UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. — What if you were the big winner on a network television reality show and nobody watched — would it be a big deal?

Well, it was certainly a big deal for Utahn Shawn Nelson when he won on Fox's "The Rebel Billionaire: Branson's Quest for the Best." But it wasn't such a big deal for Fox, let alone the nation's TV viewers, who stayed away by the hundreds of millions.

Frankly, it was more than a bit of a surprise that Fox let "Rebel Billionaire" run from beginning to end. The ratings were nothing short of atrocious — the show was consistently finishing five in its time slot, losing to reruns on the WB and UPN and drawing fewer viewers than the morning news shows.

It made you wonder if the show remained on the air because Fox had some sort of deal with billionaire Richard Branson, which Fox Entertainment president Gail Berman said was not the case.

"We have no relationship with him," she said. "We just liked the show and thought it was a good one."

And "Billionaire" didn't stay on because Fox, which had an extremely rough fall in the ratings, ran out of shows to replace it, Berman maintained.

"No, it's not a case of not having anything else to put on," she told the Deseret Morning News. "It's finishing off a cycle of what we considered to be a high-quality show."

Which she clearly felt some higher-rated Fox reality shows were not. "My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss" drew more viewers than "Billionaire." So did "Playing It Straight" and "The Next Great Champ," all of which were yanked before they played to a conclusion.

"In the case of 'Boss,' we removed it from the schedule because as a concept, it wasn't playing out," Berman said. "And in the case of 'Branson,' we let it run. We thought it was . . . an excellent program, and unfortunately too late to the party, probably."

In other words, the show couldn't help but look like an "Apprentice" rip-off. Which it was. And being unoriginal kept viewers away.

"Some genres within reality have a lot of depth," said Mike Darnell, Fox's executive vice president of reality programming, pointing to "The Bachelor" as a show you can do "40 variations" of. "Apparently, 'The Apprentice' has just one show in it. And they didn't come back as big as everybody expected. We, quite frankly, miscalculated the power of that idea."

The other problem had nothing to do with Nelson and everything to do with Branson.

"In his case, not being an American didn't help. I think (Donald) Trump is so purely American that that's what people think of in this country," Darnell said. "I also think (Branson) is a nice guy and that doesn't work in reality television. I hate to say it, but I think you're watching for emotion and sort of a sense of power. And, while Richard's a very powerful guy, he's also a very decent, wonderful human being. And, quite frankly, that may not pay off in reality TV."

Which sends sort of conflicting messages. Fox would learn a bit of a lesson from the experience, however. Berman said, "Advertisers liked the show. . . . We had very, very good ad placement in it.

"It was disappointment in the ratings, but it was well-sold. So we figured we'd stick with it."

Whereas advertisers weren't interested in sticking with a low-rated piece of trash like "My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss."

Which meant that Berman could say, "OK, let's finish it off," as opposed to just yanking it, she said.

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E-mail: pierce@desnews.com