Hearst forms TV partnership with reality producer Mark Burnett

 
Hearst Corp. and the producer of such popular reality shows as “The Apprentice” and “Survivor” announced a 50/50 joint venture Monday that will charge Burnett with the task of creating television shows for the media giant. Hearst owns more than two dozen TV stations, stakes in cable TV networks Lifetime, A&E, History Channel and ESPN as well as newspapers and magazines.

“We were not looking to be in the television production business,” Scott Sassa, president of Hearst Entertainment & Syndication, said in an interview. “But no one is sure how technology will play out or what devices will ultimately win. The one thing that is certain is: Good content will continue to be critically important no matter what’s on the screen.”

Burnett's existing television productions -- with the exceptions of his two biggest hits, “Survivor” and “The Apprentice” -- will be folded into the unnamed venture, including his latest high-stakes bet, “The Voice,” a competitive singing talent show that debuts on NBC this month. Terms were not disclosed.

The British-born producer had been trying to sell his company for several years, particularly as he struggled to develop a new blockbuster hit. Unlike successful dramas and comedies, which earn millions of dollars of profits in reruns, reality shows have little financial life beyond their initial TV airings. Thus, reality show producers constantly try to come up with the next big hit.

“I’m not exactly missing any meals,” said Burnett, who at times has been one of the highest-paid producers in television. “Strategically, this was a good move for me because Hearst has great brands and a deep bench of experience.”

Burnett plans to develop shows that are extensions of Hearst’s various properties, including its Good Housekeeping, Esquire and Marie Claire magazines.

“Those could be very useful. I’m looking for that next act in my career,” said Burnett, 50. “And Hearst provides a big burst of energy and the ability for me to work with new people.” 

In recent years, the financial upside for reality shows has been selling their format to foreign networks so they can adapt the program for local audiences. Burnett has often relied on other TV companies to sell his shows abroad, a role that Hearst is expected to fulfill on new shows.

Teaming up with Burnett makes sense, Sassa said, because the growth in television has been in the nonfiction side of the TV business. Cable networks such as History and Bravo have achieved ratings gains with unscripted shows such as “Pawn Stars” and “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”

Another goal of the partnership with Burnett is to create shows that dovetail with other Hearst projects or that can be extended to digital platforms, including the Internet, Sassa said.

Burnett has teamed up with several big names, including Martha Stewart and Sarah Palin. He recently produced "Sarah Palin's Alaska" for TLC.

-- Meg James

Photo: Mark Burnett. Credit: Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times

News Corp. moves closer to purchase of Elisabeth Murdoch's TV company

Rupert Murdoch is getting to roll out the corporate welcome mat to his daughter, Elisabeth Murdoch.

Murdoch's media conglomerate News Corp. is in the final stages of negotiating an arrangement to buy Elisabeth Murdoch's London-based television production company, Shine Group, for about $700 million, according to people familiar with the situation.

An announcement could come in the next couple of weeks.

The purchase is being driven, in large part, by Murdoch's desire to have his second-eldest daughter join the company in a high-level role. His youngest son, James, already has a key position, running News Corp.'s European and Asian operations.

Elisabeth Murdoch, 42, has spent the last decade building Shine into one of the U.K.'s most prominent and successful independent television studios. Shine produces such shows as "MasterChef" and "The Biggest Loser." News Corp. has international distribution channels, but it has limited production capabilities overseas.  That segment has become increasingly important as producers take their successful reality show formats and replicate them in countries around the globe.

Elisabeth Murdoch, who owns 53% of Shine, has several reasons for wanting to sell. Minority partner Sony Pictures Entertainment, which owns 20%, has been looking to cash out. What's more, the European production industry has been rapidly consolidating. Shine, which has considerable debt, doesn't have the financial resources to take the company to the next level and Murdoch doesn't want to bring on additional partners that would dilute her controlling interest.

Click here to read the full story in the Los Angeles Times.

-- Meg James

 Photo Elisabeth Murdoch. Credit: Tim Matthews / Allstar.

Mattel's Ken, on the comeback trail, gets his own reality show

 

Ken Carson is ready for his close-up.

Mattel Inc.'s latest marketing push, to celebrate the milestone of its Ken doll hitting the big 5-0 next month, includes Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and a reality show on Hulu called "Genuine Ken: The Search for the Great American Boyfriend."

