Craig Piligian

Heavyweight television producer Craig Piligian cut his teeth overseeing segments of the cop docu-series "Real Stories of the Highway Patrol" before charging to the forefront of the reality-TV revolution of the early 2000s. As one of the first executive producers on the game-changing "Survivor" series, Piligian helped establish the steadfast standards of reality-competition programming. In 2003, he left the seminal program and formed a partnership with blue-collar TV personality Mike Rowe, focusing on a line of craft- and labor-oriented reality series that included the Rowe-narrated chop-shop shows "American Chopper" and "American Hot Rod." Similarly, Piligian produces "Dirty Jobs," a series that follows Rowe as he seeks out and participates in the world's most bizarre but necessary occupational duties. In addition to overseeing such other macho docu-series as "Swamp Loggers" and "Man vs. Cartoon" (a popular-science show which attempts to physically re-create the outlandish concepts of Wile E. Coyote cartoons), Piligian launched "Top Shots," the History Channel's first-ever competition program. He revitalized yet another reality sub-genre with "Ghost Hunters," a paranormal-investigation spook-fest that begot two spin-off series in "Ghost Hunters Academy" and "Ghost Hunters International."