Comedy stars Samantha Bee and Billy Eichner steal the show at Turner upfront

In the midst of a rebranding spearheaded by Turner Entertainment Chief Creative Officer Kevin Reilly, the Turner networks held its upfront presentation Wednesday at the Theater at Madison Square Garden.

The sheer breadth of programming under the Turner banner -- from NBA games to campaign coverage to stoner cartoons -- made for a long and sometimes disorienting presentation. But the standout moments from the nearly two-hour event involved Turner’s comedy stars.

Samantha Bee, whose weekly show “Full Frontal” has injected a much-needed feminist perspective into the political comedy realm, stopped by to riff on the “peyote hallucination of an election.” The former “Daily Show” correspondent expressed how excited she was about the coming Republican National Convention.

“I’m going to say something that no one has ever said before: I am dying to go to Cleveland,” she said.

This being an upfront, she came with a pitch for the ad executives in attendance: Cough up $100,000 to make her an official sponsor of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

“My giant face looming over the convention in every CNN wide shot for a week? Please picture it,” Bee said.

The comedian also co-created the TBS series “The Detour” with her husband, Jason Jones. The road-trip sitcom debuted in April and has already been renewed by the network, which is repositioning itself as the home for the kind of clever, talent-driven comedy that Reilly championed during his tenures at NBC and Fox. (Think “30 Rock” and “New Girl.”)

Upcoming shows include “People of Earth,” which stars Wyatt Cenac and follows a support group for people who believe they’ve been abducted by aliens, and “Search Party,” a dark comedy with Alia Shawkat about a circle of twentysomethings whose college friend goes missing.

TBS should not be confused with truTV, the channel formerly known as CourtTV but rebranded in 2016 to focus on reality-style comedy. Billy Eichner, star of the network’s viral hit “Billy on the Street,” delivered a set as scathingly funny as Bee’s, though his barbs were aimed squarely at the industry.

“Television isn’t dead,” he assured the crowd. “That said, it has about three years to live.”

He also made light of the increasingly fuzzy distinction between traditional TV and the Internet. “The difference between truTV and YouTube is that on truTV you can’t control what you’re watching,” he quipped. “Isn’t that a refreshing twist?”

But the person who got what might have been the biggest laugh of the morning wasn’t a professional comedian; it was “Inside the NBA” host Charles Barkley. In a mock town hall opposite Conan O’Brien and moderated by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, he was asked what it means to “reinvent television,” one of the hyperbolic platitudes bandied about with mind-numbing frequency during upfront week.

“I have no earthly idea,” he replied. “I would actually just say coming up with some new shows.”

Truer words were never spoken.