Recent tales have surfaced that tell me that the filming of the new startup reality show to hit the San Francisco Bay Area has wrapped up. That’s right, San Francisco…you won’t have to worry about video cameras invading the myriad of startup and tech parties that we have around the city. The show, tentatively named “Silicon Valley”, that some either have hated from the start or love it has captured all the footage that it needs to make it’s eight-plus episodes for the season and has moved on to post-production work in order to get the whole thing ready for the upcoming fall season where it’s expected to make its debut.
“Silicon Valley”, as you may recall, is a reality show produced by Bravo TV that follows along the adventures of several entrepreneurs and records their day-to-day activities so folks around the world, or at least those that have Bravo as a cable channel, can see what it’s like to be a struggling entrepreneur, ready to defy-the-odds, and witness the potential birth of something great. The inaugural season has cameras that follow along at least six of the cast mates, including The Next Web reporter and Newspepper founder, Hermione Way, her brother, serial entrepreneur Ben Way, Dwight Crow, David Murray, Marcus Lovingood, and Kim Taylor. What antics, surprises, drama, and potential success stories will turn up? I suppose that we’re going to have to just wait until the fall season to find out.
When exactly will the series make its debut on the small screen? All guesses point to potentially October or November of this year, but there hasn’t even been confirmation yet. I bet that once executive producer, Randi Zuckerberg, takes a look at all the hundreds of hours of footage that was captured during the three months of taping, it will give the network a better idea of when to make its debut.
And there’s a lot of anticipation about what this show will be like. Many have said that it’s going to be an absolute disaster and that it reality TV should not be in Silicon Valley, but no one has even seen the show yet–in fact the cast probably doesn’t even know what the whole series will look like. What has been said already is that Mrs. Zuckerberg’s role also includes advising (the cast and television staff) on how to best capture the spirit of technology and entrepreneurship throughout production. Maybe this won’t be so bad after all, right? Perhaps we’re all just passing a lot of judgement ahead of what the production magic will do to make it worth watching and worthy of honoring the image of entrepreneurs and Silicon Valley? Some might not think so in light of hearing about parties happening at “The Villa”, a giant mansion located here in San Francisco where two of the cast mates live, along with other friends.
But you know what? I’m not really thinking that the show will be a disaster like some people say, but I will hold judgement until the series actually airs. However, from what I can piece together, the show will definitely show the cast having parties either at The Villa or elsewhere throughout the Valley (I mean, c’mon, you can’t expect a tech show to NOT have parties, right?) and it looks like Ms. Way even threw together an interesting event at The Villa as well…the event, “Hollywood Meets Silicon Valley“, is a new program created by Ms. Way as an effort to help bridge any divide the two parts of California might have in helping one another. From what sources tell me, this is going to be a bi-annual event and if the speakers at the inaugural event was any sign of things to come (Jermaine Dupri, Shira Lazar, Kwasi Aasare, Brian Sadler, etc), this might be a great thing.
So we can gather that there are professional, non-party-type events that could be featured on “Silicon Valley”, but what else? Just who are the people in the cast and is there any credibility to them? Are they really hustling to get their startup and endeavor off the ground and will it be seen on TV? Well, another source close to the cast has informed me that while you might think that cameras are always going to show them partying, there were many instances where the cameras were following at least one of the cast mates as they were off meeting with business partners, customers, and investors.
Regardless of whatever we can assume, the responsibility is now on Bravo TV to paint a respectful and representative view of Silicon Valley in a way that the industry can be proud of. It’s not surprising that the network has at least one more reality TV show being developed right now so it will be interesting to see how things develop.
Photo Credit:
- “Silicon Valley” via Bravo TV
- “Hollywood Meets Silicon Valley” photo taken by Michael O’Donnell/Flickr
