Ryan Seacrest to Host, Produce Fox Summer Reality Show

By Lacey Rose

Ryan Seacrest has found his next act.

With his long-time gig as host of American Idol set to end after the singing competition’s upcoming 15th and final season, Seacrest has lined up another Fox reality show. Later this summer, he will begin hosting Knock Knock Live, a wish-fulfillment series from Seacrest and previous collaborators Dick Clark Productions and Simon Fuller’s XIX Entertainment. Knock Knock premieres Tuesday, July 21 at 9 p.m.

Seacrest will be based in a Los Angeles studio, while the Knock Knock team criss-crosses the country, surprising unsuspecting people at their front doors with life-altering opportunities, including major cash prizes or a chance to meet their favorite celebrities. The idea goes something like this: someone knocks on your door and offers you thousands of dollars for naming nine kids who live on your block; or your favorite pro basketball player knocks on your door and challenges you to a game of H-O-R-S-E, with a chance to win court-side seats.

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Fuller, Michael Herwick, Allen Shapiro, Mike Mahan, Mark Bracco, Stijn Bakkers and Nicolle Yaron will join Seacrest as executive producers on the live event series, which fits squarely into Fox TV Group chairmen Dana Walden and Gary Newman’s stated plan to shift Fox’s reality brand towards more aspirational fare. That much more impressive — and, in success, lucrative — for Seacrest: he is also a stakeholder in the format worldwide, alongside Fuller, dcp and Fox.

Similarly key, the deal features limited exclusivity for Seacrest, which will enable the multi-hyphenate to continue working across the media landscape. Among the projects already on his resume: Idol on Fox and Dick Clark’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest on ABC as well as “On Air with Ryan Seacrest” and a nationally-syndicated Top 40 radio show. His relationship with NBCU is ongoing, too, and includes on-air broadcasting and producing duties across NBC and E! (red carpets). In an interview last year, Seacrest confirmed that he also had been having conversations with NBC Sports about collaborating on the 2016 Olympics coverage in Rio, as he did the London games in 2012.

In early April, Seacrest announced a sizable deal between Endemol and the unscripted division of his nine-year-old production company, Ryan Seacrest Productions, which officially takes effect in 2016. (Knock Knock Live is not being produced by RSP.) The pact should allow RSP, which currently produces E!’s Kardashian franchise, Bravo’s Shahs of Sunset and ABC Family’s upcoming transgender series Becoming Us, to exploit Endemol’s resources along with its access to international formats.

Fuller, too, is no stranger to the Fox reality brand, having created long-running franchises Idol and So You Think You Can Dance. DCP, for its part, has become key to the network’s summer unscripted push, with involvement in Knock Knock as well as late June hopeful, Boom!, based on an Israeli game show format, and another season of SYTYCD.