“I’m not saying I know everything. In fact, my success has come from my naiveté. I jumped in and did things I wasn’t sure of,” reported Mark Burnett, creator of numerous reality television shows, including Survivor, Donald Trump’s Apprentice, Celebrity Apprentice, Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?, The Restaurant, The Casino, Rock Star, Eco-Challenge, Combat Mission, and “a ton of other stuff” he said he’s working on right now. “All I do is make stuff that people want to watch. The challenge now days is how to get that content to the people.”

Burnett has a unique perspective on content creation and distribution thanks to his impressive record of non-scripted programs. Many shows have seen success beyond the traditional television broadcasts, making the producer a pioneer in the distribution of content over other sources, including cable, internet and phone. “I am absolutely focused on new distribution systems,” Burnett emphasized at the NXTcomm08 event in Los Angeles.

In front of industry leaders in the new technologies, Burnett sheepishly admitted he’s not a high-tech guy. “All the technology mumbo-jumbo is Greek to me. I’m a TV producer, I’ve done about 1100 hours of American television.” Based on that, he said he must know something about producing, but added that he’s not always right. “I’ve had shows that haven’t done as well. But I’ve had some hits too. And I know one thing for certain. People need entertainment. People need content, that stuff that’s currently called a TV show. I call it content because it goes beyond TV, with all the methods of distribution over various media.”

He noted that the atmosphere of the industry right now is like the wild West, with everyone trying to figure out what’s next and gunning to be first. “Honestly, none of us really know how the next few years will play out. But I am sure that fortunes will be made by those who are brave enough to take chances.”

Burnett has written four books, worked as a Beverly Hills nanny, and sold tee-shirts for a living. He’s a former member of the British Army Parachute Regiment, with active service medals, who then turned his taste for adventure into ideas for television shows, such as the grueling adventure race Eco-Challenge which aired on the USA Network.

Survivor: Borneo, the first show to launch the CBS blockbuster reality franchise, started in 2000. Burnett said, “It was revolutionary then to put non-fiction on TV where scripted shows had dominated. In fact, I remember the week before Survivor aired, TV Guide wrote that I must be out of my mind because I hadn’t decided if I was making a documentary, a drama, or a sports show.” They predicted the show would be gone because it didn’t fit an established mold.

“They were trying to say that I had to decide on the genre. I had to decide from old rules what people should watch. But my biggest gift is my naiveté. I had no clue what the rules were. All I know is that 72 million people watched that first Survivor finale.”

Ever since, Survivor has gone around the world, filming on such exotic locales as Fiji, Australia, China, Cook Islands, Africa, Panama and the Amazon. Burnett said shooting the show is like making a movie, and a lot of prep time is needed, along with great crews.

“For Survivor, we shoot a ratio about 300 hours for every one hour on television, actually it’s just about 42 minutes of air time. So technically we could make that episode 15 different ways, because there’s so much content available off channel to deliver,” Burnett noted about distributing to other sources, internet, phone, etc.

 “We can see that people want what they want, when they want it, and how they want it. And so, if you’re rigid in what you’re making, you have less flexibility to roll with the punches, and deliver in different ways. You’ve got to keep your eyes open about what you should be doing next. If you’re stuck in one little box in your head for the next five years, you’re going to get killed. You have to be open-minded to ideas.”

An important part of what he does is getting involved in the areas of advertising and integration. And Burnett has discovered that reality shows can be great content for the new distribution sources, but care must be taken to consider how it will be seen.

“Something I learned working with Verizon, and delivering Rock Star content for vcasts.  You’re pretty stupid if you think you can just shoot it like a TV show, and it’s going to be exactly the same on a small screen. You have to calculate the difference in the size of the screen. I had to put together a whole separate producing team who understood the vcast content. And it worked out very well,” Burnett said.