Last year, upstart television production company Hudsun Media contacted the El Segundo-based toy giant with an idea for a show after learning about the "Ken Initiative" from an advertising firm. Hudsun pitched a program akin to "The Bachelor," but something that would have a little fun with Ken's "boy-next-door image." Michael Rourke, chief executive of Hudsun, said Mattel immediately embraced the concept as part of its campaign to make Ken cool again.

The show, primarily shot around Los Angeles in November, debuted on Hulu last month. "Genuine Ken" is a contest between eight potential "Kens" going through the paces to prove to Barbie-like judges that they have all of the qualities of Ken: integrity, style, fashion sense, good looks, nice abs, good manners and the ability to listen and understand what makes Barbie tick. 

"There is a fun, celebratory and campy nature to the show," Rourke said in an interview. Mattel, he said, was "in complete agreement in the spirit in which we approached the project: It was about having fun with this great icon while also exploring what it takes to be a great boyfriend."

 Click here to read the full story in The Times.

-- Meg James

Photo: A scene from "Genuine Ken: The Search for the Great American Boyfriend." Credit: Mattel

MTV, after moving away from music, glances to the past to glimpse the future

Although it dropped the word “music” from its logo earlier this year, MTV is still searching for the right chord.

The main MTV channel hasn’t had a prominent series devoted to musical trends or artists for more than a year, instead riding such popular and rough-hewn reality shows as "Jersey Shore" and "Teen Mom." Distancing itself from music became something of a sore point among some viewers who worried that MTV was straying too far from its roots. 

Now the 29-year-old network has tweaked its management structure to place a higher priority on the development of shows that feature recording artists. Signaling the revived effort, the executive in charge of music and talent, Amy Doyle, was recently given additional responsibilties and now has a direct line to one of the network’s programming heads.

MTV hopes to duplicate the success of the reality series "The Osbournes," which was spun off from "MTV Cribs," the network's long-running series that showcases celebrities and athletes in their homes. Featuring befuddled heavy metal rock star Ozzy Osbourne being outmaneuvered by his family members, "The Osbournes," which launched in 2002, revitalized the English baby boomer rocker's career and became a cultural phenomenon.

“The history of our music development has sort of ebbed and flowed over the years,” Doyle said. “We’re always coming up with ways to express music across the channel’s different platforms. Recently we said, `Let’s figure out a way to do this more effectively.' This [structure] simply establishes a more formal process.” 
 
Doyle now reports to both Chris Linn, who was recently named MTV’s ranking New York-based programming executive, and the network's general manager, Stephen Friedman. Linn's expanded portfolio includes overseeing music development as well as reality shows on the East Coast. He's also been tasked with developing made-for-TV movies, including those that could morph into ongoing series. 

NBC Universal's Zalaznick to oversee Telemundo

La Revolución Cultural Comienza!

NBC Universal's Spanish-language television network Telemundo is about to get a jolt as Lauren Zalaznick -- the company's high priestess of marketing who has demonstrated a knack for turning tawdry reality shows into high culture -- will be tapped to take over the network. Zalaznick currently shepherds Bravo -- home to such splashy shows as "Top Chef," "The Millionaire Matchmaker" and "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" -- as well as the younger-skewing Oxygen channel and website iVillage.

Zalaznick's official title is President of NBC Universal Women & Lifestyle Entertainment Networks, which includes Bravo and Oxygen as well as NBC's Green is Universal initiative.

It would seem that the steamy Spanish-language telenovelas would be slightly out of step with the call for a carbon neutral footprint. Maybe Zalaznick will work on that.

Zalaznick's new role is expected as part of a new management structure being designed by Comcast Chief Operating Officer Steve Burke. Burke, who will become chief executive of NBC Universal when the Philadelphia based cable company takes control of General Electric's media company, is expected to unveil his organizational plan later this week.

Miami-based Telemundo has long presented enormous challenges and opportunities for NBC Universal, particularly as the U.S. Latino population grows. Telemundo has been the No. 2 Spanish-language network behind Univision Communications for nearly two decades. Recently, Telemundo has been looking over its shoulder as it faces a challenge in the ratings by Univision's secondary network, TeleFutura. Burke's plan could be to recast Telemundo as the Bravo of Spanish-language television.

