Renegade 83

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David Garfinkle and Jay Renfroe are the principal partners in Renegade 83 Entertainment (REG). Since its inception in 1994, Renegade has staked out a position at the vanguard of contemporary television, helping to establish, then re-invent, the “reality” format that has provided the medium with its most vital successes over the past decade. Renegade was the first to successfully re-write the rules of television storytelling in 1999, when they introduced America to the hopelessly addictive syndicated half-hour Blind Date. With Blind Date, Renegade mined one of our era’s truly universal social rituals for humor, pathos and sly insight into the nature of contemporary urban relationships. The unique approach to storytelling, aided by a multitude of on-screen editorial zingers, Blind Date emerged as one of the iconic programs of its era, paving the way for several of Renegade’s further successes in the unscripted relationship genre, The 5 th Wheel and Rendez-View. As “reality TV” proved marketable in the early 2000’s, Renegade found itself faced with the challenge of re-defining its brand amidst the glut of unscripted programming that swamped the networks—most of it highly theatrical and artlessly contrived, sorely lacking the stripped-down accessibility of Blind Date. Its appeal inspired the WB to seek Renegade’s expertise to develop a comedic brand for their network. Their solution turned the reality TV model inside-out, developing the first celebrity reality program, The Surreal Life. Featuring a collection of semi-faded media personalities including Corey Feldman, M.C. Hammer, Vince Neil, Gabrielle Carteris and Emmanuel Lewis, The Surreal Life effortlessly wielded the double-edged sword of celebrity to puncture the pretensions of its genre. (Among the program’s many ironies was the fact that as the “real people” featured on competing programs grew more artificial in front of the cameras, the celebrity cast of The Surreal Life frequently appeared more genuine, relaxed and accessible than their ordinary-people counterparts.)

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