He sold top business minds on a TV show that promised to save the world – and make them famous. They handed over thousands. Then reality set in: The world is flat.
The show had a cult-like following. It was a hit. And it ran for 10 seasons. But that didn’t stop the crew of one such show, from deciding it was time to take the show to the next level.
And that next level was the creation of an infomercial.
The show, which the crew called “Big Brother,” aired on CBS, ran for nine seasons, and featured a total of more than 2,500 episodes, from 2002 to 2017. The first season aired in 2002 and was called “The Great American Infomercial.” The series was a hit, but by the second season, the ratings became dismal.
The show’s ratings began to slip. CBS had to pull the plug on the series.
And it’s been downhill ever since.
As the years passed, the show was left on the air with “The Great American Infomercial” playing on a loop when viewers thought they were watching “Big Brother” instead. It was a sad and lonely feeling, that’s for sure.
“For the longest time, it really didn’t feel like ‘Big Brother,’” writer Mark Burnett explained to the Washington Post in an article from 2018.
The cast and crew of the series all agreed that when they began their journey on “Big Brother,” “one was sold on the idea that it could be the next ‘American Idol.’”
The crew decided to create an entire show from scratch.
In fact, Burnett actually started the series with the idea of an infomercial.
“I had the idea, let’s create an infomercial,” he said.
From there, it only took him two infomercials to realize that his idea wasn’t going to fly.
“In one the camera was pointed straight up at the sky. I was going, ‘This is pretty cool,’” he recalled. “The camera then just showed the clouds, the sun, and then the sun disappeared and I was thinking, ‘Wow, that
