I don’t start at Adweek until Monday, but in the interim I’m back in this week’s issue with my second cover story: an interview with Mark Burnett, TV’s most powerful producer, who is responsible for Survivor, The Voice, Shark Tank, Celebrity Apprentice, A.D. The Bible Continues and many, many more shows. As the British Burnett points out to me, “there’s two things that built America: the Bible and free enterprise. And now I do both. I do A.D. and I do Shark Tank.”

He also knows what viewers want to watch. In the past month alone, his shows have won the night in adults 18-49 (the most important demo for advertisers) on Sunday (A.D.), Monday (The Voice), Tuesday (The Voice), Wednesday (Survivor) and Friday (Shark Tank) — that’s five nights and three different networks.

I’d previously spoken with Burnett for my Parade cover story on Shark Tank, but this time around we talked about all of his shows, his upfront memories (he was on the cover of Adweek’s upfront issue, after all), his surprising OTT plans for his own version of Netflix and the career path not (yet) taken:

“If I wasn’t doing what I’m doing, I would honestly love to run an ad agency. I love the idea of making commercials. I love the idea of winning. Imagine if you’re clever enough to create a campaign and stuff flies off the shelves. That’s why I love The Apprentice. I’d love to be more in the advertising business.”

With more than a dozen shows under his domain, plus movies like next year’s big Ben-Hur reboot, how does Burnett stay focused on a single project when so many others demand his attention?

“It’s not always easy to do, but the correct way to approach everything is like we’re sitting here right now: This is it. So whatever I’m working on is where my focus is. And I can work on three things in a day, but when I’m there, I’m there. The definition of a loser is someone who takes a nap and then feels guilty about it. Do what you’re doing. If you’re going to take a nap, take a nap. If you’re going to work, work.”

And yes, we also talk about that epic beard of his. It was a fantastic, illuminating interview, so I hope you read the rest of it.

How the Reality TV King Created 11 Popular Shows and Counting

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The networks will play a variety of pop hits during their TV upfront presentations next month, but the only song that really should be part of the soundtrack that is The Lego Movie’s “Everything is Awesome.” After all, each of the the network executives who take the stage will be full of optimism that their new crop of shows will finally be the ones that take them to the top.

But as I wrote at Adweek, everything is not awesome, even for the top network in adults 18-49 (which will again be ABC). Before we hear a new batch of (at least partially) empty upfronts promises, I looked back at the five worst predictions from last year’s presentations. Among them: then Fox Entertainment president Kevin Reilly’s declaration that Jump of the Century and Hieroglyph will be airing soon on the network:

Reilly was far from the only one to disappear from Fox shortly after the upfronts. He touted two programs to advertisers that were canceled before they ever made it to air: straight-to-series pickup Hieroglyph (Fox pulled the plug a month later) and Jump of the Century, in which two rival stuntmen would attempt Evel Knievel’s failed jump across Idaho’s Snake River Canyon (it was scrapped last July). “The power of broadcast really shines through when there’s urgency to view,” Reilly said of Jump of the Century. Of course, it also really shines through when the shows are actually broadcast.

There’s a lot more silly predictions where that came from, so sure to read the rest of the story.

5 Predictions From TV Networks Execs Last Year That Were Way Off

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Each month, 18 million U.S. viewers access the Sony-owned, advertising-supported streaming network Crackle. But despite popular shows like Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Crackle still has a it of an identity crisis as it looks to make a name for itself among the likes of Netflix and Amazon.

That’s the challenge for Crackle’s general manager Eric Berger, who is making his loudest statement yet by moving Crackle out of the NewFronts, held primarily for digital enterprises, and into the upfronts, generally reserved for the major TV networks, on April 14.

At Adweek, I spoke with Berger about a number of topics, including his bold upfront movie, why Crackle didn’t stream The Interview last December and why he didn’t pick up the Sony-owned Community when it was looking for a home last summer:

It’s a great show. It didn’t fit in our slate at the time. Everything that we’ve done on the scripted series side to date has not been comedy. They’ve all been action, drama and thrillers. Features are different—with Joe Dirt, obviously, but the other features are action, horror and zombie type of stuff that fares really well for us.

There’s a lot more from Berger, who hopes to finally put the “What’s Crackle?” question to bed once and for all.

