John de Mol

October 2007

It doesn’t happen often that a person reaches his 50s and feels the excitement of a new beginning. But that is exactly the position John de Mol is in. After building an extremely successful career as a co-founder of Endemol and a creator and producer of some of most successful TV shows ever, among them Big Brother and Fear Factor, de Mol sold his stake in Endemol, founded Talpa Media Holding and, in 2005, set up the TV station Tien in Holland. This year his Cryte Fund joined a consortium consisting of Italy’s Mediaset and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, to acquire control of Endemol. He sold Tien to the RTL Group and in exchange got a 26.3-percent stake in RTL Nederland. All of this so he can dedicate himself to what has always been his real passion, creating shows.

WS: Big Brother was one of the shows that started the whole reality-TV genre. When you first created it, did you ever think it would last on the air this long, and that it would be so successful in so many countries?

DE MOL: It sounds so rude to say yes, but the answer is yes to both questions! We worked on Big Brother for almost one-and-a-half years for technical and research reasons, and [at first selling the show] was a big problem. I said to the people on the team working with me to develop it into what it is now, “I really, really believe that we have something special here. And I believe that in ten years’ time, people in our business will talk about the period before Big Brother and the period after Big Brother.” So yes, I did have a feeling that we were working on something very special, and during the first years when Big Brother was launched, I personally was quite involved in most of the productions in different countries.

I also worked on the [continuations] Big Brother 2, 3, 4, 5, etcetera, and what I noticed is that when we started a new season, and we wanted to come with new exciting elements that would attract viewers again, the basic elements of the Big Brother format allowed so much incredible room for new ideas and new adjustments. That is the reason why in some countries it has gone on to season nine, and ten and even more.

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

DE MOL: I think the state of reality programming today is probably in the same state the game-show genre was in before Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? Reality will never disappear off our screens because it is so broad and it offers so many opportunities that I’m sure we haven’t discovered even half of them. What reality needs is a new impulse. We’ve seen too many copycats. We’ve seen too many reality shows that look a lot like the ones we already knew. The reality genre really needs a new [boost].

I’m sure that if that comes, then the American entertainment [maxim] “Reality is dead. Long live reality,” will apply immediately. Remember, after the big success of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? which was on air [in prime-time] for two or three years very successfully in the U.S., a lot of other quiz shows that followed it failed. And when Millionaire stopped everybody said, let’s forget about game shows for the next ten years, we don’t want to show the audience another game show. And then Deal or No Deal came along.

WS: You have a show that has been on the air in Holland for a full year, The Golden Cage. What gave that show its longevity?

DE MOL: We celebrated the first anniversary of The Golden Cage in September. Maybe this, at the end of the day, could be one of those impulses I was referring to. With The Golden Cage we have tried to create a new genre within reality by combining soap operas and reality. So what we’re doing—and we are quite open and honest with the viewers and the press—is to steer the contestants behind the scenes. The only thing we don’t do is write dialogue, but we give assignments to the people in the project.

For example, as a producer I could say to one of the contestants, “You know, John, I think that Anna is not feeling very well today. Tonight, why don’t you offer her a glass of wine and sit down with her and try to find out what’s bothering her.” Anna doesn’t know that it’s set up. John goes to her and she thinks, “Wow, he’s interested and wants to know what’s bothering me.” And what follows is a very, very interesting discussion because John is sent by the producers to ask Anna what’s bothering her and she is giving a real answer. That triggers real reality.

The way we produce The Golden Cage in terms of the cameras and the lights and the music makes it feel like a soap opera. The special thing is that it’s an open-ended reality series so you never know how long it’s going to last. At the same time, that presents a bit of a problem when selling the format because broadcasters are a little bit hesitant to make commitments to open-ended series—which is a big commitment.

WS: In the past you have lamented that broadcasters were not always willing to try something new. Is it easier now to get a broadcaster to take a risk?

DE MOL: No. I don’t think it has become easier. It is still the same problem. Broadcasters still tend to take a copy of something that is successful instead of a risk with something that is really new. So unfortunately the market—at least as far as my experience goes—has not become more open to new and what I call “against the flow” shows.

When I create formats, my main theory has always been, don’t create shows that are similar to what’s on the air today, try to create something that will be for tomorrow. So don’t come up with the 27th rip-off of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? or Big Brother. Try to come up with something that has new elements, but at the same time this leads to difficulties during the sales process with broadcasters because it’s not a proven success.

WS: Has The Golden Cage been sold in other territories?

