The Benefactor is an American reality television show broadcast on ABC starting on September 13, 2004. The premise involved 16 contestants vying to win US$1 million from billionaire entrepreneur and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. In late March and early April 2004, ABC held open auditions for the show in Atlanta, Boise, Boston, Dallas and Las Vegas and also accepted auditions by mail. The show and its format were kept tightly under wraps during its filming, which began on April 30, 2004 in Dallas, Texas. Mark Cuban purposefully kept details about the show to a minimum, eliciting only a small bit of information about the show on his personal blog during filming. Dallas journalists, eager to learn what was going on, routinely compiled sightings of Benefactor film crews around town. However, the show proved to be extremely unpopular and suffered from very low ratings, despite leading in to the popular Monday Night Football. The show also suffered from ABC stations in NFL markets moving the show to a timeslot after Jimmy Kimmel Live! or another night entirely due to local sports shows devoted to NFL coverage or local pre-game shows in the pre-MNF slot. Episode three had only 4.9 million viewers, the network's least-watched show of that week. Episode four did even worse, with only 4.05 million viewers and finished sixth in its time slot among 18- to 49-year-olds.
Air Date: 2004-09-13
In the premiere episode, the 16 finalists are brought into the Dallas mansion and are left to their own devices while...
Air Date: 2004-09-20
Cuban selects three of the remaining 13 contestants and has them pick teams. Linda, Shawn and Dominic make their pic...
Air Date: 2004-09-27
Cuban gives the remaining contestants the task of spending $1000 in 12 hours. They must challenge themselves, push th...
Air Date: 2004-10-04
Mark Cuban divides the contestants into two groups and instructs them to search the streets of Dallas to put together...
Air Date: 2004-10-18
Mark meets with the five remaining competitors and first tells them that Dominic, the odd man out, will be leaving. ...
Air Date: 2004-10-25
Mark goes to each of the three remaining contestants home towns. He visits Linda and her boyfriend, Dan, in Boston. ...