Aronson to Take Over Bernie Mac

Regency TV president Peter Aronson is leaving his job to become the third
executive producer and showrunner that Fox’s The Bernie Mac Show has had
in the past year.

Creator and executive producer Larry Wilmore, now running NBC’s
Whoopi, departed the post last March and was replaced with
Friends’ Michael Borkow.

After shooting a few episodes this summer, it became apparent that Borkow
wasn’t working out and Aronson stepped in.

Aronson was instrumental in creating the show, calling Wilmore soon after he
arrived at Regency in August 2000 and pitching him on a smart, black comedy
starring Bernie Mac, whom Aronson had seen on Home Box Office’s The Chris Rock
Show
.

Wilmore already had written such a script and had been thinking about Mac,
and the show was born.

Aronson has the right experience, having executive produced The WB Television Network’s Zoe,
Duncan, Jack and Jane
and worked on other shows.

In this position, he will serve as a nonwriting executive producer and
showrunner, working with Mac and the show’s established team of writers.

With Aronson already on the Bernie Mac set, Regency is without a
president, but Fox Television Studios head David Grant is going to step in and
fill the position for now.

Bernie Mac is a co-production of Regency TV and Twentieth Century Fox
TV.

Paige Albiniak

Contributing editor Paige Albiniak has been covering the business of television for more than 25 years. She is a longtime contributor to Next TV, Broadcasting + Cable and Multichannel News. She concurrently serves as editorial director for The Global Entertainment Marketing Academy of Arts & Sciences (G.E.M.A.). She has written for such publications as TVNewsCheck, The New York Post, Variety, CBS Watch and more. Albiniak was B+C’s Los Angeles bureau chief from September 2002 to 2004, and an associate editor covering Congress and lobbying for the magazine in Washington, D.C., from January 1997 - September 2002.