Vincent John "Vin" Di Bona[1] (born 1944) is a television producer for many American television shows such as America's Funniest People, MacGyver and Entertainment Tonight as well as America's Funniest Home Videos. He runs an eponymous production company called Vin Di Bona Productions.
Contents |
A native of Cranston, Rhode Island[2], Di Bona began his career in the entertainment industry as a singer, under the stage name Johnny Lindy (the last name was taken from the Cranston area restaurant owned by his parents that Di Bona worked at as a pre-teen); releasing two records by the age of 16, which became hits regionally. However Di Bona turned his aspirations to making film and television in 1962, following the major worldwide success of The Beatles, quoted in a 1990 interview as saying "Guys who sang romantic ballads were up a creek without a paddle. So I adapted."[2]
He received an education at Emerson College in Boston, where he served as manager of WECB, the campus radio station.[3] Di Bona met his wife Gina, who serves as a production consultant on many of his series including America's Funniest Home Videos and with whom they have a daughter, Cara, while attending Emerson College.[2] After graduating from Emerson in 1966 and earning up a master's degree of fine arts in film at UCLA, he worked for nine years at Boston's then-NBC affiliate WBZ-TV (channel 4; now a CBS-owned station). After he left WBZ-TV, Vin, his wife and daughter moved to Los Angeles, Di Bona did not find a job for about eight months, until he became employed at CBS directing and producing documentaries for the network, which earned him four Emmys and a Peabody Award.[2]
Di Bona is considered one of the pioneers of reality TV, thanks to Battle of the Network Stars, which Di Bona produced in 1976.[3] By the 1980s, Di Bona became a producer for the syndicated newsmagazine Entertainment Tonight and later served as a producer for one season on the ABC series MacGyver; he also was a director for the American Music Awards and the Academy of Country Music Awards and produced taped segments for the 36th Annual Emmy Awards, among others.[2]
Di Bona's first two television series creations were spawned from two Japanese programs, and at the insistence of his wife Gina: the ABC series Animal Crack-Ups, was based on a popular Japanese game show called Waku Waku; his wife Gina watched a story featured on CBS News about the show, which aired on the Tokyo Broadcasting System, the story featured a frilled lizard, which made Gina laugh and at her insistence, Vin looked into developing a series based on Waku Waku. America's Funniest Home Videos was inspired by another Tokyo Broadcasting System series, the variety show Fun TV with Kato-chan and Ken-chan, after Vin and Gina attended a television festival in France and Gina walked past a booth showing Japanese home video clips, Gina found the clips in the program to be hilarious, asking her husband to look into developing a series based on the viewer-submitted home video segment.[2]
The success of America's Funniest Home Videos eventually led to two spinoffs, America's Funniest People and the short-lived World's Funniest Videos; along with similar home video shows Show Me The Funny for Fox Family Channel (now ABC Family) and the syndicated series That's Funny. Di Bona also produced several made-for-TV movies and a Showtime series Sherman Oaks. Vin Di Bona also serves as chair for The Caucus for Television Producers, Writers and Directors. Vin Di Bona received the 2,346th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Thursday, August 23, 2007.
In 1992, Arleen Sorkin was fired from the television show, America's Funniest People by Di Bona. In response, Sorkin filed a lawsuit against Di Bona, claiming that she was dismissed from the show due to her race, after ABC Chairman Dan Burke had suggested to Di Bona that Sorkin be replaced by an African-American or a person of another ethnic minority. Sorkin sought $450,000 for lost earnings, and an additional unspecified amount for harm to her professional reputation and emotional injury. Sorkin additionally claimed that after she denounced the move as unfair, Di Bona changed plans and hired new cohost Tawny Kitaen, who is white.[4]
In May 2011, Di Bona, a leading member of the Caucus for Producers, Writers and Directors was censured for standing by his remarks that he accepts Hollywood's discrimination against conservatives, causing fellow member Lionel Chetwynd to publicly resign from the Caucus the following month. Di Bona made comments in relation to the publication Prime Time Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How The Left Took Over Your TV, that personally affected Chetwynd and eventually caused a falling out between the two.[5]