production - Why does America's Got Talent have so many executive producers? - Movies & TV

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I was watching America's Got Talent
last night, and during the opening credits was struck by the number of executive
producers listed. It seems to grow longer each
year.

They are (from the official href="http://www.nbc.com/americas-got-talent/about/" rel="nofollow">NBC
site):

Executive producers: Simon
Cowell, Cecile Frot-Coutaz, Ken Warwick, Jason Raff, and Georgie
Hurford-Jones

Co-executive producers: Nikki
Boella, James McKinlay, Tabitha
Hanson-Obtulowicz

Executive in Charge
of Production: Tiffany Hoss, Charlie Krestul

Now
I understand Simon Cowell and Ceicle Frot-Coutaz. He is head of the production company
SYCO TV, and she is the CEO of FremantleMedia North America, which produce the show. And
Ken Warwick is an executive producer and href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Showrunner" rel="nofollow">showrunner
for American Idol. (Not clear if he is is also a showrunner at
AGT.)

But who are all these other seven EPs?
None of them have entries in Wikipedia.

The
executive
producer entry in Wikipedia indicates there can be several types of executive
producer: traditional EPs (production executives, financiers, etc.), head writer(s), and
showrunner(s).

I can't see how there could be
more than one head writer -- host Nick Cannon is the only one that appears to have a
script. AGT is making a ton of money, so it wouldn't seem there would need to be a lot
of investors.

Do they really need ten
chefs in the kitchen?

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class="normal">Answer

These days
it is more common for people to 'buy' themselves a credit on TV and film productions
through financial backing, sponsorship or other enabling
methods.

Traditionally (at least on film), the
executive producer(s) coughed up the money to get the production rolling - they
generally wouldn't have any other impact on the production. Of course, there are a few
horror stories about executive producers only providing finances on the proviso that
their terrible niece got a role, or they could sit in on the set (and
interfere).

In the case of AGT, I suspect that
this roster of EPs is made up mostly of financial backers.