By David Bauder, Television Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --The Hearst Corp. said Monday it is buying half of prolific reality television producer Mark Burnett’s company and folding it into a joint venture.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Burnett is the executive behind “Survivor,” “The Apprentice” and “Shark Tank” and has produced more than 1,100 hours of television programming. Hearst has ownership stakes in cable networks heavy in nonfiction content, like A&E, History, Lifetime and ESPN.
Nonfiction programming has quickly become a staple at these networks and others, like Bravo and the Discovery family of networks, said Scott Sassa, president of Hearst Entertainment & Syndication. Burnett has a proven ability to make popular shows that are advertiser-friendly, he said.
“We couldn’t be more thrilled to be in partnership with Mark,” Sassa said. “There was nobody else that we looked at.”
Burnett said it was key that Hearst will allow him to sell programming to non-Hearst companies. The deal doesn’t affect long-running shows like “Survivor,” either.
The deal will allow him to expand into other areas and build complementary businesses around his programming, he said.
“I’m ready for the second act of my career,” he said.
The arrangement falls in line with a trend toward consolidation of media companies and content producers, said Paul Kagan, CEO of analysts PK World Media.
“If you are a distributor of programming, it would be great to own content, and vice versa,” he said.
Sassa said he believed that the development of nonfiction programming is a trend still on an upswing.
“‘Survivor’ was like ‘I Love Lucy’ for nonfiction,” Sassa said. “We haven’t seen ‘The Brady Bunch’ yet. We haven’t seen ‘Seinfeld.’ We haven’t seen ‘Modern Family.'”
A decade ago, Sassa was a top executive at NBC at a time it was criticized for being suspicious of reality television, while CBS was profiting from “Survivor” and ABC from “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.”
“Megalopolis” Is One From The Heart–Of A Reflective Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola believes he can stop time.
It's not just a quality of the protagonist of Coppola's new film "Megalopolis," a visionary architect named Cesar Catilina ( Adam Driver ) who, by barking "Time, stop!" can temporarily freeze the world for a moment before restoring it with a snap of his fingers. And Coppola isn't referring to his ability to manipulate time in the editing suite. He means it literally.
"We've all had moments in our lives where we approach something you can call bliss," Coppola says. "There are times when you have to leave, have work, whatever it is. And you just say, 'Well, I don't care. I'm going to just stop time.' I remember once actually thinking I would do that."
Time is much on Coppola's mind. He's 85 now. Eleanor, his wife of 61 years, died in April. "Megalopolis," which is dedicated to her, is his first movie in 13 years. He's been pondering it for more than four decades. The film begins, fittingly, with the image of a clock.
"It's funny, you live your life going from being a young person to being an older person. You're looking in that direction," Coppola said in a recent interview at a Toronto hotel before the North American premiere of "Megalopolis." "But to understand it, you have to look in the other direction. You have to look at it from the point of view of the older looking at the younger, which you're receding from."
"I'm sort of thinking of my life in reverse," Coppola says.
You have by now probably heard a few things about "Megalopolis." Maybe you know that Coppola financed the $120 million budget himself, using his lucrative wine empire to realize a long-held vision of Roman epic set in a modern New York. You might be familiar with the film's clamorous reception from critics... Read More