Michael Davies
Producer
Who Wants to be a Millionaire and Wife Swap

Instrumental in bringing Who Wants to Be a Millionaire to U.S. television, on which he continues to serve as Executive Producer, Davies has been a key figure in transforming the television landscape and bringing alternative ideas to the mainstream.

Davies and his team at NY-based Embassy Row focus on producing smart and alternative content for broadcast and cable networks and the internet.  Moreover, Davies specializes in working with a select group of UK-based production companies to successfully launch their formats and build their businesses in the highly competitive U.S. market.  

With the continued success of Emmy Award-winning Millionaire in syndication and Wife Swap (with RDF Media) in primetime, Davies has firmly established himself as one of the leaders in the alternative and reality television business.

In 2005 Embassy Row consolidated their television development in New York and broached new territory with a wide range of innovative projects.  In addition to the summer series, My Kind Of Town, under the company’s first look deal with ABC, Davies made a long desired entry into the world of documentary film with the release of First Descent, the completion of Once In A Lifetime (with Passion Pictures and Greene Street) and the television series Iconoclasts for The Sundance Channel (with Radical Media).  The company also made its first venture in the web and emerging media with a summer venture with Pepsi and Yahoo!, where two friends went on a road trip around the country to see “100 Concerts in 100 Days” and documented their journey in a series of webisodes.

In 2006, powered by a new overall deal with Sony and GSN, Davies will expand his range of alternative programming with such projects as: The World Series of Pop Culture, a multi-platform quiz event for VH1; Keith Barry: Extraordinary, a primetime celebrity magic special for CBS and The World Series of Darts, a major sporting event for ESPN.  Moreover, following the recent sale of Once In A Lifetime to Miramax and ESPN, Embassy Row is rapidly expanding its development in the non-fiction film and sports-feature arena.  The company is also set to announce its first pickups in the world of scripted half hour comedy and is currently working on multiple development projects for GSN and other cable and broadcast networks.

Founder and President of Diplomatic, Davies also includes among his credits ESPN’s popular game show 2 Minute Drill and The WB’s game show/reality hybrid Studio 7.  Additionally, Davies took a brief hiatus from television to attend the 2002 World Cup Finals in Japan and Korea as a journalist, writing a widely read diary for espn.com's critically acclaimed Page 2.  Davies will also be attending the 2006 World Cup, where he will return to Page 2 and expand his online diary to include video.

Prior to the formation of Diplomatic, Davies served as Executive Vice President, Alternative Series and Specials, for ABC Entertainment, where he oversaw the development of the Daytime Emmy- and TV Guide Award-winning U.S. version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, the popular David Blaine magic specials, the original pilot for The Man Show (which ran for seven seasons on Comedy Central) and the 1998 and 1999 Academy Awards.  He joined the network in January 1998.

Davies joined ABC from Buena Vista Productions, where he was Senior Vice President, Development, responsible for developing all first-run syndication, cable and network programming. Davies had been with Buena Vista Productions since 1992, shepherding such projects as the late night talk-variety program The Keenen Ivory Wayans Show; the television adaptation of the feature hit, Honey, I Shrunk The Kids; the Emmy Award-winning Comedy Central series Win Ben Stein’s Money; the Lifetime hit game show, Debt, which won a CableACE Award for Best Game Show in 1996; the Emmy-winning children’s series Disney Presents Bill Nye the Science Guy and the original development of the Survivor format in the US (with UK indie Planet 24).

Before joining Buena Vista, Davies worked with dick clark productions, inc., PBS and Merv Griffin Enterprises.

Davies earned a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts degree in law and history from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and began his career at Academy Films in London.