Michael Davies (television producer)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Michael Davies is President and CEO of Embassy Row, a NY-based television production company.
Instrumental in bringing Who Wants to Be a Millionaire to U.S. television, on which he continues to serve as Executive Producer, Davies has been a key figure in transforming the television landscape and bringing alternative ideas to the mainstream.
Davies and his team at NY-based Embassy Row focus on producing smart and alternative content for broadcast and cable networks and the Internet. Moreover, Davies specializes in working with a select group of UK-based production companies to successfully launch their formats and build their businesses in the highly competitive U.S. market.
With the continued success of Emmy Award-winning Millionaire in syndication and Wife Swap (with RDF Media) in primetime, Davies has firmly established himself as one of the leaders in the alternative and reality television business.
Embassy Row's latest move is a new first look deal with web giant Yahoo! to produce original content for the Internet. Most recently launched is The 9 (hosted by Maria Sansone), a cutting-edge, daily morning vlog, exclusively sponsored by Pepsi that was named as one of TIME Magazine’s “50 Coolest Websites of 2006.” Other new content includes Talent Show, an online video contest dedicated to discovering the hottest original talent on the Internet and Hook Me Up, an informative, weekly reality show featuring a tech-impaired individual undergoing a technology makeover, exclusively sponsored by Verizon Wireless.
In 2006, powered by a new overall deal with Sony and GSN, Davies has expanded his range of alternative programming with such projects as: The World Series of Pop Culture, a multi-platform quiz event for VH1; Chain Reaction, a reinvention of the classic word game for GSN, The World Series of Darts, a major sporting event for ESPN and Keith Barry: Extraordinary, a primetime celebrity magic special for CBS. Moreover, following the recent sale of Once In A Lifetime to Miramax and ESPN, Embassy Row is rapidly expanding its development in the non-fiction film and sports-feature arena.
Also this year, Davies developed a devoted following among old and new soccer fans thanks to his 2006 World Cup Diary blog on espn.com. After blogging the 2002 World Cup from Japan and South Korea, Davies found an even wider audience the second time out with his hilarious observations about football, sausage, beer, the autobahn, his Swedish in-laws and Chelsea, his beloved club team. To rate games, players, fans, etc., Davies introduced the English concept of pantsness to the American audience. (Pants = "crap" job; no pants = bravura performance.)
The company is also set to announce its first pickups in the world of scripted half hour comedy and is currently working on multiple development projects for primetime broadcast as well as GSN and other cable networks.
In 2005 Embassy Row consolidated their television development in New York and broached new territory with a wide range of innovative projects. In addition to the summer series, My Kind Of Town, under the company’s first look deal with ABC, Davies made a long desired entry into the world of documentary film with the release of First Descent, the completion of Once In A Lifetime (with Passion Pictures and Greene Street) and the television series Iconoclasts for The Sundance Channel (with Radical Media). The company also teamed with Pepsi and Yahoo! to make its first venture in the web and new media with “100 Concerts in 100 Days,” a music-driven nationwide road trip documented in a series of webisodes.
Before founding Embassy Row in 2005, Davies was Founder and President of Diplomatic, where he produced multiple projects including ESPN’s popular game show 2 Minute Drill and The WB’s game show/reality hybrid Studio 7.
Prior to the formation of Diplomatic, Davies served as Executive Vice President, Alternative Series and Specials, for ABC Entertainment, where he oversaw the development of the Daytime Emmy- and TV Guide Award-winning U.S. version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, the popular David Blaine magic specials, the original pilot for The Man Show (which ran for seven seasons on Comedy Central) and the 1998 and 1999 Academy Awards. He joined the network in January 1998.
Davies joined ABC from Buena Vista Productions, where he was Senior Vice President, Development, responsible for developing all first-run syndication, cable and network programming. Davies had been with Buena Vista Productions since 1992, shepherding such projects as the late night talk-variety program The Keenen Ivory Wayans Show; the television adaptation of the feature hit, Honey, I Shrunk The Kids; the Emmy Award-winning Comedy Central series Win Ben Stein’s Money; the Lifetime hit game show, Debt, which won a CableACE Award for Best Game Show in 1996; the Emmy-winning children’s series Disney Presents Bill Nye the Science Guy and the original development of the Survivor format in the US (with UK indie Planet 24).
Before joining Buena Vista, Davies worked with dick clark productions, inc., PBS and Merv Griffin Enterprises.
Born in London in 1966, he attended Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania (he graduated from Mercersburg the same year as actor Benicio Del Toro) and graduated from the University of Edinburgh. He lives in Tribeca, New York City, with his wife and two young daughters. He also has a daughter, who currently resides in Florida with her mother.
