He brought viewers Survivor and The Apprentice to TV and now producer Mark Burnett is getting ready for adventure with Expedition Impossible.
TV producer Mark Burnett has made many unknown and US based TV producer has preferred to stay in the background himself.
In person he's handsome, genial and usually smiling. After all he's got a lot to smile about. His shows including Survivor, The Apprentice, Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?, Rockstar Supernova and The Voice are popular the world over.
But years of success have not dulled his edge. He always appears just as excited and is as eager to get on with each project, including his latest show, Expedition Impossible.
"I have been very fortunate to work on shows that I really like and in which interest me. I love adventure. I love music, movies and television," says Burnett.
This time Burnett is back to adventure in the aptly called Expedition Impossible. On the show three-person teams toil through 3000km of tough terrain in Morocco in a bone-breaking competition. The enormous undertaking of such an adventure required a crew of 400, 41 strategically placed cameras and 13 teams of three people each.
Burnett said he wanted to give "real people" an Indiana Jones' experience.
"My hope is that millions of people will go out and have adventures after watching this show," he says.
In fact, Bw·nett cannot really hide his excitement as he explains the premise of the Impossible.
"Doing Everest would've been a lot easier than this," he says. ''This is back-toback camels, then they have to ride Arabian stallions and then they're given donkeys to traverse mountain passes, then they've got to climb
snow-capped mountains, swim through canyons, go through caves and everyday solve problems.
Burnett does make it clear, however, that experienced guides are there and that although there were some iajuries, most contestants were able to carry on.
"It was a case of can a group of people go through this and keep their act together," he says.
Burnett's own life has come in many acts. Burnett worked for a Beverly Hills couple as manny and chauffeur for their two young sons for reportedly US$250 a week in the 1980s when he was new to the country. He parlayed that job into working in an office and finally had enough to rent a space on Venice Beach to sell T-shirts on weekends. He did so well he eventually quit the office job.
He found out about a French adventure competition called Raid Gauloises and entered it. This wasn't such an unusual move since Burnett had served as a parachutist in the British Army. He and four people participated in Raid Gauloises. He then decided he could franchise it in the US and bought the rights, renamed them
eco-challenges and eventually was able to bring a version to TV.
Survivor debuted in 2000. It won an Emmy the following year and since then has been voted the number one series of all time by US magazine Entertainment Weekly.
Personally, his life got better too when he married Touched by An Angel star Roma Downey in 2007. He's even swayed her over to his love of adventure.
"In the last ten years I've convinced Roma to come and sort of scuba-dive in open water. Roma can repel down cliffs and Roma's training right now to climb big mountains," he says.
Last April Burnett debuted The Voice, a singing competition with celebrity judges set to rival the already successful and popular American Idol and X-Factor, all the while also overseeing the Expedition shows.
On The Voice, idea is that instead of contestants singing to the judges' faces, the judges sit with their backs to the contestants. This way they can only hear the voice, not what the person looks like or their presentation until after the song is finished.
Celebrity judges Christina Aguilera, Cee-Lo Green and country singing star Blake Shelton have been a hit with US viewers, now a UK version is set to debute.
