Adam Jay
Wednesday August 18, 2004
MediaGuardian
The British producer behind hit reality show
Survivor and the makers of
Big Brother, Endemol, will slug it out in a California court today over their rival boxing shows in the latest round in the high-stakes reality TV battle.
Mark Burnett, producer of NBC show The Contender, is seeking a court order to block the Rupert Murdoch-owned broadcaster Fox from showing a rival reality show produced by Endemol.
Mr Burnett is suing Fox and Endemol claiming they violated state boxing laws in a "rushed and frenzied" bid to beat Contender to the airwaves with their own version, The Next Great Champ.
A California judge is expected to rule today on whether Fox should be allowed to air its show, which Mr Burnett's production partners DreamWorks Television claims features unlawful bouts.
Mr Burnett teamed up with DreamWorks earlier this year to create The Contender, a Sylvester Stallone-fronted hunt for the next boxing champion.
In the show, which does not air until November, Stallone and Sugar Ray Leonard train 16 contestants for a boxing tournament with a $1m prize.
Fox also bid for The Contender, but when it lost out responded by buying up The Next Great Champ, produced by Endemol and Lock & Key Productions.
It features another world boxing champion, Oscar de la Hoya, and offers a contract with his company and a World Boxing Organisation title fight. Despite the head-start gained by NBC, Fox's version is due to hit TV screens two months earlier than that of its rival.
The NBC Universal Television Group president, Jeff Zucker, has already accused Fox of hijacking his network's idea and in a recent interview Mr Burnett memorably claimed: "If I decide to produce a show called Dogshit I'll get a call saying there's a new show someone's doing with the same concept
But in several recent cases courts have failed to be convinced that reality ideas could be protected as intellectual property.
Last year CBS lost a suit after it claimed ABC's I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here was a rip-off of Survivor.
In a statement, DreamWorks said Fox should be barred from using "film of any boxing match that wasn't legally promoted... It would be terribly damaging to the sport, to our show The Contender and to all the participants if anyone were to profit from or gain an unfair advantage by breaking the law".
"We believe these claims are without merit," a Fox spokesman said yesterday. "This is an effort to stifle competition by seeking an inappropriate prior restraint of a broadcast."
It is rare for courts to prevent material from being viewed by the public.
But Mr Burnett told the New York Times he was confident the judge would rule in his favour because of the "egregious" actions of Fox.
"They left us no choice but to file legal action," he said, insisting his show had followed every rule and regulation mandated by the state, "while their show has flouted the law" by not having licensed promoters stage the fights.
