Business As Reality Programming

As I've mentioned before in VentureBlog, I'm a big fan of the marketing genius of Mark Burnett (of "Survivor" fame). Well according to the New York Times Mark Burnett's business hero is Donald Trump. While he was selling t-shirts on Venice Beach and nannying in Beverly Hills (before he became the crazy millionaire, stranding folks on deserted islands), he was reading Trump's "The Art of The Deal" and gaining inspiration. Now Burnett and Trump have teamed up to create a reality show about business. Each week contestants will do pseudo business tasks that Trump walks them through. He claims he's hosting the show for educational purposes. According to Trump:

I think there's a whole beautiful picture to be painted about business, American business, how beautiful it is but also how vicious and tough it is. The beauty is the success, the end result. You meet some wonderful people, but you also meet some treacherous, disgusting people that are worse than any snake in the jungle.

It's not too profound, but that's entertainment isn't it.

Comments

[Rob]

I just wonder how interesting the average American will find the show. It could be good for b-schools if people like it.

[x]

The money here (for NBC) is in showcasing companies in exchange for equity. Imagine Friendster as the host company for The Apprentice 2.

Or my company, which is going to disrupt Friendster (and clones) by shifting the basis of competition away from proprietary encodings of SocNet data (as RDF/OWL are good-enough modular open standards), and to SocNet search/navigation features ;-)