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Mark Burnett keeps putting his unscripted TV company up for sale, negotiates with the likes of IMG and even Ben Silverman’s Electus, and then loses the buyer because he’s asking too much. And, increasingly, Burnett has lost his programming touch, too. For instance, he took over HGTV’s Design Star contest this season and turned the likeable Vern Yip into the awful Donald Trump. The result is a now unwatchable show. (Burnett doesn’t even allow judges Candace Olson and Genevieve Gorder, both talented articulate designers, to talk. Just Yip. Ugh.) That said, Ray Richmond, who’s contributing to Deadline’s TCA coverage, just sent me the news that the crime-themed network Investigation Discovery has hired Burnett to find the talent lurking in America’s prison system. Seriously.
Burnett’s entry Dancing Behind Bars will look to uncover hoofer talent among the incarcerated. The other show, Talent Behind Bars, is designed as a singing competition and has yet to attach a producer. Richmond says media in the room already began dubbing the second show Prison Idol, which Investigation Discovery honcho Henry Schleiff didn’t seem to mind. Schleiff noted that no hardened murderers will be permitted to participate — just those convicted of crimes like selling crack. Who’s gonna be the judges: prison guards? Surely there’s a buyer now for Burnett’s company with classy programming like that.
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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God help us all …
First, MSNBC’s weekend programming which seems to glorify criminals and prison life. I swear I saw three dangerous female inmates vamping for the camera like the Jersey Shore girls. Please please post a correction that this is just a joke.
Nikki’s right. Every week on “DesignStar” I’m surprised to see Mark Burnett’s name, because the show is so bad this year. I don’t know what he’s done, but everything is wrong, from the look of the show to the incredibly bad crop of designer contestants.
I totally agree! Why would we want to see a room inspired by a fruit salad? Please let these designers showcase their limited talent in individual events next year! It’s not entertaining or good design to keep these poor people in “apprentice-like” groups! We could also use at least two new judges next season, Vern Yip needs to go home & crack open a Luxe magazine.
Why do so many of the posts this week seem like practical jokes? First, Guggenheim directing the 3D Beiber pic and now this?! I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!!
Nice to see that someone else shares my opinion of “Design Star” this year. I made it through only the first episode and a half this season. It now seems like a bad clone of Burnett’s other tedious shows.
Good Lord! They just go lower and lower with these idiotic reality shows.
I’m no show runner, but it’s funny – I pitched prison themed reality shows to Fremantle five years ago they said… ‘No one would watch a show with inmates competing… no one cares what happens to them.” Apparently times have changed (or there are just more channels to fill) – probably both.
have to agree Mark has ruined Design star for it seems vern has become the only judge who feels he can give the opinion. as for going into prisons for new Talent is Mark smoking something for what is he going to offer the winner of such a thing a chance for freedom or a record contract?
Agreed on “Design Star” – no fun, snippy Vern, no judge talk, as grim as possible and very little actual talent. Thanx Burnett for taking a cool reality competish show and drowning it.
As for “prison” talent? Boooo and ewwwww…. It’s all happening – just like Howard Beale predicted it would!!!
Wow, SNL did a sketch last season with Dancing w/Prisoners. It was very funny, because its insane.
I bet that’s where he got the idea from.
Great idea… until the production crew gets shanked on set! Reality programming has officially ruined TV.
The inmates will have to sign a “we’re-not-responsible-for-what-happens-to-your-anal-virginity-after-you-sing-show-tunes” release clause.
We are getting closer to the Running Man every year.
Burnett has fallen way down the mountainside. All he does is produce garbage after garbage each year that come and go fast- and are totally unwatchable but cost a huge amount of money because of his fees. Why networks keep falling for this shit is beyond me. Given his impact on the genre a decade ago, maybe it is his right to kill it too. He’s certainly doing a great job of it.
Burnett goes down in a blaze of glory and takes the reality genre with him. Look for his book.
People don’t get it yet, do they? Burnett was never a “visionary” producer. Survivor, his biggest hit, wasn’t even his original idea. (Neither was Eco Challenge, which he did long before anyone knew who he was – that one, he literally stole, including the logo, from Raid Gallois.)
Burnett is a brilliant, brilliant sales guy and marketing man – one of the best since Barnum – with a great sense of showmanship, and the innate smarts to hire the right creatives to actually make the shows work.
He has burned a lot of bridges (and left a lot of burning bodies) on the way up…maybe the pool of real creative talent he has to choose from has shrunk because of that?
Burnett turned Design Star into a pile of crap, and the ratings bear it out. Blame HGTV for firing 495 Productions (the previous producers) so the new HGTV execs could brag that they’re bring Mark Burnett to the network. For 4 Seasons it was well produced and the net’s highest rated series.
