Actuality Entertainment
Overview
Providing an answer to the recruiting problem for summer sales companies, Firstline Security affiliate Actuality Entertainment formed to create The Prodigy, a reality television show. Firstline Security and other companies were experiencing difficulty in the recruitment process: many firms were offering bonuses up to $20,000 to inexperienced sales representatives. Chief Executive Officer Wright Thurston and Chief Marketing Officer Bryan Ferre developed Actuality Entertainment and The Prodigy in order to increase the number of summer sales candidates as well as the number of summer sales themselves. The production team traveled to colleges across the country and interviewed more than 10,000 students.
Ultimately, Actuality Entertainment selected 2000 students to compete in the show’s first challenge. Contestants were trained on how to sell Firstline Security products before being sent out to locations across the country to put their training to practical use. Film graduates of Collins College in Tempe, Arizona, were hired to follow contestants in 57 different cities. The film crews followed students for four months, taping them nonstop. Actuality Entertainment assigned increasingly difficult tasks to competitors and regularly eliminated contestants. The Prodigy ended with an awards ceremony in Hawaii, where the winner earned $300,000 in cash and a brand new car.
Unfortunately, Actuality Entertainment was never able to air The Prodigy. Shortly after the show’s wrap-up, Firstline Security entered into bankruptcy and the 80-plus hours of footage for the reality television show was destroyed during the liquidation of assets. Despite this, The Prodigy’s winner, Jordan Folsom, still received the cash prize and the car.