The Beijing News reported recently that Beijing TV has aquired the adaptation rights to the American reality TV show The Apprentice, making it the first reality program offically imported from Uncle Sam. The local version will be launched this summer on BTV-5 (Beijing TV’s station for economy and finance programs).
The Apprentice is a reality television show that originated in the United States on NBC in 2004. Billed as “The Ultimate Job Interview”, the show depicts a group of 15-18 businessmen and entrepreneurs competing in an elimination-style competition for a one year, $100,000.00 job of running one of host and executive producer Donald Trump’s companies.”
It has been said that The Apprentice caters more to the tastes of the Chinese audience than other reality shows. Focusing on office politics and full of mutual scheming, it is more situationalized (情景化) and soap operaized (肥皂剧化) compared to Big Brother, Survivor and American Idol. Nobody wants to be fired and everyone is eager to be on the top. Perhaps this matches perfectly the mentality of white collars and golden collars in comtemporary China.
As for the the program host, the production team will probably announce its selection at the end of this month. The real estate tycoon and media celebrity Pan Shiyi (潘石屹) is under the spotlight. Whether Pan’s agenda fits in with this long term program’s schedule is still unknown.
Right now, there are two programs similar to Apprentice. One is Winner (创智赢家) from Dragon TV and the other is called Win in China (赢在中国) on CCTV-2.
- The Beijing News (Chinese): The Apprentice comes in
- NBC: The Apprentice homepage
- NBC: Donald J. Trump’s blog
- Sina (Chinese): Pan Shiyi’s Blog