Mike darnell biography

When a producer brought Mike Darnell roughly 17 minutes of black-and-white footage that showed an alien being dissected—supposedly—Darnell was immediately fascinated. Who wouldn’t want to watch this? As a nod to his bosses’ wish not to be blasted for propagating what might have been a hoax, Darnell programmed the footage, with a little hedge in the title: Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction. When the special debuted on Fox in , it killed in the ratings—enough that the network återutsändning it multiple times. And when the video was proven to be a hoax? No problem: that simply allowed Darnell to create a new schema, World’s Greatest Hoaxes, and fold in the alien footage once more.

Darnell came to Fox’s national operation after years in the news division of its local Los Angeles affiliate—so he knew a thing or two about how to capture an audience’s attention. Over the course of 19 years, he climbed the ranks at Fox, eventually being named president of alternative entertainment. He

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Mike Darnell: Confessions of a reality TV genius

Twenty-four years ago today, two strangers got legally married on live television, and the modern reality TV genre was born.

Long before Married at First Sight, 90 Day Fiancé, Love is Blind, and all the other shows that treat arranged marriages as just another option for lonely singles, Fox delivered the first-ever reality TV wedding with Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?. The two-hour special saw real-estate developer/comedian Rick Rockwell wed nurse Darva Conger, drawing an audience of 22 million viewers — and fueling the ire of countless critics, who excoriated the special as a new low for the TV industry.

Little did they know, the evil genius behind Multi-Millionaire was just getting started.

For Mike Darnell, Rick and Darva’s (soon-to-be-annulled) marriage was the beginning of an unscripted empire. As the Fox network’s chief reality exec from , Darnell led a reality revolution by taking bold — and often

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Mike Darnell, currently President of Warner Bros. Unscripted Television, is regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of reality television. Since joining the Warner Bros. studio in , he has since grown the unscripted portfolio exponentially, currently overseeing 50+ series, from prime time formats to premium documentaries, consisting of over 2, hours of programming annually.

Darnell and his team produce hit shows such as the long-running franchise "The Bachelor" and "The Bachelorette", Emmy-winning music competition "The Voice", as well as "Little Big Shots", "Mental Samurai", "Family Game Fight", "Ellen's Game of Games", plus the multi-Emmy winning "The Ellen DeGeneres Show", among others. In addition, his division produced the recently launched and Emmy-nominated "Friends: The Reunion", which quickly became the most watched special in the history of HBO Max.

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