Jeff Probst Has New Show

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Exclusive: Jeff Probst creates new show for CBS | Hollywood Insider | EW.com

Survivor’s Jeff Probst has created — and will host — a new reality pilot for CBS, EW.com has learned exclusively. The show, Live Like You’re Dying, will feature a person who has been given a terminal diagnosis with a finite amount of time to live and “take them on the last adventure of their life,” according to Probst. That adventure will include reunions with lost friends or formerly feuding family members, a “legacy moment” that will ensure their name carries on forever, and living out a personal dream. “It could be playing guitar with Eric Clapton or jumping out of a plane into a volcano,” Probst explained to EW.com. “Whatever it is that you’re still desiring to do in your life — we want to make it happen.” (A new subject will be profiled for every episode should the show get picked up and go to series.)

Of course, a program profiling people with terminal diseases runs the risk of being just a tad morbid, but Probst insists the show will be inspirational rather than depressing. “The focus of the show is not death,” says Probst. “The story we’re going tell is about living. This is a show that is intended to inspire everybody to get the most out of their lives every day.”

Joining Probst on the project is his Survivor boss Mark Burnett, who will also be executive producing, and Denise Cramsey of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and Trading Spaces, who will act as showrunner. Production on the Live Like You’re Dying pilot will begin in January (after filming has wrapped on season 18 of Survivor), and no air date has been set should the show make it to series.

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Lisa de Moraes - CBS to Turn Dying Wishes Into Reality TV - washingtonpost.com

Finally, a network has found the perfect way to cast a reality series free of all those wannabe actors/wannabe "The View" hostesses who are doing so much to make viewers so cynical about the "reality" of reality TV.

CBS has ordered a pilot on "Live Like You're Dying," which will be cast entirely with people who have received a diagnosis of a terminal disease and been told by their doctors they have but months, or better yet, weeks, to live.

Each week we will get to see a different terminally ill person being given their dream TV audition -- which, sadly, will be their last TV audition. Each nearly-toes-up regular Joe will get to live out his or her fantasy, so long as that fantasy fits into FCC decency guidelines, naturally.

And if the subject is not an elderly person but is young (preferably 18 to 49 years old), hot, looks good in a bikini and says she can die happy if only she participates in the next Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, so much the better.

The show is the brainchild of reality-TV Mensa boy Jeff Probst, though it bears a striking resemblance to Phil Keoghan's Discovery Channel reality series "No Opportunity Wasted." Except, of course, that Keoghan, not taking the broad outlook, hadn't stipulated that his subjects had to be on the verge of handing in their dinner pail. These details are what make all the difference in a TV show's success and do so much to explain why Keoghan's show lasted a single season.

"Live Like You're Dying" will be executive-produced by "Survivor's" Mark Burnett and "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" co-exec producer Denise Cramsey. Cramsey, it appears, will give special consideration to all you Camille-types out there whose telegenic last act somehow includes reunions with long-lost friends or estranged family members.

So if you're literally dying to be on CBS, you need to think long and hard about whether you're willing to let your final days include getting slobbered over by your crazy-as-a-loon Aunt Agatha, from whom you hoped you'd heard the last.


Probst is so excited about his new show he gave an interview to Entertainment Weekly to talk about it. In discussing last wishes that might make the cut on the show, he gave the example of a terminally ill person who wants to jump out of a plane into a volcano. Where I come from, that's known as "committing suicide."

EW notes with infinite tact that a program profiling people with terminal diseases "runs the risk of being just a tad morbid." Pshaw! responded Probst, who insists the show is "inspirational."

CBS has agreed only to cut a pilot on this series, which means at least one lucky dying person will get to film his or her last big act.

Of course, if CBS doesn't pick the show up to series, that person will have spent his or her last days working on a TV show episode for naught. Nice touch.

And if you're left wondering how long it will take before someone snookers Probst by faking a terminal illness to get on the show -- get in line.