Mark Cronin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section needs to be wikified to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please help improve this article with relevant internal links. (September 2007)

Mark Cronin is an American television producer and writer.

[edit] Biography

A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Chemical Engineering, Cronin spent five years working as an engineer in research and marketing. His first job in entertainment was moonlighting as a freelance joke writer for an Ace Award winning newsbreak spoof on Nick-at-Nite called "Global Village News."^[1] Cronin switched careers permanently when he joined Howard Stern’s nationally syndicated Saturday night television show "The Howard Stern Show" (also known as the infamous “Channel 9 Show”) as a staff writer in 1991.^[1] His responsibilities expanded to include scripting entire episodes, producing celebrity interviews, and producing comedic field pieces.^[2] He went on to contribute to Stern’s national radio show^{[citation needed]} and serve as producer/writer on his television and video projects, including Stern's "New Year's Rotten Eve" pay per view special^[1] - the most watched entertainment pay per view event of all time.^[3] Cronin also scripted an entire E! Entertainment Television special for Stern’s book Miss America.Auerbach, Cronin Sign Deal with Fox. Retrieved on 1998-07-01.

Moving from New York to LA, Cronin became the head writer for the pilot and first season of MTV’s dating show "Singled Out" (starring Jenny McCarthy) and went on to run the show for two full seasons.^[1] From MTV, Cronin moved to the Fox network as supervising producer for their first primetime event game show, "Big Deal." From there, he returned to late night and served as supervising producer of Comedy for "The Keenen Ivory Wayans Show."^[1]

In 1997 Mark founded Mindless Entertainment with then partner Gary Auerbach who left the company in 2001. The inspiration for the company name came from Mark's mother, a school teacher. She would comment on his watching "that mindless entertainment"/television every day. Mindless Started with studio based talk shows and game shows including "The X Show" which ran 395 episodes on FX, "The New Movie Show with Chris Gore" also on FX, "Beat the Geeks" on Comedy Central, "America's Most Talented Kids" on PAX, "Ultimate Film Fanatic" on IFC and the competition shows "Cram" and "Extreme Dodgeball" on GSN.^[1]

In 2004 Cronin’s Mindless Entertainment teamed up with Cris Abrego’s 51 Pictures to form 51 Minds – the company that produces VH1’s lineup of reality television. Anchored by the "Celebreality" flagship show "The Surreal Life" the company went on to create related shows including "Strange Love" (with Flavor Flav and Brigette Nielsen), "My Fair Brady" (with Christopher Knight and Adrianne Curry), "The Surreal Life Fame Games" (with Robin Leach), "Celebrity Paranormal Project", "Flavor of Love" (the highest rated series in VH1 history), "I Love New York", "Flavor of Love Girls: Charm School" starring Mo'Nique, "Rock of Love with Bret Michaels" and "America's Most Smartest Model".^[1]