Posted on: Wednesday, July 14, 2004

ENTERTAINMENT
Reality programs rip each other off

By John Cook
Chicago Tribune

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it has NBC executives hopping mad at Fox. Addressing the summer gathering of the Television Critics Association, NBC Universal Television Group president Jeff Zucker decried a proliferation of copycat programming that may turn the fall season into a battle of boxers, billionaires and wife-swappers, and he singled out Fox as the main offender.

"Quite frankly, they used to be innovators," Zucker said. "And now they're imitators. It's just bad for business, and it's bad for everybody, and I don't think all's fair in love and television."

Zucker was referring to Fox's "The Next Great Champ," a reality show scheduled for this fall featuring former boxer Oscar De La Hoya and a cast of hungry, young boxers vying for a "large cash prize, a possible title fight and a boxing contract with (De La Hoya's) Golden Boy Promotions," according to the show's Web site. It bears a suspicious resemblance, NBC said, to "The Contender," a Mark Burnett-produced reality show launching on NBC in November that features Sylvester Stallone and Sugar Ray Leonard.

NBC also complained that its Donald-Trump-fueled reality hit "The Apprentice" has spawned knockoffs — Fox's "The Billionaire," starring Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson, and ABC's "The Benefactor," starring Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.

Add to that Fox's "Trading Spouses," a reality series expected this summer that sounds a lot like ABC's "Wife Swap," which is scheduled for the fall — and which is itself an authorized knockoff of a British show — and, Zucker said, a pattern emerges.

"I think that what's going on right now is there seems to be a tendency to see someone else's idea, hear it, and try to take it before the other guy does," said Zucker. "And I think that raises some real ethical issues."

"I've never experienced anything like this," said DreamWorks SKG partner Jeffrey Katzenberg, who, along with Burnett and Stallone, is producing "The Contender." "The sanctity of an idea is an ideal that I was taught from the moment I arrived in this business. This is disheartening and disappointing."

Reached over the weekend, a spokesman for Fox, which is scheduled to present its fall and summer lineup to the critics later this week, said the network has no comment. Fox is certainly not the first network in the annals of television history to develop shows that seem to borrow from competitors — NBC's "For Love or Money," to name just one show, was noted by some critics for its similarity to Fox's "Joe Millionaire."

"The Apprentice," slated for a second season on Thursday nights this fall, will certainly borrow from its own highly successful past when it returns to the screen. Burnett confirmed that last year's winner — Bill Rancic — will return to the show's boardroom, filling in for two episodes for Donald Trump's gruff executive vice president and senior counsel, George H. Ross. Burnett also suggested that Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth, last season's villain, may make an appearance, but he declined to say for certain.

NBC is relying heavily on the prospects of "The Apprentice" and its other reality series — including "The Contender," "Fear Factor," and "Last Comic Standing," which the network said will come back in the fall for another run — to make up for the loss of two long-standing sitcoms, "Friends" and "Frasier," as well as waning audience interest in "The West Wing."