{"id":6477,"date":"2018-10-03T17:11:22","date_gmt":"2018-10-03T21:11:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/abcs-robert-mills\/"},"modified":"2018-10-09T15:59:35","modified_gmt":"2018-10-09T19:59:35","slug":"abcs-robert-mills-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvformats\/abcs-robert-mills-2\/","title":{"rendered":"ABC\u2019s Robert Mills"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Some of the biggest, best-known entertainment formats in the world have long had a place on ABC in the U.S. The Disney-owned network launched The Bachelor<\/em>, now a global staple and significant reality franchise with multiple spin-offs, in 2002. It was among the first networks to adapt the BBC\u2019s Strictly Come Dancing<\/em>, launching Dancing with the Stars<\/em> in 2005. Shark Tank<\/em>, based on a Japanese format, is in its tenth season this fall. And since the beginning of this year, ABC has been home to American Idol<\/em>, rebooted on the network after a long stint on FOX. Robert Mills, ABC\u2019s senior VP of alternative series, specials and late-night programming, speaks to TV Formats<\/em> about franchise management, global trends and keeping an eye on what\u2019s new and innovative in the genre.<\/p>\n

TV FORMATS:<\/strong> Why did you feel American Idol<\/em> was a good fit for ABC?
\nMILLS:<\/strong> Not only is it a good fit for ABC, but it\u2019s also a good fit for Disney. At the heart of everything that Disney and, by extension, ABC do are great storytelling, people you care about fulfilling their dreams and great music. American Idol<\/em> felt like it fit us like a glove. And if you look at our brand of alternative programming with Shark Tank<\/em> and Dancing with the Stars<\/em> and even The Bachelor<\/em>\u2014although that\u2019s less four-quadrant\u2014these are stories about great journeys. It\u2019s kind of a roller coaster, but at the end, the heroes have overcome adversity and there\u2019s a lot of celebration. When we first started talking to Fremantle, it was fascinating how excited they were at the prospect. They really felt Idol<\/em>, in its bones, felt like an ABC show.<\/p>\n

TV FORMATS:<\/strong> I know it\u2019s a large-scale production to stage. What were some of the significant lessons from ABC\u2019s first season that you can bring to next year\u2019s edition?
\nMILLS:<\/strong> The advantage we had was we had partners in Fremantle who knew this show inside and out, especially Cecile [Frot-Coutaz, former CEO], who was really close to it and always offered advice and counsel. They knew what worked, and that was helpful. We all went in with this mindset: it\u2019s really about the contestants. When you care about these contestants, you care about the show. And when you don\u2019t, it\u2019s hard to get people to go on this journey. We\u2019re talking about 38 hours of television [per season]. The biggest thing we want to do now for season two is look at how to make those stories even more emotionally resonant. What\u2019s great about it is we have a truly magical judging panel. I\u2019ve done enough of these shows to know that sometimes it just doesn\u2019t work. It\u2019s like making a cocktail, you have to get all the ingredients right. And these three [Katy Perry, Lionel Richie, Luke Bryan] absolutely believe in this show. They\u2019ve all been offered every other music show under the sun, and they truly believe in Idol<\/em> because they know it\u2019s about the process and it\u2019s not them in competition with each other but instead working together. Now that they are comfortable in their roles, they\u2019re going to be taking it to the next level. I said to Lionel that if season one is Lionel Richie<\/em>, which was a big hit album, season two is going to be Can\u2019t Slow Down<\/em>, which was a huge hit album. That\u2019s what this feels like. We all know what we\u2019re doing, we know it works, and we\u2019re going to make it even bigger and better.<\/p>\n

