American Inventor - Re-Inventing American Inventor
Episode 1 Recap by Gayl Killough
June 7, 2007
American Inventor is back for a second season with Co-Creator Peter Jones as the only judge returning from last year. New judges this year are George Foreman, the famous boxer who re-invented himself with the Lean Machine Grill. I own one of these and my mother absolutely loves hers. George has sold over 100 million of them. Sara Blakely, a Rebel Billionaire contestant formerly, created SPANX, a hosiery company that has done over $100 million dollars in retail sales. The fourth judge is Pat Croce, who went from trainer to motivation speaker to Philadelphia sports team owner.
There is a new host this year in Nick Smith and he has great energy from the very start. Auditions were held in six cities this year, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Houston, and Orlando. I have seen Tampa listed instead of Orlando, but Orlando was on the original audition city list.
Last year for American Inventor 1, Atlanta was one of the audition cities, but it did not make the cut this year. I know about Atlanta because I tried out for American Inventor 1 in Atlanta, but I did not try out this year at all. I felt like Atlanta was completely shunned last year and I have wondered if I tried out in the wrong city. As far as I know, only a couple of people from the Atlanta audition received any airtime at all in season 1. None of the finalists were from Atlanta last season. There were some very good inventions in Atlanta that were completely ignored.
Therefore I actually am glad about the changes in the format this year. Each audition city will have one finalist that will get $50,000 seed money to develop an invention. This means that there are six finalists since there are six audition cities. Also, very different this year is that the finalists are determined within the audition cities themselves. Potential contestants were told to allow for 5 days for the initial audition.
For the first season, everybody was screened in one very long day and contestants were not told yes or no during the very initial audition. The first round that aired on American Inventor 1 was actually the second round. People auditioned for what was considered a screening and then were told to wait six to eight weeks to find out if they were selected for the Top 100 in Hollywood.
Contestants only received notice if they were selected; otherwise they received nothing and had waited for nothing. Like many other contestants last year, I was told how great my invention was, went back home and waited, and was completely ignored. I never was told why I was not selected. On the show last year, a Top 50 was mentioned. I have assumed that about half of the so-called Top 100 were selected to be wacky or "bad" and the other half was considered to be the better half (otherwise known as the Top 50). So in other words, some contestants were flown to Hollywood, got their hopes up, and then were made fun of for the sake of reality TV. At least this year, the wait to be made fun of was much shorter.
I assume that there was still a screening round this year since the four judges would not have had the time to see everyone. However, at least contestants would know if they were moving on to the next round when they auditioned. I wish that they had this format for American 1 when I tried out. It figures that since I was unable to audition this year for American Inventor 2 that it would change. Maybe I will tryout for American Inventor 3, maybe I won't.
I was expecting each audition show to have its very own show and that a finalist would be announced at the end. Instead the "first round" of Los Angeles and San Francisco was shown in this episode, and it appears that the final round for those two cities will be next week. So this week had an emphasis on people that were rejected by the judges and it appears that next week will show more of the inventions that the judges actually liked. This seems like an uneven balance and I think this is an effort to show as many "bad" auditions as possible. I am expecting that the vast majority of good auditions will get no airtime at all.
The amount of money that contestants have spent on their inventions is a favorite topic of this show. Something to keep in mind is the very high costs of patents and related build-up costs. I will use myself as an example. I will admit that I did not have a patent when I tried out for American Inventor 1. My idea actually was two separate ideas and each one could have had its own patent, but then I combined the two ideas to work together, thus making what is called a complex patent if I wanted to patent my full idea. I checked with several lawyers and the estimated costs were all close to $10,000 dollars for just the legal portion of my invention idea that I used for my audition. I am aware that people can file patents without a lawyer, however due to the complexity of this particular invention idea and the history of related inventions, this invention idea really needs to be handled by lawyers. I did not have and still do not have the money for it. Too many have the misconception that a good invention idea will automatically make money, but instead most invention ideas cost money with no reward because there are no guarantees in life.
Gayl writes government documents for a living and hopes that people will actually read her blogs. Her hobbies include inventions, music, and toys. Her true American Idol will always be B.B. King. Grand Master Flash is her favorite inventor. She can be reached at Gayl@RealityTVCalendar.com
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