NBC acquired the unit in 2002 for more than $2 billion, figuring it could channel its prime-time programming prowess into higher ratings.  But things didn't follow NBC's script, and the Spanish-language operation has become a bit of an island within the vast NBC Universal enterprise.

Don Browne, a former NBC News producer, has been president of Telemundo since 2005, managing its day-to-day operations. For the last three years, NBC Universal television Chairman Jeff Gaspin has been overseeing Telemundo on the corporate level, putting renewed emphasis on Telemundo's youth-oriented cable channel mun2. 

Gaspin said Monday that he would be leaving the company soon after Comcast takes charge. That means another shuffle for Telemundo. Since NBC took over the operation, three ranking executives have been in charge: Jeff Zucker, Randy Falco and Jeff Gaspin. Falco left the company in 2006 and the two Jeffs are losing their jobs as part of the Comcast takeover and reorganization.

Comcast is awaiting federal approval for its acquisition of controlling interest of NBC Universal. Once the deal closes, Comcast will own 51% and GE will retain 49%.

-- Meg James

Photo: Lauren Zalaznick. Credit: Derick E. Hingle, Bloomberg News

The Morning Fix: Big bucks for 'Big Bang'! Weinstein Co. makes splash at Toronto. Reality bites on broadcast.

After the coffee. Before wondering why Fashion Week snubbed me.

Reality bites. The Wall Street Journal uses the overhaul of Fox's "American Idol" to check in on the state of the reality TV biz. Heading into the fall season, the WSJ notes that the five broadcast networks have scheduled 14 hours of reality shows, the lowest number since 2005. Of course, in fairness, a lot of reality shows usually come on in mid-season to replace new comedies and dramas that didn't work. Also, although broadcast may be backing away from reality shows, the story doesn't note how huge they've become on cable. TLC, MTV, Bravo and dozens of other channels are basically reality-show factories these days. As for "American Idol," we're all still waiting for Fox and the producers to announce Steven Tyler, the Aerosmith singer, and performer Jennifer Lopez as the new judges. Actually, does anyone care anymore?

Big paycheck for "Big Bang Theory." Deadline Hollywood has the details on the new contracts for the stars of the CBS hit "The Big Bang Theory." Most interesting was how Warner Bros. TV, which makes the show, managed to get breakout star Jim Parsons to take the same deal as his co-stars. Initially, the Emmy winner had been holding out for a bigger deal, but Warner Bros. played hardball. The raises come in the wake of Warner Bros. selling repeats of the program to TBS. In other words, this is the reward for the last few years as much as it is a raise going forward.

They're back! The Weinstein Co., apparently trying to move on from founders Bob and Harvey Weinstein's unsuccessful effort to buy back Miramax from Walt Disney Co., has been making a splash at the Toronto International Film Festival. According to Variety, the Weinstein Co. picked up North American rights for a British coming-of-age comedy called "Submarine," its second purchase after springing for "Dirty Girl." Lionsgate has also been busy as it and specialty subside Roadside bought U.S. rights to Robert Redford's "The Conspirator," which is from new Chicago Cubs owner Joe Ricketts

Brother, can you spare a dime? Veteran movie banker Clark Hallren, who left JPMorgan last year to create Clear Scope Partners, has a grim financing forecast for the movie industry. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Hallren, who worked on the initial IPO for DreamWorks Animation, said "it's a good time not to be a banker." Why? Well, Hallren notes that foreign banks are not doing as many deals and the risks in the movie business have skyrocketed.

You say show, I say advertisement. An advocacy group is going after Nickelodeon, charging that one of its new shows is nothing more than an advertisement dressed up as a kids cartoon. The show, "Zevo-3," premieres on Nicktoons next month (actually the day after Hub, a new rival kids channel from Discovery and Hasbro, launches) and is based on characters that were created for a marketing campaign by the shoe company Skechers. The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood has sent a complaint to the Federal Communications Commission asking the agency to stop Nickelodeon from proceeding with the show. The FCC does have rules regarding advertising and kids programming, but Nickelodeon parent Viacom counters that although the characters of the show may have been inspired by the ads, it is not violating any government regulations. More on the skirmish from the New York Times.

