Mike Darnell Biography
Mike Darnell is a former child actor and television executive from the United States. He is presently Warner Bros.’ president of unscripted and alternative television. He was president of alternative entertainment at FOX for nearly 19 years, heading the network’s reality television segment during the genre’s ascent.
How old is Mike Darnell? – Age
He is 61 years old as of 18 May 2023. He was born in 1962 in Philadelphia. His real name is Michael H. Darnell.
Mike Darnell Family – Education
Darnell was born to Eileen and Doyle E. Darnell in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Darnell was raised and attended public school in Philadelphia’s Northeast district, where his father was a cop. A talent manager noticed him singing at a Police Athletic League event when he was 10 and urged him to pursue advertisements.
Mike Darnell Wife
Darnell is married to Carolyn Oberman, an Emmy Awards public relations consultant, and they have a daughter. He currently resides in Calabasas, California.
Mike Darnell Net Worth
He has an estimated net worth of $10 million.
Mike Darnell Commercials
A talent manager noticed him singing at a Police Athletic League event when he was 10 and urged him to pursue advertisements. His family relocated to California when he was 12 years old, and he eventually appeared in or voiced over sixty advertisements.
Mike Darnell Warner Brothers
Darnell left Fox in 2013 and started leading Warner Bros.’ Unscripted & Alternative division. There, he oversees the development and current programming for first-run syndication, high-end documentaries, unscripted streaming and cable series, alternative broadcast series, and high-end documentaries.
In 2017, Darnell and his group supervised 35 series across 20 distinct organizations, including early evening series like Ellen’s Down of Games (NBC), The Voice (NBC), The Lone ranger establishment (ABC), Mental Samurai (FOX), The Genuine, and The Ellen DeGeneres Show, among others. In the same year, Deadline reported that Warner Bros. had more primetime airings of unscripted series than any of its rivals during Darnell’s first four years there.
Darnell made and created ability rivalry series The World’s Best on CBS facilitated by James Corden. Darnell and his Warner Horizon Unscripted Television division collaborated with Mark Burnett and MGM Television, Ben Winston, and Fulwell 73 to produce the series.
Darnell additionally made and leader created the opposition series Mental Samurai on Fox facilitated by Ransack Lowe. Darnell and his Warner Horizon Unscripted Television division, in collaboration with Arthur Smith and A. Smith & Co. Productions and Jeff Apploff and Apploff Entertainment, are in charge of producing the series.
Mike Darnell Fox
In 1994, Darnell joined Fox as an executive, initially working under the title “director of specials.” In 1995, a producer showed Darnell black-and-white footage that appeared to show an alien being dissected. This was one of his first public appearances. As the organization dreaded allegations of proliferating a deception, the show was communicated with the title Outsider Post-mortem examination: True or false; It was rebroadcast multiple times and attracted nearly twelve million viewers.
At a certain point, he delivered north of sixty specials per year for Fox, including: When Animals Come After You, Breaking the Magician’s Code: The Wildest Police Videos in the World Man vs. Beast, and Magic’s Biggest Secrets Are Finally Unveiled. In 2000, The New York Times referred to Darnell as “Fox’s point man for perversity” because of the lurid and controversial nature of his projects.
Series that Darnell was engaged with included American Icon, Damnation’s Kitchen, MasterChef, So You Want to Move, The X Factor, Kitchen Bad Dreams, Would you say you are More Brilliant Than a Fifth Grader?, The Simple Life, Temptation Island, My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiancé, Joe Millionaire, and the debut of Futurama and Family Guy as animated series.
American Idol helped FOX become the number-one network for eight consecutive seasons with a peak audience of more than thirty million viewers. Darnell was in charge of American Idol from the show’s inception until its twelfth season. Darnell told Variety that American Idol, the success he had with Gordon Ramsay, and the season finale of Joe Millionaire, which drew about forty million viewers and surpassed that year’s Academy Awards to become the network’s most-watched entertainment show, were his proudest FOX accomplishments.