Turning a pitch into a Survivor

Jun03

Turning a pitch into a Survivor

Business

A multi-billion dollar TV almost didn't happen. A television producer was eventually able to find one person who understood his vision to reinvent television and was persistent enough with his idea to help an old industry grasp a new concept.

British producer Mark Burnett had an idea for a new reality TV show but needed support from network gatekeepers to make his vision a reality. In the late 90s Burnett went all over Hollywood pitching the show to whoever would listen, including the cable networks. No one was interested and the idea of reality television had not taken off.

Mark Burnett's business manager doesn't give up and placed a call to the executive assistant of Ghen Maynard, a lower ranked executive at CBS who wants out of his cubicle. Ghen happened to major in social psychology at Harvard and understands the appeal of reality TV to the masses. He gets excited about Burnett's idea and pitches it to CEO Les Moonves. Moonves supposedly calls the "the stupidest idea I've ever heard in my life."

After a little more persistence Les Moonves reconsiders. Survivor is born, and makes CBS millions of dollars and reinvents the reality TV industry.

Story based on Bill Carter's book, Desperate Networks.

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Posted on June 3, 2006 at 1:46PM
Updated at 1:48PM
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Comments [4]
By Niall Kennedy, a web technologist from
San Francisco, California, United States

4 Comments

Commentary on "Turning a pitch into a Survivor":

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jim on June 3, 2006 at 3:11 PM wrote: #

that story misses the fact that mark burnett did not come up with the survivor concept. wikipedia has the whole story.
Simeon on June 5, 2006 at 7:12 AM wrote: #

Hi Whether he came up with the idea or not. The interesting thing is how he took the idea and made it into a multimillion dollar enterprise. There are so many fresh ideas out there that just get squashed because the right people arent behind them. This is the case for me as well, I have some brilliant ideas, but just cant seem to get anyone to talk to about them. I have some of these on my blog whatidea.blogspot.com
jim on June 5, 2006 at 4:45 PM wrote: #

perhaps the other lesson to draw is that it's not the idea that made the fortune, but the personal network of mark burnett. coming up with ideas is pretty easy, especially in comparison to actually executing them.
kabadayi on June 5, 2006 at 8:09 PM wrote: #

Talking about "the appeal of reality TV to the masses", here's a very in-depth analysis on the issue which also explores the motives of businesses and contestants... There you go: "Media Analysis: Reality Game - Understanding the dynamics, and predicting the future of Reality Shows - Part 1 (understanding the dynamics)"