiny and glamorous", adding that it "could do better" in drama and should do more of it.
Six new drama pilots will air next year, with one of them destined to become a series, along with a new US teen drama.
New comedy will include a sitcom written by a 19-year-old and a sketch show mixing live action and CGI.
BBC3's factual output, meanwhile, will be a "bit more serious". Mr Cohen said he wanted the channel to be a "bit younger" without alienating the older end of its audience.
But Mr Cohen rejected accusations that the BBC spent too much time trying to woo younger audiences. He said if the corporation did not chase younger audiences then "the future of the BBC is under threat".
"If we don'tgrab them when they are young why would they come back?," he added.
He said it was a myth that young people do not watch television. "TV viewing among the young fell 1.3% over the last three years, and has been level in the last two. They are able to multi-task and do several things at the same time."
