Recap from Lunch Roundtable Workshop

November 20, 2006
Guest speaker – Conrad Riggs (Mark Burnett Productions)

Conrad Riggs is producer of Mark Burnett Productions. Riggs oversees the business development, business affairs, creative development, and is a producer on all Mark Burnett Productions projects. Among these series are Survivor (CBS), The Apprentice (NBC), Rock Star (CBS), The Restaurant (NBC), The Contender (NBC), The Casino (FOX), and Eco-Challenge (USA).

Riggs was an entertainment lawyer before he joined Mark Burnett Productions. His vision there is to monetize television shows as early as possible, by exploiting their ancillary rights. A recent example is “Gold Rush”, an interactive treasure hunt show in partnership with AOL. Other sponsors and partners include Best Buy, Chevrolet, Coca-Cola, T-Mobile, Washing Mutual, CBS and Google. The online game lasted 7 weeks and garnered over 110M pageviews and 11M players. The Alternative Reality Game also offered cash prizes of $3,500 each every 3.5 days.

Riggs opined messages from advertisers do not get to consumers properly because they, the advertisers are not involved in the creative process, because of a long chain of middle people. Hence, Mark Burnett Productions tries to answer that need by talking to the advertisers directly. While advertising messages are difficult to be inserted into scripted programming, product placement in reality television is more acceptable. Mark Burnett Productions also incorporates real-time engagement into these programming, especially the online component. However, a program must be upfront with its audience about such relationships in order gain their acceptance. With such a technique, Mark Burnett Productions’ value proposition to the advertisers is delivering exactly the audience that is conducive to the messages.

“Gold Rush” presented a fantastic learning experience, said Riggs. For example, in season 1, all players were required to be registered. However, in season 2, they plan to break down that wall to enable all players to play anytime while registration is only required to win prizes. Other upcoming projects include online gaming (a joint-venture with Dreamworks) based on Flushed Away and Shrek, and mobile content with different ways of monetization. An example was the partnership with Verizon’s where they supplied 20-40 clips per week to VCast with additional original storyline that was not repurposed from television. Mobile voting was coordinated in conjunction with VCast and MSN.

Mark Burnett Productions also has a new how under development with Steven Spielberg. “On the Lot” (http://www.thelot.com) is described as “American Idol” meets “The Apprentice” but for filmmakers. There will be 2 episodes per week and are filmed live. Participating filmmakers are assigned short films which then are voted on by various methods. The current website will (1) service the television show with promos, etc, (2) make available premium short-form content, and (3) cast the show with online applications. Moreover, this show will enable cross-carrier mobile phone voting. Previous voting was done with Verizon’s closed system but will be opened up to other carriers in this case.

Riggs discussed sponsorship-based programming where Mark Burnett Productions makes its revenue by giving value to advertisers. Riggs opined that such “value” is more art than science and is difficult to standardize. The constant tradeoff is between generic product placements versus being a part of the storyline, with the latter having more measurable value to advertisers. For example, Honda Solstice sold out of a year’s inventory within 2 weeks after its appearance in an Apprentice episode. They are focusing on domestic sponsorship for now, without a set time frame for international.

CBS was Gold Rush’s marketing partner and was in a “no-lose” position. Gold Rush sent traffic to CBS television shows by placing clues in their programming, which then sent traffic back to Gold Rush. In fact, CBS credited Gold Rush to the success of Jericho because of the increased awareness from Gold Rush. [A side note, television is still the most efficient way to increase awareness to brands, even online brands. More people knew about “Lazy Sunday” from SNL than those who knew about lonelygirl15.] With such cross-promotions, Gold Rush was positioned as event programming. Players had to watch live (or near live) in order to play along.

Mark Burnett Productions is a content company, whose online and wireless revenues have been doubling annually. This rose from giving great value to advertisers, especially from their online properties. By aiming to monetize reality shows early in their lifecycle, one does not need to wait until syndication for monetization (which may not be profitable anyway) or DVD sales. Of course, advertising sponsorship during production helps with the startup costs. Other partnerships in progress include a new feature with Tivo where promos for the shows include advertising messages (ie Apprentice and Lexus). This technique brings about new opportunities with other black boxes such as Playstation, Xbox, Sling Box, etc. The future of these partnerships will then be measuring the aggregation of viewing ratings across all platforms.