A kind of mix between the business remakes of Gordon Ramsay’s “Restaurant Nightmares” and “Tabitha’s Salon Takeover,” with a dash of “Shark Tank,” the new series “The Profit” (CNBC, 10 p.m.) unleashes the president of RV World to advise and invest in struggling companies.
“When we started at CNBC, we were very eager to do a business makeover show, but we wanted to do a makeover show that was Yelp-proof, a makeover show that when the camera crews left the business, it would still sort of be truly transformed, that would really make a difference,” said Jim Ackerman, senior vice president of alternative program development, said at a breakfast session for the show at the TV Critics Press Association summer press tour last week.
“The only way to really do that is to find somebody that’s actually not just going to make it over, but actually invest in these businesses, and we found one in Marcus Lemonis.”
Lemonis, for his part, said he wanted to do the show is “a love for business,” focusing on people, process and product.
“It’s not a revolutionary formula. It’s a very simple formula, but in that equation, the one thing that I know for sure is the one part of that that’s most important is people,” he says. ” If you have crappy people, it doesn’t work.”
Also: Cash infusions help. “The thing that makes this show different is that I put up $2 million of my own money, not someone else’s money, not a bank’s money, and in some cases I make money, and in some cases I lose it.”
“The Profit” is part of a retooled prime time lineup at CNBC that began with “The Car Chasers,” which has been picked up for a second season that begins in October, and a new show about a sports agency on the way called “Money Talk$.”