American Inventor
A new show featuring innovative product ideas being evaluated and eliminated by a panel of three judges premieres Thursday night on ABC. It’s called American Inventor, and there’s nothing especially original about the concept. This appears to be a mash-up of a show the USA Network had on back in September of 2005 called “Made In The USA” and the American Idol format. The resemblance to American Idol is no accident, as the the show is being produced by Mr. Mean himself, Simon Cowell.

The only thing that’s going to have me tuning in Thursday, is that one of the judges is Doug Hall — the idea guru who helped to inspire me to go into the idea-selling business. I even had a chance to visit Doug’s Eureka Ranch brainstorming facility in Cincinnati, Ohio to work with Doug and his team of Trained Brains in generating ideas for a few of his clients. It was one of the best experiences of my life.

The brain-blessed Mr. Hall is one of the charter inductees to my personal innovation hall of fame, and it’s going to be interesting watching him on tv and hearing his opinions on the ideas offered up by Joe Public. But, given the base UNoriginality of the show itself, I can only wonder why the creators didn’t take advantage of Doug Hall’s pedigree and have him spin it into something destined to be infinitely more successful than its current incarnation — Perhaps something more along the lines of his weekly radio show, Brain Brew?

American Inventor premieres March 16th at 8pm EST.