HILVERSUM, the Netherlands — The man who unleashed “Big Brother” on the world is a savvy Dutch businessman with the good looks of a Hollywood movie star — and the money, as well.
John de Mol, chairman and chief creative officer of Endemol Entertainment, is the creative powerhouse behind “Big Brother” and a raft of other formats that have made his company one of the highest-profile program makers in the world, with 26 offices in 21 countries.
Dutch modesty frowns upon ostentation — the 46-year-old has only two houses, one in Het Gooie, the Dutch equivalent of Beverly Hills, and one in Portugal — but he is a billionaire thanks to Endemol’s sale to Spanish media group Telefonica last year.
De Mol and partner Joop van den Ende, another major Dutch entertainment figure, received 3 billion guilders ($1.1 billion) each for their shares in the company.
Back then, De Mol said he wanted to devote all of his time to creating content. It has taken a year to reshuffle management so that he “can spend about 20% of my time being chairman and the rest of the time, doing what I do best, creating content,” he says.
Sitting in his Richard Meier-designed offices in a wealthy enclave of Hilversum, De Mol reveals Endemol’s plans for its Central Creative Unit to Variety.
The CCU is a new international division housing a multinational team whose sole job will be to think up ideas for content across all platforms. The CCU also contains a network of freelance “creatives” all over the world and an apprentice program.
Clearly, De Mol doesn’t fool around when it comes to the creative process.
He says: “You have to be 200,000% committed to being creative. Everything I do, 24 hours a day seven days a week, when I’m on holiday, in the car, in meetings, in the shower, everything I see and hear, I automatically look at to see if any corner of it is new and different.”
Ambition and talent run in the family. De Mol’s grandfather had his own orchestra, which his father, John de Mol Sr., was the Dutch answer to Frank Sinatra as well as general manager of Dutch station Radio Noordzee. Sister Linda de Mol is an actress and his son, Johnny de Mol, is one of Holland’s top soap stars on its longest-running series, “Good Times, Bad Times.”
De Mol began his career as a program technician, became a radio sports editor and then moved into TV at Dutch pubcaster TROS.
He admits: “In the first six months working in TV, I hated it. Then one day we were working on a Miss Holland program, and I felt this strange nervousness and butterflies in my stomach and realized that, in ten minutes, 5 million people would be watching us. That’s when the fever started.”
By the late 1970s, De Mol began to see opportunities for selling Dutch programs abroad. Unfortunately, the banks did not. After failing to get a loan in 1979, he was bankrolled by Dutch entrepreneur and record company publisher Willem van Kooten and John de Mol Prods. was born.
His first program was an entertainment show, “Willem Ruis,” but by the mid-’80s he was cranking out 100-episode dramas including “Medical Center West.”
In 1990, “Love Letters” became the first of his formats to cross to Germany, where it was launched by RTL TV and in its first season bagged a slew of awards.
It was followed by such formats as “Forgive Me,” “All You Need Is Love,” “Lucky Letters,” “Blind Date,” “It’s Your Turn” and, of course, “Big Brother.”
“Big Brother” came out of a brainstorming session. “We were sitting around, tossing ideas around,” when it came up, he admits, adding he knows when a format will work. “I don’t know what it is, maybe a gut feeling, but I just know.”
That confidence led him to back “Big Brother” with Endemol coin to the tune of 50% of its production cost when broadcaster Veronica balked at producing it.
The sale of “Big Brother” to the U.S. was the culmination of his dreams.
“From the very beginning, he wanted to sell a Dutch show to the U.S.,” says Van Kooten, who has sat on the Endemol board and has known De Mol since he was a teenager. De Mol himself said after inking the deal with CBS, “I feel like a country boy in the big city.”
De Mol is a success, says Van Kooten, because “he is a go-getter, he knows how to get things done, he delegates and is extremely creative.” But, he adds: “He is a loner and, as they say, it is lonely at the top.”
Although considered shy by insiders, De Mol is not timid when it comes to leading the company to the promised land of global media presence. Endemol has a presence on five continents; next stop, China and India.
As for “Big Brother,” De Mol has fresh ideas for it. The show enters its third season in Holland in the fall and De Mol says it will be a new format.
“If it takes off, we will have proved that the real-people format can grow. It doesn’t have to die after a few seasons. The genre can stay alive for at least the next three to five years.”
