They're so money

By Scott Collins

Sept. 6, 2004 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

He’s younger, hipper and has less alarming hair. Now Mark Cuban is about to find out if he can trump the Donald as a TV star.

Cuban, Internet billionaire and feisty owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, is host and star of ABC’s latest reality series, “The Benefactor,” in which he leads a group of competitors through a series of on-the-fly character tests in a battle for $1 million.

The concept sounds suspiciously similar to that of NBC’s smash “The Apprentice.” But Cuban is hardly a Donald Trump clone, on screen or off. This is a 46-year-old guy who screams at NBA referees like a Little League dad gone berserk and shows up for business meetings in ripped jeans and goofy T-shirts.

“I could have been one of those 16 contestants,” the Dallas-based tycoon marveled during a recent visit to Los Angeles. “Why have I been able to get to this level? Luck, skill -- what?”

Maybe it has something to do with his self-promotional chops. Already he’s figured out how to make mischief in plugging “Benefactor,” which starts next Monday. He insists that any similarity between his show and “Apprentice,” which returns for a second season Thursday, is coincidental. But Cuban -- who until now has been a hero mainly to tech geeks and sports junkies -- clearly enjoys elevating his public profile by flicking verbal spitballs at Trump, the 58-year-old tycoon whose own celebrity has been rejuvenated by the NBC show.

“He’s certainly done a good job branding himself,” Cuban said of his rival mogul. “I just love to tweak him in the press, though, because he’s not that media savvy. He’s really not. And he takes the bait all the time.”

To help sell “Benefactor” to a meeting of TV critics in July, ABC trotted out a promotional clip in which Cuban jokingly suggested he could afford to write “Benefactor’s” $1-million prize check far more easily than Trump could. The Donald -- plagued by heavily publicized financial woes at his casino operations -- was not amused, and Cuban received e-mails from a Trump attorney threatening legal action.

Cuban, who initially told reporters he regretted the prank promo, grew defiant. “I had my lawyer tell his that if he wanted to find out who was more liquid and had more cash, we could do it publicly and let everyone know,” Cuban said in an e-mail. “I figured ... it would be entertaining to find out if he reads his balance sheet as accurately as he reads the TV ratings.”

Reached by phone, Trump expertly pivoted to counterspin mode, hedging the question of whether he actually intended to sue Cuban. “I’m much richer than Mark and I obviously have a much better television show, but nevertheless I hope he does really well with his show,” Trump said. Keeping the focus on himself, Trump added that Cuban “must like me because he bought an apartment in one of my buildings on Central Park West.”

Retorted Cuban: “Typical Donald Trump. He has never seen my show, but that never stops him from pretending to know what he is talking about.”

No matter who delivers the best lines, it remains that Trump is that rarest of creatures, a proven prime-time star. So far, Cuban is just one of the nation’s few hundred billionaires. Can “Benefactor” change that?

ABC better hope it can. Trying to cash in on Cuban’s notoriety among sports fans, the low-rated network is pairing the eight episodes of “Benefactor” with “Monday Night Football,” ABC’s most-watched program. But that means the Cuban show will confront a difficult scheduling issue. In much of the country, “Benefactor” airs at 8 p.m. Eastern time, leading into football. But West Coast viewers won’t see the program until after the game is over at 10 p.m. -- right opposite CBS’ hit crime drama “CSI: Miami.” As Andrea Wong, executive vice president of alternative programming, specials and late night for ABC Entertainment, said, “There’s no question it’s a tough time period.”

The hope is that, just as viewers were lured by Trump’s vaudevillian take on a scowling corporate alpha male, they will be similarly taken by Cuban’s mix of approachability and swagger. Cuban “doesn’t necessarily seem like someone who would be successful at life,” said David Young, the London-based creator and executive producer of “Benefactor.” “He didn’t necessarily go to the right schools, didn’t necessarily get the right education.”

