NEW YORK (AP) -- NBC had big plans for an
out-of-this-world reality TV series from the producer of Survivor where American contestants would compete to go up in space on the Russian space station Mir.
One big problem: Russia's Cabinet decided last week that it would send the deteriorating
Mir hurtling into the Pacific Ocean in February.
NBC wasn't quite ready to admit Monday that its big idea had crashed.
"We have every faith in Mark Burnett as a producer, and we hope that he is able to execute an exciting program for us," spokeswoman Shirley Powell said.
Powell wasn't sure what Burnett would be able to do. A spokesman for the producer, who has been filming Survivor II for CBS in a remote section of Australia, did not return telephone calls seeking comment.
Its loss would be another blow to NBC, whose programmers have been scolded by management for not developing a nonfiction series that has succeeded on the level of CBS's Survivor or ABC's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.
NBC had agreed to pay Burnett nearly $40 million for the rights to Destination Mir. The idea was to follow a group of would-be cosmonauts from space camp to a final broadcast, when a winner is picked and launched into space.
The payment was to include a nearly $20 million sum Burnett had agreed to pay
MirCorp, a Russian company that has leased use of the space station.
However, Russian Space Agency officials say the 15-year-old Mir station would be unsafe without new, expensive missions to refurbish it.
A MirCorp spokesman in the United States, Jeff Lenorowitz, said the company is trying to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to overrule the Cabinet decision.
"MirCorp hasn't thrown in the towel and is trying to see what options remain open," Lenorowitz said. He said it was unlikely that any kind of TV show could be produced without a quick reversal, though.
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