TV FORMATS:<\/strong> The Bachelor<\/em> has become such a pop-culture phenomenon. Why do you think it\u2019s been able to build in popularity season after season?
\nMILLS:<\/strong> We thought these things have life cycles the way comedies and dramas do. But we\u2019ve seen from the really good, rock-solid reality formats, whether it\u2019s Survivor<\/em>, The Bachelor<\/em>, Idol<\/em> or Dancing with the Stars<\/em>, that they can last forever if you take care of them. You have the familiarity of the format and then you\u2019re basically rebooting it every season with a new cast. So if you do it right, you can have these things last for as long as you want them to. When The Bachelor<\/em> started, it was this novel idea of a person who nobody would have a chance to date in real life, somebody who was very wealthy and unattainable, dating these women. That worked because it was so different. And then it wore off; we were airing it twice a year, so it felt like it was always on. Two things helped [turn the ratings around]. One was we started airing it once a year, so it felt more special, and the other thing was using people from prior seasons. So it was like a soap opera, where you see a character who maybe was back burner go front burner. It was somebody you already liked and somebody who the people on the show, whether the women on The Bachelor<\/em> or the men on The Bachelorette<\/em>, knew and were interested in getting to know better. They already have an investment in this person. And you\u2019re now able to have somebody be the Bachelor who is just a regular person; it doesn\u2019t have to be somebody who is the heir to a vast fortune or a Harvard-educated businessman. Also, the rise of social media has made the audience the silent producer. We\u2019re all in it together. When somebody says on Twitter, \u201cI want X to be the next Bachelor,\u201d they feel like their voice is being heard. That\u2019s unique to any broadcast TV show.<\/p>\n

TV FORMATS:<\/strong> I\u2019m curious about the management of that particular franchise. Once you started extending with The Bachelorette<\/em> and Winter Games<\/em> and other shows, were you ever concerned about taking away from the popularity of the original?
\nMILLS:<\/strong> No, because we\u2019ve taken such care with it. It\u2019s a 24-hours-a-day, 365-days-a-year job. We talk with Mike Fleiss [creator of The Bachelor<\/em>] several times a day about every single one of these franchises. There\u2019s so much care taken in making them different, that\u2019s why it works. You can apply The Bachelor<\/em> to almost anything and make it work. Bachelor Winter Games<\/em> was a title, and then we somehow figured out how to retrofit it into something that feels like The Bachelor<\/em> franchise, and many say it was one of the best things we\u2019d ever done. I think as long as we\u2019re careful with it, there\u2019s no end to how long it will go and what we can do with it.<\/p>\n

TV FORMATS:<\/strong> We have to talk about Shark Tank<\/em>. It\u2019s one of the very few shows that my sister watches with her kids every week.
\nMILLS:<\/strong> I\u2019m on a call every day telling somebody it\u2019s our most co-viewed show, along with America\u2019s Funniest Home Videos<\/em>. And we get more requests from people asking for their kids to go for on-set visits. It is such a point of pride that this is something that kids are watching, enjoying and learning from. We\u2019re somehow getting them to eat their vegetables without them knowing it. They know all these business terms now! It\u2019s great, and it makes you hopeful\u2014we\u2019ve got these kids who are growing up to be budding entrepreneurs.<\/p>\n

TV FORMATS:<\/strong> You\u2019ve got some new guest Sharks coming up this season. How do you determine how much you can experiment with the lineup of investors?
\nMILLS:<\/strong> We love our core Sharks. Hopefully, they\u2019re not going anywhere and those seats are theirs as long as they want them. But Shark Tank<\/em> is a little bit like Saturday Night Live<\/em>, where the core of the show is fantastic, and it\u2019s about making sure that if for some reason somebody wants to leave, you can still do it. So we\u2019re always putting in new people and it makes the show fresh as well. And it\u2019s interesting to see them interact with different people. As long as you have a Shark that is complementary and isn\u2019t filling the same bucket [as another one], then it\u2019s made for great TV. This is our tenth season and it\u2019s some of the best episodes we\u2019ve ever done. One of the Sharks [in the new season] was an entrepreneur who pitched [a product] that ended up becoming Ring [a security system]. He\u2019s now a Shark himself. He sat in and was fantastic. To me, that is the essence of Shark Tank<\/em>. That\u2019s the dream. We never would have thought when we started this show ten years ago that this would happen.<\/p>\n

TV FORMATS:<\/strong> Your other big returning juggernaut is Dancing with the Stars<\/em>. How have you kept that format fresh, and what\u2019s been the approach to casting each season?
\nMILLS:<\/strong> It such a hard show to cast. There are only so many celebrities\u2014although we now live in a world where we make celebrities every day. But it is difficult. We have enough collective muscle mass over 27 seasons that we know it\u2019s about the mix. I talked about it with Idol<\/em>\u2019s judges and making that cocktail. There are so many great stories\u2014redemption stories, discovery stories, all these things you need. The important thing is making sure you\u2019ve got all those buckets filled for a successful season of Dancing<\/em>. If you watched an episode from the first season, it wouldn\u2019t look anything like this season. The Bachelor<\/em> is like that too. And Shark Tank<\/em> as well. You\u2019ve always got to continue to evolve these shows. They can\u2019t live in vacuums. Dancing <\/em>is another one too that we\u2019ve found little ways to keep making it feel more current and different, but still holding on to those core philosophies that you had from the beginning of the show.<\/p>\n

