KSTC-TV Minneapolis' half-hour local entertainment series, Million Dollar Idea, will end its local-station run next month and move to cable, according to show co-creator Jean Golden.
The half-hour local entertainment series features inventors competing for help in marketing their brainchildren. Golden says she is in final negotiations with several cable nets for a fall launch of the show as four half-hour specials.
For the national version, Golden's Roaring Entertainment (her partner is show host Todd Walker), has teamed with Minneapolis' Mall of America to build a new set there. The show has been shot at the mall since it launched two years ago.
Winners, voted on by viewers and a panel of judges, get help from patent attorneys, accountants, marketing firms and manufacturers to take their idea from the drawing board or prototype to the shelves of a Mall of America retailer.
For example, says Golden, one first-series winner is now negotiating with a major manufacturer for his "twister bill cap," a baseball-style cap whose bill rotates for the sidewinder or rally cap look while the rest of the cap stays stationary.
Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.
