Howie Mandel: Our guide to the future?

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on August 19th, 2005

The first few grafs of a LA Times story on Howie Mandel’s new series is fascinating.

Not only did Mandel create and produce the show, he also owns it. In order to get it on the air without network meddling, Mandel acted as his own studio, which essentially left him paying to be on television. The Bravo license fee (less than $1.8 million for all six episodes) didn’t cover all of the production costs, which included many location shoots and salaries for Julie Warner, who plays his wife, guest stars such as Estelle Harris and Marlee Matlin, and the crew, according to Mandel, who wouldn’t disclose how much he spent.

Mandel is a bleeding edge television producer. Seems like the suits in Hollywood are slowly awakening to the decentralization of power. Multi-chip video cams and wildly powerful computers within the budgets of mere mortals are changing the way TV does business. Read the whole thing and you realize that latter day alternative acts got nothing on Mandel. (Thanks to Sharilyn Johnson for the hot tip!)

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