Missing the point. The Hollywood Reporter has a story Thursday declaring that "fat is making a comeback in Hollywood" and suggesting that we can all "forget about" the super-skinny actresses that fill just about every show on broadcast and cable. What the story doesn't note is that most of these shows are reality shows about losing weight and that their overall message is that there is something wrong with the people on the show. Although obesity is a real issue, many of these shows are just exploiting people in the hopes of ratings. In other words, Hollywood is not suddenly embracing people who you can actually still see when they turn sideways.

Inside the Los Angeles Times: Sirius XM Chief Executive Mel Karmazin said he is confident that Howard Stern will sign a new deal with the satellite radio broadcaster. MGM got its seventh (that's right, seventh) forbearance on its debt payments. Lucas Cruikshank is building an empire with his Fred Figglehorn character.

-- Joe Flint

Follow me on Twitter because I said so: Twitter.com/JBFlint

The Morning Fix: Revenge of the writers! 'Expendables' not expendable yet. Last words on Comcast-NBC deal. 'Modern Family' co-creator Steve Levitan blasts Hulu.

After the coffee. Before deciding if "Piranha" will have any bite.

"The Expendables" not expendable yet. Looks like the over-the-hill gang will ride again this weekend at the box office. Although there are five new movies opening, "The Expendables" is again expected to finish in first place. According to Los Angeles Times box office guru Ben Fritz, "Nanny McPhee Returns" has a tiny chance to upset "The Expendables," while the rest of the newcomers -- "Lottery Ticket," "Vampires Suck" "The Switch" and "Piranha 3D" will all open in the $7-million to $13-million range.

Getting the last word in. The Federal Communications Commission was busy collecting the final comments from those who want to have a say about cable company Comcast Corp.'s proposed takeover of NBC Universal. According to Multichannel News, satellite broadcaster DirecTV told the regulatory agency that the deal would "would lead to higher prices for content, pose no public benefit and allow the distribution and programming giant to migrate programming to the Internet."  Meanwhile, Comcast found itself in a fight with Allbritton Communications, the parent company of the influential website Politico, which also wants to have a voice at the FCC about the deal. More on that inside-the-Beltway spat from the Los Angeles Times. For more reaction to the deal, see Variety's roundup.

Man your battle stations. As the deadline for a new deal between Walt Disney Co. and Time Warner Cable nears, ESPN executives George Bodenheimer and Sean Bratches were told to trim their vacations and prepare for some late-night negotiations, according to the New York Post. Disney, parent of ABC, ESPN, Disney Channel and ABC Family, and Time Warner Cable have until Sept. 2 to agree on a new distribution deal. After that, the signals of Disney networks could be dropped from Time Warner Cable systems around the country, including New York and Los Angeles. 

How about Jason Schwartzman as Larry Page? While Hollywood continues to struggle to figure out what its relationship should be with search engine giant Google, Deadline Hollywood reports that Groundswell Productions has acquired the rights to Ken Auletta's book "Googled: The End of the World as We Know It." The book follows Google from its creation by founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page to its rise to the top of the digital world. 

Tell us how you really feel. Steve Levitan, a co-creator of ABC's sitcom "Modern Family" took to Twitter this week to air gripes about Hulu, the video website co-owned by ABC parent Walt Disney Co. along with NBC Universal and News Corp. Using the news that Hulu was considering an initial public offering to raise money, Levitan griped that creators are being shut out of any potential revenue from Hulu while at the same time they risk seeing their television audiences decline as shows are made available on other platforms. Levitan, whose concerns are shared by many writers and producers, tweeted the question on the minds of many people when he wrote: "What is Hulu without content? An empty jukebox.” More on Levitan's hate-hate relationship with Hulu from Forbes. 

Reality bites. Endemol, the giant reality-show factory whose production credits include "Big Brother" and "Deal or No Deal" may be facing a harsh reality of its own. According to the Daily Beast's Peter Lauria, Endemol, whose owners include Goldman Sachs, has a $3-billion debt load and is trying to restructure its finances. The company has been on a little buying spree as of late, which Lauria says has put a dent in its liquidity. It also hasn't had any new big hits in a while.

