Debmar-Mercury on the Hot Seat

By Paige Albiniak
( Broadcasting & Cable )
published

Debmar-Mercury acquired the rights to U.K.-based Standing Stone Productions’ Hot Seat, which combines reality and game-show elements.

Debmar-Mercury will offer both primetime and daily versions of the show to broadcast networks and television stations in the United States, and the company’s London-based unit will distribute the show throughout the world. Standing Stone, headed by former FremantleMedia CEO Tom Gutteridge, retained distribution rights in the United Kingdom.

“Hot Seat is the perfect fit for the U.S. broadcast networks in primetime and stations seeking strong syndication programming for key weekday time slots,” Debmar-Mercury co-president Mort Marcus said, “because it blends the best elements of popular reality and quiz-show formats.”

Added Ira Bernstein, also co-president of Debmar-Mercury: “Tom has delivered a fresh concept that contains every essential ingredient for success: simplicity, scale, jeopardy, anticipation, strategy, unpredictability and, most of all, drama.”

Paige Albiniak
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.