Mark Burnett

October 2007

By Anna Carugati

Mark Burnett left his native England and his assignment in the British military as a paratrooper years ago and came to the U.S. in search of the American Dream. At first he was a nanny, then he sold T-shirts on the beach in California. He began his career in unscripted television with the series Eco-Challenge and went on to become one of the driving forces behind reality television. He brought Survivor, now in its 15th edition, to CBS, and The Apprentice will mark its seventh season on NBC with this fall’s celebrity version. Last season he teamed up with Steven Spielberg to direct On the Lot, a reality competition that aired on FOX, which featured young filmmakers competing for a DreamWorks studio development deal. His most recent hit is Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?, the show that captivated family audiences and regularly stumped adults on questions that are right out of 10-year-olds’ school books. Burnett has not limited himself to network television. He has embraced online content and produced the reality treasure hunt Gold Rush as well as games for AOL.

TV FORMATS: Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? is such an engaging show. Could you give us a little bit of background about how that came about, and did you expect it to be so phenomenally successful?

BURNETT: Just as Survivor and The Apprentice are very simple to understand—you’re being marooned like Robinson Crusoe in one, and the other one is just a televised job interview process—5th Grader is also very simple in that most adults struggle with fifth graders’ homework. It’s amazing really. We all learned how to calculate the area of a triangle. We all learned the planets in the Solar System—basic stuff when we were 10 years old—but since then our brains have become so full of information that we can’t remember schoolwork. So here’s a show that really brings that to the forefront and allows the kids to celebrate being smarter than the adults. It’s really empowering to kids. I think 5th Grader is driven in large part by the kids who watch it with their parents, and love the fact that they know more answers than their parents do.

TV FORMATS: There’s a great need for shows that bring together children and their parents.

BURNETT: My entire Survivor business has been built upon collective viewing, like appointment viewing for families, and certainly 5th Grader is another good example of that, of family�-friendly programming.

TV FORMATS: When you’re putting these shows together, I imagine that the casting and choosing the contestants is the key element. What do you look for when you’re casting a show like 5th Grader?

BURNETT: The key element we’ve learned about casting is that the show works better when the people who are playing the game are quite smart, and obviously so. It would really hurt the underlying values of what we stand for by putting less-than-smart people on the show. It’s more fun when you’re someone who’s got a good job and you’re obviously educated or went to college, and the funniest ones of all are the lawyers and doctors who think they are extremely smart and still cannot answer 11 fifth-grade questions.

TV FORMATS: You’ve produced some content for AOL. What challenges and opportunities does the online world offer a creator?

BURNETT: Online offers massive opportunities. I had a great experience with AOL, and you can expect much more of that stuff coming from me. I don’t think anybody has yet fully figured out what to do in that space. But what I have figured out is that I don’t think linear storytelling makes much sense. Simple games with prizes that engage you on a daily basis make the most sense.

TV FORMATS: Can you tell us a little bit about your experience working with Spielberg on On the Lot?

BURNETT: Yes, it was an absolutely wonderful experience. Everybody in this business—we all look up to Steven Spielberg. He’s made incredible films for decades and I never actually thought I’d ever meet Steven Spielberg. I luckily met him through producing [the reality boxing series] The Contender, for which I am a partner with DreamWorks. One thing led to another and I ended up with the opportunity to produce On the Lot, which was a really great experience. Spielberg was very hands-on in terms of the set design and the point of the show and the integrity of the show. And of course he found some great young filmmakers and gave people a real chance to come out from obscurity and have their work seen.

TV FORMATS: What do you think of the state of reality programming today?

BURNETT: During the regular TV season, more reality shows tend to succeed than scripted shows. If you look back at last season, the only new hit in scripted was Heroes. It was the only one. Yet more than half of the weekly top ten shows during the regular season are reality shows. So reality is helping [the networks] and there are lots of new worthwhile ideas. It’s not just on network television. Reality TV is a very important staple on A&E, which never used to have reality TV; Discovery Channel, which never had reality TV; even The History Channel. So all these channels now have a lot of reality shows and there are a lot of opportunities for producers. But reality is not going to replace scripted. A healthy broadcast network will have great dramas, great comedies, and great realities. It all coexists.

TV FORMATS: Any comment on what happened in the U.K. with the call-in scandals?

BURNETT: I’m not actually physically producing over there. There are so many different rules. And things go wrong sometimes. I heard there was some problem but I’m not really familiar with it. But this calling in and text voting is certainly going to become much more prevalent in America. The U.S. is probably one of the least text-friendly countries. It’s very prevalent in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and South America, so I think you can fully expect a lot of text-based additions to TV.

TV FORMATS: Do you think the audience now expects a certain level of participation and interactivity?

BURNETT: I don’t know that the whole audience expects that. I think it’s an opportunity for revenue that shouldn’t be overlooked because some people do want to play a bigger part in programming. It’s quite expensive to set up, but there’s no reason not to provide that value for people who want it.

TV FORMATS: On the other hand a show like 5th Grader has no call-in or text messaging and yet offers a lot of audience participation.

BURNETT: Right. Any really good game show needs to have that play-along element.

TV FORMATS: Can you tell us about any new projects you’re working on?

BURNETT: I’m working on some other game-show products. I’ve got a really good development slate. Early next year there’ll be a bunch of new stuff from us and I think before 2007 is out, we could have two new shows on.

TV FORMATS: What still excites you about what you’re doing?

BURNETT: It’s nice to have an idea and then make it come true.

TV FORMATS: When you first moved to America and were selling T-shirts on the beach, did you ever think that you would get to where you are today?

BURNETT: No! Obviously I hoped and had a crazy outlandish dream but no, I never thought I’d meet Steven Spielberg, I never thought that I’d be fortunate enough to be considered for a job in television. It all shows you what is possible in America.