For those keeping score Oxygen fired 495 Productions from Dance Your Ass Off to bring in the higher profile Magical Elves. That series is unwatchable this season, too. It also went from the highest rated series on the net to a bomb this cycle.
Oh, and in the meantime 495 Productions happened to crank out Jersey Shore.
“Oh, and in the meantime 495 Productions happened to crank out Jersey Shore.”
Which is to say that popular crap is still crap, no matter who dumps it on the table – or the TV audience.
It’s obvious ALL of the posts criticizing Burnett’s Design Star are employees of 495 Productions. I don’t work for either one but I can say that this season has drastically improved. Burnett knows how to put a nice slick looking show. 495 should stick to their amateur trash shows.
I’m assuming he was ‘inspired’ by that prison in the Phillipines where literally thousands of prisoners organize highly-choreographed dance routines. It’s quite a sight to behold. (Youtube ‘dancing inmates’ if you’ve never seen it).
In theory, it’s not a horrible idea as long as the participant pool is confined to non-violent offenders. Maybe if we take the ‘rehabilitation’ approach to incareration, it would give the inmates something to work towards and build upon when they are eventually released?
Just thinking outside of the box…
There’s a reason those criminals are “inside the box” to begin with. Reality TV has corrupted many into thinking they can be an add-water-and-stir instant star. We will diminish the crime prevention aspect of prisons by plucking fame seekers from behind bars. A big fat no to this stupid idea.
Well, unless i miss my guess, nobody want ex prison groupees at the next comic con.
Or the next, etc..
Are you kidding me with this?! How is nobody responding with outrage that it is sickening to give people who have committed crimes the chance to be famous??? How do you think the woman who was mugged is going to feel when she sees her attacker, whom she had to testify against in open court, on TV? I can think of dozens of examples of reasons that this is not just some lame, silly idea and the demise of TV, but rather a horrible offense to society.
There are plenty of examples of people who reform themselves once they’re out of prison and make shining examples of their lives. But while they are in jail, they should have to suffer their punishment without glory.
Reality TV glorifies the sociopath and the narcissist. Look at the Desperate Housewives, Jersey Shore, even The Hills.
And we wonder why our teenagers are growing up without consciences.
Thank God for shows like Intervention and even Hoarders; shows which focus on real people and compassion, not the mindless quest for 15 minutes of fame at any cost.
You’re right, @sara — reality shows are awful. Not like the top-quality scripted shows on TV… like Accidentally On Purpose or Hank or Eastwick or ‘Til Death.
Get rid of Jim Roush, that’s a good start.
Mark Burnett, meet the bottom of the barrel.
“Mark Burnett, meet the bottom of the barrel.”
cuz this is where yo will be for a long while. keep phoning it in
This backs up my main theory: all you need in one hit and you’re able to put complete shit on tv. Mike Fleiss lives by this mantra.
We’re told Scripps hired a programming exec from within the company to makeover the entire slate of programming last year.
At this point, Mark gets all the meetings and people buy shit from him because he’s HIM. They think they need to be in business with him because he has this undefinable deft touch.
We knew him from long before he became a “brand name” (i.e. in the late 90s when his big credit was producing “Eco Challenge” for Discovery) and he was a decent guy. But, he’s struck it very rich and now he has access to whatever comes along first and he just saunters in and the network lap dogs don’t know how to say no to him. They don’t want to be the one that turned down his pitch which then became a hit somewhere else. So he crowds the field and makes it that much harder for everyone else to come in with good stuff because they’ve already committed their dollars to his stuff.
Not that we’d want to ever work with her under any circumstances, but when Sarah Palin came a callin’ and wanting to do a reality show, she was paired up with Mark Burnett before anyone had a chance to sit down with her. It was a fait accompli, naturally.
The ironic part is that when you have this much business under your name, you’re not really doing much show running in any meaningful capacity. It would be impossible. I have friends who work on his shows — editors, story people, producers. He doesn’t watch cuts, watch raw footage or spend much time in the field. He couldn’t possibly have the time to do that. So, the irony is that people buy his stuff and he’s not all that engaged!! Of course, he hires incredibly capable people, but the network fools think they’re buying Mark Burnett!
Anyway, his stuff just gets more audacious and puts a bad name on all of us and of course, he’s looking for the ultimate pay day — the sale of his company.
A lot of his people aren’t all that capable either. Some of the shows are terribly produced compared to his earlier works. (Anyone see Expedition Africa aka Expedition in Boredom?) He’s had over a dozen new shows in the last few years – and none of them have come back for a second season. Some got shelved and never aired – including Little Geniuses which ended in scandal and couldn’t air on Fox – thanks to Burnett charging it to incompetent producers and not knowing what was going on.
Didn’t Alan Partridge come up with this idea?
Now if he could only get a design show set behind bars, then he’d really have something