Why Crackle Wants You (and the Industry) to See It as a Mainstream TV Network

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One of my favorite things about writing for Adweek is the opportunity to find all these fascinating advertising angles in stories about the TV industry. My most recent Adweek story, about Sarah Gertrude Shapiro, is a great example of this. She’s the co-creator of UnREAL, Lifetime’s upcoming drama that goes behind the scenes at a Bachelor-like reality dating competition program. And it’s all due to the time she spent as a content producer at ad agency Wieden + Kennedy, which gave her a fresh start in 2005 after she literally fled her reality TV job on The Bachelor:

“Part of how I got out of my contract was leaving the state,” said Shapiro, who drove to Oregon where she planned to “drop out and be a kale farmer or embroider tapestries.” But the Portland-based W+K had other plans for her. The agency reached out, asking her to work on Battlegrounds, a docuseries featuring NBA star LeBron James it was making with MTV. “It was like a moth to the flame,” said Shapiro, who joined as a content producer.

While working for Wieden, she developed the idea for Sequin Raze and cornered DeSipio when she arrived at W+K in 2011 after 20 years as a TV executive and producer. Thanks to DeSipio’s outsider perspective, “she was naïve enough to say, ‘Why not? Why can’t we do it?'” said Shapiro. “Sally became my total champion from that time forward.”

In addition to tracing UnREAL’s unusal genesis, I also look at Lifetime’s position as it enters this year’s upfronts, and talk about A+E Studios, the in-house production company that produced UnREAL. The show doesn’t premiere until June 1, but I was very happy to contribute this story to Adweek’s Women’s Issue.

A Filmmaker Gets an Opportunity of a Lifetime

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I was in the middle of vacation yesterday when I heard the shocking news about Robin Williams, who died of an apparent suicide. So I paused my family fun to I write this Quartz appreciation of Williams, who had seemed to crack the code for career longevity in Hollywood.

But Williams wasn’t content to just coast on comedy. He honed his dramatic skills in not-just-comedic films like Good Morning, Vietnam. That led to full-fledged dramatic roles in movies like Dead Poets Society, Awakenings and 1997’s Good Will Hunting, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Note the word “supporting”—even then, Williams was happy to accept smaller roles and cede the spotlight to others. That certainly wasn’t something his fellow comedy superstars like Eddie Murphy, Tom Hanks, Billy Crystal and Jim Carrey were doing then—or now—with any regularity.

Even as he brought his career circle last year, returning to TV in The Crazy Ones, Williams went in another unexpected direction, generously ceding many of the show’s funniest lines to his costars. CBS had canceled the show in May, and now, sadly, we’ll never get the opportunity to see how the actor would have reinvented himself next.

How Robin Williams shared the spotlight to forge a beloved Hollywood career

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As upfronts wrap today, I wrote this Quartz piece about one big change to this year’s proceedings: the networks are finally serious about programming year-round, and they’re actually putting their money where their mouths are.

But as broadcast ratings continue to erode, those networks can no longer assume that their viewers will stay loyal and return in the fall. So when CBS took a chance on adapting Stephen King’s Under the Dome as a “limited series” last summer, and it became the highest-rated scripted summer series in 21 years, the network kept it in the same spot this year (it returns June 30). With the addition of Extant and other summer shows, CBS will have 90 hours of original programming this summer.

It’s a big change from the broadcasters’ traditional hands-off approach to summer, allowing the cable networks (and more recently, Netflix) to swoop in and take all the audiences for themselves.

Finally, instead of re-runs over the summer, new TV shows will premiere all year

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It’s upfronts time once again: the annual week in which broadcast execs unveil their new TV lineups to advertisers. And as I wrote at Quartz, as networks grapple with season-to-season ratings decline, they are trying a new tactic: approaching their lineups as if they are summer movie schedules.

The networks are coming to the same conclusion as the movie studios: the best way to potentially attract huge audiences, both domestically and internationally, is by relying on “safe” projects featuring well-established, beloved brands. That’s a big reason why Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was one of the few new series to get a renewal this year.

And if a network picks up my NCIS: Avengers idea, I’d better get a cut of the profits!

Television is taking a cue from summer movie blockbusters

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