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4.10.2013
NBC teams up with Virgin Galactic for 'Space Race' reality TV show
NBC says it's reached a deal with Virgin Galactic and reality TV producer Mark Burnett to create a television series called "Space Race," which will follow contestants as they compete to win a flight into space aboard Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo rocket plane.
SpaceShipTwo is currently in the midst of flight tests at California's Mojave Air and Space Port, and could take passengers on suborbital space rides as early as next year. But it's too early to say when "Space Race" will air, or when the show's winner would fly, said Clare Anne Darragh, a spokeswoman for Burnett's production company, One Three Media.
More than 600 customers have made their reservations for SpaceShipTwo flights from Spaceport America in New Mexico, at a current price of $250,000 per seat.
Long-held ambitions
The TV project combines the long-held ambitions of Burnett, the mastermind behind such shows as "Survivor" and "The Voice"; and Richard Branson, the British billionaire who founded Virgin Galactic.
"The scope of this endeavor is so staggering that it took these two titans to even imagine it," Paul Telegdy, president of alternative and late night programming for NBC Entertainment, said Thursday in a news release announcing the deal. "The term 'trip of a lifetime' has for once been delivered on! This will be a remarkable experience for anyone who has looked at the night's sky and dared to dream of spaceflight."
Branson said the show fits in with Virgin Galactic's vision of democratizing space and "eventually making commercial space travel affordable and accessible to all."
"'Space Race' allows us to extend this opportunity of a lifetime to as many people as possible right at the start of our commercial service — through direct experience and television viewing," Branson said. "All of us at Virgin Galactic and our partner Aabar Investments are delighted to be collaborating with NBC and Mark, who is a true pioneer and creative force in television programming."
The deal's deja vu
If "Space Race" becomes a reality, it would be the first TV contest built around honest-to-goodness space travel. But there's a hint of deja vu to the deal: Thirteen years ago, NBC said Burnett would produce a space-themed reality TV series titled "Destination Mir," with the winner flying to Russia's Mir space station. "It's going to be very, very dramatic in the beginning, and all the way through to the end," Burnett told NBC News at the time.
That deal literally went up in flames in 2001 due to Mir's demise. Other efforts to create space-themed reality TV projects, including a plan to put boy-band singer Lance Bass in orbit, have been stymied by the inherent risk of spaceflight. Potential insurers and advertisers were put off by the idea that someone could get blown up on the show they were backing.
Burnett obliquely referred to "Destination Mir" in Thursday's press statement about "Space Race."
"For the past 10 years I have relentlessly pursued my dream of using a TV show to give an everyday person the chance to experience the black sky of space and look down upon Mother Earth," he said. "Last year I spent time in New Mexico at the state-of-the-art facility, and last week spent time in the Mojave Desert with Sir Richard and his impressive team. We got to see the spaceship up close and hear of Sir Richard’s incredible vision of how Virgin Galactic is the future of private space travel. I am thrilled to be part of a series that will give the everyday person a chance to see space, and that NBC has come on board, too, so that viewers at home will have a first-class seat."
Thursday's news release said One Three Media would be distributing "Space Race" at the upcoming MIPCOM TV market in Cannes.
Correction for 5:30 p.m. ET: I mistakenly referred to SpaceShipOne rather than SpaceShipTwo at one point in the original posting. That's what I get for going too far down commercial spaceflight's memory lane.
Quelle: NBC
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Update: 5.10.2013
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Ultimate prize on new TV show 'Space Race': Virgin Galactic ticket
Richard Branson is seen at the Virgin Galactic hangar at Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave this year. NBC says it will air a competition show with an out-of-this-world prize: a ride into space.
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It had to happen: "Voice" and "Survivor" producer Mark Burnett is teaming up with Richard Branson for the ultimate unscripted TV show in which average Americans compete for a chance to go into outer space.
NBC on Thursday announced an exclusive deal with the pair for "Space Race," a show it's hyping as a "groundbreaking, elimination competition series." Winners score a ride on Branson's Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, which made successful test flights this year in its quest to take commercial passengers into space.
The show will be filmed at least in part at Virgin Galactic's home in the Spaceport America in New Mexico, where prospective fliers are trained and prepared for space flights, according to the announcement.
" 'Space Race' allows us to extend this opportunity of a lifetime to as many people as possible right at the start of our commercial service – through direct experience and television viewing," Branson said in the announcement.
This isn't the first time Burnett's One Three Media has wanted to do a show with a Space Age payoff. The Hollywood Reporter's story about the show says:
"... The producer first sold 'Destination Mir' to NBC in 2000. The series, whose finalists would have been teamed up with professional cosmonauts to go through training at Russia's Star City facility, was poised to end with an ordinary American taking a televised trip to the aging Mir space station. The pricey project, also at the center of a multinetwork bidding war, was shuttered when Mir was brought down the following year."
A Virgin Galactica ticket costs $250,000 -- and more than 600 people have signed up to be among the first passengers, including actors Ashton Kutcher and Leonardo DiCaprio. The "spaceline" has trained more than 140 "space agents" to sell tickets for upcoming flights expected to begin as soon as 2014.
Quelle: Los Angeles Times