ESPN has announced that it has ordered a second season of its Dream Job reality series. A talent search competition show similar to The Apprentice -- but in the works well before the NBC series became such a hit -- Dream Job follows aspiring sportscasters as they compete for a yearlong position as an ESPN SportsCenter anchor.
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Mike Hall, a 22-year-old journalism student at the University of Missouri, won the recently completed first edition of the program. In a nationwide viewer vote, Mike defeated Adam Levine, a 21-year-old senior at Stanford, by approximately 60% to 40%.
The series performed well for the network, premiering to 1.1 million viewers and maintaining and average of over a million viewers during its six-episode run despite airing in a highly competitive Sunday evening time period.
In a comment that could be interrupted as a dig at Beg, Borrow, & Deal, the network's previous attempt at an original reality series, ESPN executive Mark Shapiro told Daily Variety that "Dream Job's success showed us that our viewers are receptive to the reality show genre when it's done the right way. The overwhelming consensus is that viewers want the chance to decide who we put on our air, and we enjoy giving it to them."
Dream Job 2 is expected to premiere in January 2005.