DE MOL: On paper yes. It has not been on air everywhere. ABC has an option on it for the U.S., the same with Denmark and Italy, but that is far from sufficient for me. I have the advantage that in Holland The Golden Cage moved from my TV station Tien to RTL 5 [as a result of the sale to the RTL Group] and immediately you see the value and the difference that an established TV station like RTL 5 makes compared to a new TV station like Tien, because the audience share for The Golden Cage has gone up.

WS: Since you are the creator of The Golden Cage, would you be involved in any versions produced in other countries?

DE MOL: Yes, that’s what we are now trying to do. I bought back part of Endemol, so I am involved in Endemol again. I sold my TV station in Holland to RTL, the market leader, and I’m now a [26.3 percent] shareholder of RTL Nederland, which has four TV channels in the market. And those channels are much more powerful than the one I had, so in that respect I’m in an ideal position as a content developer. In Holland I have access to time slots on strong TV channels. And I have Endemol, so when I create a success in Holland, Endemol can do the international distribution and production and [localization]. So I am going to sit down with some Endemol managers in the coming weeks to look at, territory by territory, what we can do to pitch The Golden Cage.

WS: What qualities do you look for in your creative teams?

DE MOL: I try to pick the people myself. So my creative team cannot start working here unless I’ve seen them and I have checked myself whether they have the dedication to create a show that people will talk about the next day.

[My biggest satisfaction was] when I started in television at the age of 20, when I did my first show as a producer. Nobody knew who I was and I was sitting in a restaurant the day after the show aired, and at the tables on my left side and my right side people were talking about my TV program. That for me was the biggest kick ever—it has nothing to do with money. I’m in this business, first of all, to create shows that people enjoy watching, and I think this should be the biggest source of pride. And you should have the mentality that you don’t stop at 5:30 or 6:00 in the evening and say, “OK, this is it.” This is a seven-days-a-week, 24-hours-a-day business, and I want people with dedication and people who always say, “OK, this is good but I think we can do it better. So let’s try one more time to see if we can improve this idea even more.” Full dedication—that’s what I want from my people.

WS: Do you think that the recent call-in scandals in the U.K. have given the reality genre a bad name?

DE MOL: No. First I think it’s much too early to draw conclusions. Secondly, I can imagine, because I’ve been in this business for almost 30 years, that the pressure broadcasters are under to perform and to deliver ratings sometimes can lead to situations that, when you look back, you didn’t want to be in. The fight for viewers is huge, and I don’t think what happened in the U.K. is something you can [attribute to] the whole genre and the whole business. There are always exceptions to the rules and there are always things you have to look at—what caused [the call-in situation] and what are the reasons that it happened—and not draw general conclusions.

WS: What have you learned from the experience of running your own station?

DE MOL: If I’m honest with you I have to say that the two years’ experience of owning a TV station did teach me a lot of new elements about how to run a TV station that I didn’t know when I was a producer, although in those days I thought I knew everything about how to run a station! I now know that I didn’t, and it is certainly not as easy as I thought it was. So that’s why I’m so incredibly happy with the situation I’m in right now. After two years, Tien still had a market share of 6-6.5 percent, which is much too weak to launch big prime-time product. But at the end of the day I had to go through this to be able to end up where I am now in my deal with RTL. I had two [extremely valuable] years and I met people whom I never would have met. So I don’t regret it for one second. It was a great experience, but to be quite honest, I now am in the perfect position in that I can spend all my energy and time focusing on content and not have the daily responsibility of running a TV station.

WS: What are your goals for Talpa Media?

DE MOL: I’ve always said, even during my Endemol period, that I am in this business to create interesting content. Content about which, [hopefully] a lot of people will say, “No I can’t come to your house tonight. I’m staying home because I want to watch this show.” If that happens, I have succeeded. Right now, I have my company Talpa Media. I am a shareholder in Endemol. I own part of RTL Nederland, which gives me extra access to it. This is almost the ideal situation, because I am building my creative unit. I have Talpa Productions as an in-house unit to produce my own pilots so I know they will get the attention they deserve. I have RTL Nederland as a platform to launch new shows. And if they’re successful, I have Endemol to roll them out all over the world. How happy can you be?

WS: Does it still happen that you’ll be in a restaurant or in a café and you’ll overhear people talking about one of your shows? Does that still give you a thrill?

DE MOL: Yes, but the problem is that, at least in Holland, that rarely happens because people know who I am. The example I mentioned to you of 30 years ago was a good experience because I could listen to people’s conversations without them knowing who I was. Unfortunately that’s not possible here in Holland anymore. But in other countries it is still possible, so I may try it in France and in the United States!