The story of how Cuban elbowed his way into the billionaires’ club has attained the status of new-economy legend. After studying business at Indiana University, he started his entrepreneurial career in Dallas (“My car could make it [there], and it was a fun city,” he explained). He co-founded MicroSolutions, a tech company that was sold to CompuServe in 1990. But a far bigger score came at the height of the Internet frenzy nearly a decade later, when Yahoo! scooped up Cuban’s company Broadcast.com for $5.7 billion. While retaining his regular-guy demeanor, Cuban developed a ruthless business philosophy that could easily guide one of the young sharks sucking up to Trump on “Apprentice”: “Whenever you’re doing a deal, look around the table and try to find the sucker. If you don’t see him, the sucker is you.”

Since buying the Mavericks in 2000, Cuban has nurtured a reputation as a courtside bad boy. He’s calmed down a bit lately, but anyone who watched during Cuban’s first few seasons frequently saw him on camera, leaping and cheering like a tent-revival preacher when the scoreboard went his way and angrily hurling verbal abuse at officials when it didn’t. He’s been fined more than $1 million by the NBA for arguing with referees and, in one case, “making a derogatory gesture” during a game.

Given how the outbursts burnish his celebrity, the league’s fines might actually represent a bargain for Cuban. The same goes for the $1-million prize in “Benefactor,” although Cuban said his foray into reality TV is actually -- believe it or not -- an exercise in altruism. “This isn’t a business investment for me,” he said. It has been an opportunity, he said, “to change someone’s life forever.”

The opportunity arrived somewhat by accident. Producer Young pitched and sold “Benefactor” to ABC in February 2003. The timing proved fortuitous: the Walt Disney Co.-owned network had just lost out on the bidding to “Apprentice.”

“We worried that ABC might not buy ours” because the concept was so similar to that of ‘Apprentice,’ ” Young said. “Little did we know that in America, that doesn’t really matter.”

Young didn’t have anyone attached as star. He toyed with the idea of U.K. billionaires John Caudwell or Richard Branson (Branson later signed for his own reality series, “The Billionaire,” which debuts on Fox this fall). On the American side, Ted Turner or Bill Gates were batted around as possible candidates. But “ABC wanted somebody young, a little bit dangerous, a little bit unusual,” Young said.

Cuban says he’d been approached about eventually taking over the “Apprentice” franchise. But he had no interest in simply minding the store after Trump left. He met Young through their mutual agent, Endeavor’s Sean Perry. Cuban liked the idea of tackling what it meant to be successful through a series like “Benefactor.” While Cuban has dabbled in Hollywood -- he and longtime business partner Todd Wagner own the assets of Rysher Entertainment, for instance, and his firm HDNet hopes to exploit the emerging business of high-definition television -- this is his first major on-camera experience.

“It was something I thought would be unique,” Cuban said. “I don’t want to be 90 years old and look back and say, ‘Well, that might have been fun.’ ”

The producers sorted through thousands of applicants, whittling the list to 100. Then Cuban became more involved, helping pick the contestants and devising many of the challenges. Some seem reminiscent of “Apprentice.” For example, aspirants get $1,000 and 12 hours to develop a 15-minute presentation explaining what makes them special. Cuban also eavesdrops on the contestants through cameras hidden in the mansion where they’ve been cloistered.

An open question is whether viewers will warm to Cuban’s personality. Where Trump comes off as a fully realized (if cartoonish) mogul, Cuban may suffer from an onscreen identity crisis: Is he the arrogant, abrasive capitalist or the boyish philanthropist just trying to write a check to a deserving soul?

And how will televised selflessness play, coming from the attention-seeking tycoon known as the scourge of the NBA? “I loved doing [the show],” Cuban said. “I get to spend a lot of time with 16 strangers [who] became friends ... It wasn’t that I was judging them. I said, ‘Look, this isn’t about me, it’s about you.’ ”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Battle of the prime-time rich guys

Billionaires Donald Trump and Mark Cuban are already swapping insults over their rival reality shows. Here’s how the moguls stack up.

Donald Trump vs. Mark Cuban

Donald Trump

Show: “The Apprentice”

Age: 58

TV persona: Mock serious

Net worth: $2.5 billion (Forbes rank: 205)

Business degree (bachelor’s): Wharton School of Finance

Private plane: Boeing 727

Major ventures: Real estate, casinos, publishing