Exclusive Interview: Mark Burnett

August 27, 2012 World Screen
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PREMIUM: Slated to deliver a Media Mastermind keynote at MIPCOM this October, Mark Burnett speaks to World Screen about his expanding slate of unscripted shows—including the recently launched Stars Earn Stripes on NBC—and his new company, One Three Media, established with Hearst Entertainment.

 

WS: You are very hands on with your shows—how are you managing this large slate?
BURNETT: The last couple of years have been amazing. We have The Celebrity Apprentice, The Voice, Survivor, Shark Tank. We also have Stars Earn Stripes on NBC and The Job on CBS. Four of these shows are renewals and two are new. Constant renewals require maintaining a very high quality. In order to maintain that quality, it’s imperative to have a great team around you, which we do, from a corporate standpoint and with the showrunners we hire for each series. The fundamental answer to your question, however, relates to quality. We have always held high standards, and they’ve been achieved by having a very focused team to maintain quality. Making great shows is what I love doing, so I can’t imagine ever feeling burdened by increasing the volume as long as the shows are great.
 
WS: The Voice has generated a lot of buzz over the last two seasons—what attracted you to adapting that format to the U.S.?
BURNETT: The Voice has become the music competition series for young Americans. I have three teenagers who hang out at our house with a lot of their friends. I often ask these teenagers what they think of current television shows. I talked to them about The Voice format. Initially, they all said, “why would you do another music show?” until I asked them to watch the clip of John de Mol’s The Voice in Holland. Universally, these teenagers got it. Yes, it’s another music show, but it’s entirely fresh and causes a reversal of power, whereby unknown, unproven singers are being pitched to join the teams of music superstars. It’s human nature for the masses to love seeing the little guy have some power. It’s a great hook and to evaluate someone solely on the strength of his or her voice was something I knew the American public would respond to.
 
WS: Survivor remains a ratings stalwart on CBS. To what do you attribute its longevity, and how have you been able to keep it fresh over the years?
BURNETT: Longevity is completely dependent upon high quality, great characters, and compelling story lines. Jeff Probst has been the anchor of this series since day one of season one. Every season we add small twists, but it always remains true to the core values of the format. When you watch Survivor, it’s a familiar experience, but you always get something a little different. That’s the key.
 
WS: What are the qualities you look for when evaluating international ideas for the U.S.?
BURNETT: I look for the same things from an international format that I do for a U.S. format: solid storytelling and something unique. The projects that appeal to me have worldwide appeal. The Apprentice is a three-month televised job interview. Most people have thought about what it would be like to have a big job with a dynamic figure at a huge salary. This series is something everyone can relate to. Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader has great humor. What parent hasn’t been helping their kids with their homework and realized they could not remember the simplest things from their school days? These kinds of hooks make a show relatable to a worldwide audience.
 
WS: Can you tell us about your own development process, and the projects you’re generating in house?
BURNETT: We have a great in-house team who are generating ideas across multiple genres. The most important qualities to me are that shows be thoroughly developed, true to our brand, and most of all, tell a great story. There are three things to remember in developing shows: story, story, story.
 
WS: What led to the partnership with Hearst?
BURNETT: I have always admired Hearst as a company and have had a long business relationship with my friend and colleague, Scott Sassa [the president of Hearst Entertainment & Syndication]. When Scott joined Hearst we began exploring various ways to work together, which initially led to our partnership on The Bible mini-series [for HISTORY] and, ultimately, the larger content partnership we concluded last year as we formed One Three—the production company jointly owned with Hearst and myself.
Hearst, through its TV stations, magazines, newspapers, and other businesses, have a massive reach both here and overseas. Scott and his team are incredibly smart and are steering us on paths that we wouldn’t have taken without this relationship. They’ve been incredibly supportive of our programming in a whole host of ways.
 
WS: What are your priorities for you international business over the next year?
BURNETT: As we move into scripted content more, we will be doing more co-productions with broadcasters around the world. Bringing them early to a project and getting the benefit of their input early in the process will help us create more relevant shows. We’re also stepping up our efforts in connecting with the top creative producers from around the world to bring some of their ideas to the marketplace in a much bigger way than they could do themselves.
 
It’s been a great time to be on the content side of the business. With all the new technologies, viewers are finding new ways to watch shows, which makes it a really exciting time to be a producer. Our primary business is still creating formats that would be successful globally. We are going to start some formats in countries outside the U.S. as well as continuing our normal U.S. operations. It’s clear to us that our brand and our quality really means something globally, and therefore, we don’t want to limit ourselves to always starting our shows just in the U.S.
 
WS: What do you see as the major shifts that have taken place in the format business in the last decade?
BURNETT: Technology has made the global marketplace much smaller. It makes the exchange of ideas so much faster. Smart international broadcasters have started jumping in and acquiring formats and shows much quicker than they used to. We’re also starting to see international broadcasters be more willing to take a chance on a new format idea, not needing to wait until it’s made in the U.S. or U.K. first. That’s very encouraging.
 
WS: How has the move into scripted been for you?
BURNETT: We are making an aggressive move into scripted television. Hatfields & McCoys [a mini-series that delivered record ratings on HISTORY this year] was a watershed event in a trend we already saw coming, which is that, just as broadcast networks realized ten years ago that they all needed unscripted shows, cable networks that only aired unscripted shows are now realizing that they needed scripted shows too. We have hired Anne Thomopoulos, who was previously with HBO, to spearhead our scripted division. This is a clear signal that we are starting to produce the same quality in our scripted division as we have maintained in the past two decades in unscripted.
 
WS: What have been the greatest challenges for you working in scripted as compared with unscripted television?
BURNETT: All successful television show requires great characters and great stories. It doesn’t matter whether it’s unscripted or scripted, you are held to the same standard of capturing the imagination of viewers and having them become loyal fans.