TV FORMATS:<\/strong> ABC has renewed its Sunday night lineup of classic game shows for summer 2019. How did that deal with Fremantle come about?
\nMILLS:<\/strong> It was a happy accident! Steve Harvey had been doing Family Feud<\/em> in syndication. And I watched it and these episodes were electric, you saw [clips] going viral. I just knew there was something there. When I started heading up this group, literally the first call I made was to Steve\u2019s agent, and said, I want to figure out how we do this in prime time. He was immediately receptive. It took a little bit of doing for Fremantle. They didn\u2019t want to water down how successful it had been in syndication. I totally respected that. I can\u2019t say enough about what great partners Fremantle have been. They listened to me and took a chance on it. We did one season of Celebrity Family Feud<\/em> and it worked out better than we could have dreamed. And then, ironically, Michael Strahan expressed interest in doing a new version of Pyramid<\/em> (which is from Sony, not Fremantle). And we thought, this is the perfect pairing for Family Feud<\/em> and Michael is the perfect host for it. And then a light bulb went off and we said, What if we did a three-hour [game-show] block? That\u2019s when Match Game<\/em>, the quintessential 10 p.m. show, came about. And Fremantle really worked with us and we all agreed we weren\u2019t going to do it unless we found the right host. That old saying, Luck is when preparation meets inspiration? The fact that we got Alec Baldwin to say yes was such a coup. He\u2019s been great. That\u2019s how the ball got rolling on this. I\u2019ve been so lucky. I\u2019m as proud of these shows as anything I\u2019ve done here. They make people happy. A lot of us grew up watching these shows. The fact that people say we\u2019ve done right by them is the biggest compliment I could possibly get.<\/p>\n

TV FORMATS:<\/strong> How much do you track what\u2019s happening in the non-scripted space internationally? Are you looking at new imported format concepts?
\nMILLS:<\/strong> Absolutely. That\u2019s the lifeblood of this business. That\u2019s how these all started. The one format that is domestic that has been a juggernaut is The Bachelor<\/em>; everything else comes from international. I\u2019ve been around this business\u2014I was at CAA in 2000 and then came here\u2014and the world has gotten so much smaller because we can all communicate with each other. It\u2019s so much easier to find these things now. It\u2019s fascinating to see what\u2019s working and what isn\u2019t. The biggest thing is finding things that are new. You have formats that are not going anywhere. What is the newest thing? What is the evolution of these shows? You have to look to see what\u2019s working abroad.<\/p>\n

TV FORMATS:<\/strong> How do you see the health of the unscripted landscape at present? And what innovations are you excited about?
\nMILLS:<\/strong> I think the state of reality TV is as strong as it\u2019s ever been. Certainly broadcast is the one place where it\u2019s thriving. For scripted it\u2019s difficult because you\u2019re competing with streamers and cable. It truly is the golden age of TV. When shows like Survivor<\/em> and Idol<\/em> and Bachelor<\/em> started with massive, Super Bowl-type numbers, it led everyone to think that this was going to happen forever. Nothing lasts that long. And it\u2019s the attrition rate of TV in general. The pie has gotten so big. But these are still among the biggest hits on TV. If I went on the street and asked ten people about The Bachelor<\/em>, seven of them would be able to have a conversation with me about it. There are some exciting things [to come]\u2014I don\u2019t know what they are exactly\u2014in live TV. One of the things that we did with Idol <\/em>that I loved was a simulcast nationwide on our live shows. Everyone can vote at the same time, and to me, that was exciting, and that was a boundary that had never been [crossed]. No one thought it could be in broadcast TV. You\u2019ve seen what the HQ app has done as a live game that everyone plays. Is there an interactive alternative show that can be done? People have been trying to crack it for years. I don\u2019t know if they can, but that\u2019s exciting to think about, that there\u2019s undiscovered territory there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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