Media All-Star: Brian Terkelsen

President and managing director, Liquid Thread, navigates the blurring line between art and commerce

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Mark Burnett and Brian Terkelsen revolutionized the business of television over a slice and a beer. It was 1993 and Burnett, a former T-shirt hawker on Venice Beach, was looking for a financial whiz to help ride herd on a new genre of reality series designed to capitalize on the nascent trend of eco-tourism.

The newbie producer hired Terkelsen before the pizza cooled. And while Eco-Challenge was not an enduring success, it would serve as the blueprint for Burnett's Survivor, the series that restored CBS to power while validating the sponsor-integration model.

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