ABC has indefinitely waylaid the catch-as-catch-can reality show, executive produced by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, which had been scheduled to debut in January.
The official reason? According to a statement by ABC Entertainment boss Lloyd Braun: "Today's environment would not be conducive to this type of television event."
Translation: Asking the American public to compete for a potential $1 million prize to capture someone on the run seems a bit circumspect now that reality is about hunting down terrorists.
The show's notion was to set a runner loose, giving him/her 13 weeks to accomplish a series of "missions" without being captured. If the runner remained free and finished the missions, the prize was his, but if someone from the public captured the fugitive, the viewer would share in the cash. The game played out in "three dimensions," according to the show's creators: on television, on the Internet and in the real world.
Perhaps another reason for The Runner's shelving? Sagging ratings for reality shows. With even the once mega-rated CBS reality show Survivor now playing second fiddle to NBC's Friends, the networks seem to be turning their backs on such contrived unscripted programming. Earlier this week, ABC removed the struggling The Mole II from its schedule. Fox's Love Cruise sunk faster than the Titanic in the Nielsens and CBS' Amazing Race failed to amaze viewers.
But even before September 11, critics were questioning the content of The Runner and wondering how it would be successfully executed. When Damon, Affleck and two other coproducers showed up to face a roomful of the nation's television critics in July, the first question asked of them was, "How do you do this without someone getting killed?"
Michael Davies, who brought Who Wants to Be a Millionaire to America and ABC and is the series producer of The Runner, responded that the content of the series was "nowhere near as alarming as you would think at this point in terms of what the actual capture is, the method of capture and how that will actually happen."
While Davies avoided giving any actual details of how the contestant would remain safe, he stressed, "If you tackle our runner, if you touch our runner, if you impede our runner, you'll not only be prosecuted to the fullest extent of law, you can win no money."
Affleck said the game was "not geared around actually catching the guy and holding him." He said The Runner wasn't the kind of show "to exploit people's conflicts with one another. Rather, what we thought was kind of exciting about it was an opportunity on a grand scale to play this game, to live out this fantasy of like being in a [John] LeCarre novel...like living this sort of spy experience in a way that was fun and exciting."
Damon, meanwhile, insisted he and his pals came up with the idea "before reality television kind of hit with the force it did."
Unfortunately for the show, it didn't make it to air before reality really hit on September 11.
So, will The Runner ever make it out of the blocks? We're not holding our breath, even though the series is--officially--merely on hold.
For the record, Braun says he hopes "that circumstances will evolve in such a way that we'll eventually be comfortable moving forward." Adds executive producer Sean Bailey, "We still believe it's a great entertainment idea, but we think [our] decision is the most responsible action in the current entertainment environment."