I'm sorry Denis Leary, really! The Wall Street Journal on Friday looks the age-old practice by television writers and producers to sometimes take not-so-subtle revenge on folks who have annoyed them or bad-mouthed their show. Most recently, USA's "Psych" named a murderer after "Entertainment Weekly" critic Ken Tucker. The old NBC show "Just Shoot Me" once had a stalker character named Preston Beckman, which just happened to be the name of the man in charge of scheduling at the network at the time. Heck, yours truly has a judge named after him on "Law & Order." In my case, I will note that it was not a payback for some sin, although I do worry a little that if I ever really irritate that franchise's creator, Dick Wolf, then Judge Joe Flint is going to be arrested on some pretty tawdry charges. I've heard that "Rescue Me" co-creator Denis Leary has taken issue with some of my critiques (I do love the show, Denis, really) so if I end up being roasted in a fire in Harlem, now you know why.

Inside the Los Angeles Times: Kenneth Turan on "The Tillman Story."

-- Joe Flint

You really shouldn't need a reason to follow me on Twitter: Twitter.com/JBFlint

WeTV's 'Sunset Daze' is a hit with its core audience but fails to attract youth

WeTV's new reality show "Sunset Daze" (think "Golden Girls" meets "Jersey Shore") was a hit with older viewers, but efforts to sex up the greatest generation for folks under 50 didn't pay off.

About 311,000 people tuned in to the 10 p.m. premiere Wednesday of the show, which got a ton of publicity including a front-page story in the New York Times, as well as some solid reviews. While 311,000 viewers doesn't sound like much, for WeTV it is a big number.

That was the good news. The not-so-good news was that the audience dropped in the second half, losing more than 40,000 viewers, and that is never a good sign. Also, the show performed poorly with the 18-49 demographic. Women made up about 80% of the audience.

The median age of the show was a little over 60, which is about 15 years older than the channel's average.

-- Joe Flint

Marlee Matlin launches reality series on YouTube

Marlee Matlin had an idea for a reality show that she hoped would bring some insight into the lives and struggles of deaf people and how they cope. But while reality TV has brought us wife swappers, party girls, aging rock stars and dieting divas, apparently no one was ready for something that real.

So instead, the hearing-impaired actress who won an Academy Award as lead actress for her role in "Children of a Lesser God," took her show "My Deaf Family" to Google's YouTube. You can watch it here.

"Deaf and hard of hearing people make up one of the largest minority groups," she said in an interview through her interpreter, Jack Jason, "and yet there has never been a show, a reality documentary series that features what life is like for them." Matlin financed the show, which tells the story of a family in Fremont, Calif. All the family members are deaf, except for the oldest son, Jared, and the youngest, Elijah. It is narrated by Jared.

Matlin shopped her pilot to network executives, who purported to "love it." But none would take the plunge.
"They didn't quite know if they could pull it off, or even how," Matlin said.

Refusing to give up, Matlin turned to the Internet, more specifically to YouTube, the world's default broadcaster of Web video. 

"I didn't want to wait for the networks to warm up to the idea of whether the show would be a hit or not with audiences," she said. "So I decided to put it out there on my own terns. YouTube is akin to having my own [TV] network."

There's another reason Matlin chose YouTube. The Google subsidiary in November introduced an automatic captioning system for its videos. The system is a mash-up of Google's speech-to-text voice recognition technology used in Google Voice and captioning software that syncs the text with the video.

Right now, the experimental program can only recognize spoken English, but once transcribed, it can translate the text to 50 different languages.

"Google’s mission is to make all the world’s information universally accessible," explained Ken Harrenstien, the software engineer who led the captioning effort. "We’re about accessibility to everyone for everything."

Because YouTube is inundated with a constant stream of videos (about 24 hours of videos are uploaded to the site every minute), it does not automatically caption every piece that comes along. Instead, viewers have to request that a particular video be captioned. Once the request is made, it takes about 24 hours to deliver the captions.

Harrenstein cautions that the captions aren't going to be perfect. Ambient noise can affect the translation. But the software is also prone to error. YouTube is hoping that the owners of the videos will upload corrected captions through a quick process it has designed.

That's good enough for Matlin, who said, "The process isn't 100% there yet. But they've done it. And that's a good thing."

For an edited transcript of our interview with Matlin on her project, click on the continue reading link below.