{"id":8298,"date":"2022-02-04T08:28:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-04T13:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/?p=8298"},"modified":"2022-02-01T13:52:08","modified_gmt":"2022-02-01T18:52:08","slug":"its-showtime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/2022\/02\/04\/its-showtime\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Showtime!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In a clamorous world where so many things compete for our attention, Stephen Brown \u201981 wants us to slow down \u2014 and play a game. As executive vice president of programming and development for Fox Television Stations, he develops and produces reality and game shows that include 25 Words or Less<\/em>, Dish Nation<\/em>, Divorce Court<\/em>, and the new version of a classic game show that was once hosted by Groucho Marx, You Bet Your Life<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Game shows \u201ctake you out of the\nconcerns of the world,\u201d Brown says. \u201cYou\nexercise your mind in a different way. And\nyou want to feel a little smarter than the\npeople up on the screen.\u201d\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brown spent several years as an English teacher in his early 20s, an experience he says helped prepare him for a career in a very different line of work. \u201cStanding up in front of 17-year-olds and lecturing about literature gave me the confidence to get into entertainment,\u201d says Brown, who was an English major. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He bought a one-way ticket to Los Angeles in 1990, slept on a friend\u2019s couch for a week, and landed a temp job in the human resources department at Fox. Eventually he became an assistant writer on Love Connection <\/em>and worked his way up at several production companies. After spending 17 years producing reality and game shows for various outlets \u2014 among them Pyramid<\/em>, Shop \u2019Til You Drop<\/em>, and Legends of the Hidden Temple <\/em>\u2014 he returned to Fox in 2005. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year, Brown helped launch the\nstreaming network Fox Soul, which focuses\non the Black community. In addition to\ndramas and gospel programs, the network\nhas several talk shows that offer \u201cauthentic,\nunfiltered voices,\u201d Brown says.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In September 2021, Brown brought back\nthe iconic game show You Bet Your Life<\/em>,\nwhich first ran in the 1950s. Now hosted by\nJay Leno, the show pairs two strangers and\ngives them the chance to earn prize money by\nworking together to answer trivia questions.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brown loves the challenge of developing game shows in a business that has an 80\u201390% failure rate, he says. Hosts like appearing on them because they are usually filmed on a compressed schedule to make them cost effective. \u201cWe film six episodes a day, five days a week\u201d to produce 175 shows in eight weeks for a typical game show, he explains. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pandemic forced many changes for game shows, but they have persevered with new protocols. Divorce Court <\/em>has a virtual studio audience, so audience members are filmed at home and appear on the screen in their own square. Meredith Vieira, host of 25 Words or Less<\/em>, tapes the show from a newly constructed studio in the basement of her New York home while the rest of the production is shot in Los Angeles, with a staff that undergoes frequent COVID-19 testing. The celebrities who compete together to solve the fast-paced word problems appear from separate soundstages. Brown, who used to be in the studio for tapings, now supervises each show remotely from his home in Los Angeles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the evenings at home, Brown watches\nthe broadcasts to get a better sense of how\nthe audience experiences each show. \u201cI\u2019m\nwatching as a producer\u201d and contemplating\ntechnical issues, he says. When Brown hears\nhis husband laughing at a joke made by Leno\nor one of the other hosts, he says, \u201cThat\u2019s the\nbest moment for me.\u201d
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As executive vice president of programming and development for Fox Television, Stephen Brown \u201981 develops reality and game shows. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1263,"featured_media":8750,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[300,282,281],"coauthors":[572],"class_list":["post-8298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-alumni-spotlights","category-alumni-updates","tag-entertainment","tag-television","tag-tv"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/palXSH-29Q","amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2022\/02\/ItsShowtime.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1263"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8298"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8737,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8298\/revisions\/8737"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8298"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}