[This post on bransonblog.com was originally written for John’s stanforth.org blog.]

At one point in 1996, when I worked for a tv studio with seven shows on the air, I thought about how great it would be to be in development, dreaming up new ideas for shows, all that. But that fleeting thought passed and I never really gave it a second thought. Fast forward to last tv season when Donald Trump’s new reality show, The Apprentice, premiered, and I found myself watching every week. Old friends called to ask how thrilled I was, since I was quite a Trump fan back in 1988-1990 (in my defense, I was 15— young and stupid), but I instead had one answer for them all:

"It’s ok, I guess, but you know what would be really amazing? Take the Apprentice concept, but instead of Trump, who makes my skin crawl, have [Virgin Group founder] Sir Richard Branson, and then make it a cross between the Apprentice format and that of Amazing Race [the only other reality show I can stand], where the competitors fly around the world doing different tasks. And it would be brilliant branding for Branson! Imagine: They can fly everywhere on Virgin Atlantic. They can have tasks involving his many far-flung Virgin Megastores. You can even get them to all drink Virgin Cola, which should, like, double the number of Virgin Cola drinkers. And Branson will finally get good publicity to American audiences who don’t know who he is."  

Funny, when I told a couple people at work about "a cross between the Apprentice and Amazing Race, but with Branson," one of my colleagues asked, "Branson, Missouri?"

"Exactly why Sir Richard needs the show," I thought. To friends who already consider me the insufferable Sir Richard fanatic (and co-workers who already laughed at me for it), this probably seemed rather absurd, though at least Doug got it and agreed it was a great idea. (Long story why I think Richard Branson is the coolest businessman ever, but I’ll have to rave about that another day.) Suffice to say, when one of the people from work emailed a couple months later to say, "They read your mind," with a link to an article about the new show being developed, I was thrilled.

And so, after months of waiting, here we are… November 9th on Fox! Originally titled Branson’s Big Adventure ("they have to change that," Tricia and I both said), they wisely changed it to The Billionaire: Branson’s Quest for the Best. Much better. Can’t wait to see what they did with this show! (Oh, and also still of interest: The second season of The Apprentice starts in a few weeks as well.)