Reinventing Reality

It's been 15 years since Tiffany topped the charts with hits like I Think We're Alone Now, but Simon Fuller imagines her back onstage singing her heart out to a whole new audience one he has created. At the advanced age of 31, Tiffany has been trying to create buzz (even undressing for Playboy) without much success. But would she take part in a TV talent contest for faded stars one like American Idol, last summer's smash hit, but with the added pathos of careers in decline? The grand prize would be a recording contract and perhaps the start of a comeback. Tiffany's competitors? Oh, Fuller wants no less than Vanilli, the surviving member of the duo Milli Vanilli (infamous for secretly miming its songs), and Vanilla Ice, the formerly huge white rapper.

"The working title is Second Chance Idol," Fuller tells TIME during a rare interview in his temporary Los Angeles quarters (he also has a home in London). The plan is to "go to people who have had a taste of fame but, sadly, their candle has been snuffed."

This TV show doesn't exist yet, but it just might by summer. If there's one thing reality TV has confirmed, it's that people will do almost anything for 15 minutes of shame. Fuller, 42, a British entertainment entrepreneur, exploits this as well as anyone. He's the creator of Britain's Pop Idol, its offshoot American Idol in the U.S. (also a hit) and the current Germany Seeks the Superstar, which drew almost 7 million viewers to its most recent episode and gives up nothing in schmaltz to the U.S. version. A recording of the show's 10 finalists singing a tune called We Have a Dream has sold more than 250,000 copies.

Fuller has become rich by putting fame-hungry performers in front of audiences eager to see them squirm. His web of privately held entertainment companies, known as the 19 Group, is estimated by industry analysts to be worth more than $300 million. But with reality TV looking ripe to go the way of prime-time soap operas and other fads, the genre must evolve to survive. And Fuller knows it. "In England the bubble's already about to burst," he says, even as he oversees Pop Idol's second British series, a global rollout in China, Norway and other countries, and a set of new reality-TV shows planned with ABC and Fox. His solution is for the format to devour itself. "The clever thing," he says, "is to take it and parody it."

Fuller is a master of blending music, television and manufactured celebrity. In the mid-'90s, he managed the top pop confection known as the Spice Girls. In 1999 he launched the TV band S Club 7 (renamed S Club after a member left), a collection of British twentysomethings who have belted out 10 Top 10 pop hits in Britain and made four TV series. Next came a youth offshoot, S Club Juniors. Naturally, Fuller is planning to create the American Juniors or the AJs five U.S. kids ages 8 to 14 whom he will find, groom and turn into a band. The concept might be launched with a song-filled movie about kids at a performing-arts academy--"a cross between Fame and Grease," Fuller says.

Not that Fuller is stepping off the TV money train just yet. A new American Idol series will make its debut Jan. 21 on Fox. More than 50,000 wannabes tried out; 234 were shipped to Los Angeles for further auditions, and 32 made the cut. Fuller has a $15 million plus deal with ABC for a show to air in March called All American Girl, which will feature a contest of women ages 18 to 25 who can sing, dance, play sports and display some knowledge of the world. "If Idol reinvented the talent show," Fuller says, "then All American Girl will reinvent the beauty pageant." (He has also persuaded NBC to feature four fresh goofballs in an updated version of the 1960s concocted-pop-band sitcom hit The Monkees. The New Monkees is scheduled to air in September.)

Earlier this month, the winner and the runner-up from the first American Idol series, Texan Kelly Clarkson and Pennsylvanian Justin Guarini, started filming an American Idol movie, a romantic comedy written by Fuller's brother Kim. The working title is To Justin from Kelly. We predict that Ben Affleck and J. Lo have nothing to worry about, but, hey, who knows?

How did we get here? Like any virulently successful media life-form, reality TV has mutated into an array of species. It evolved from such primitive organisms as America's Funniest Home Videos, reached a Darwinian plateau with "watch and dial" shows like Big Brother, in which viewers voted by phone to evict or endorse roommates, and morphed into such elaborate creatures as Frontier House, a reality time-travel show in which families spent months living in the conditions of a bygone era. Proof that anything goes is The Osbournes the verite look at the domestic life of aging rocker Ozzy Osbourne and The Anna Nicole Show, which will remain undescribed here. "Reality TV has become a staple, just like drama and comedy," says Mike Darnell, executive vice president of special programming at Fox.