'Pitchmen' goes on without Billy Mays

Surrounded by a host of cooks scurrying through his kitchen to handle the start of the dinner rush, restaurateur Jamie Alba looked up from his cutting board to see a welcome surprise.

"I've got some good news for you, Jamie," thundered infomercial king Anthony (Sully) Sullivan, invading Alba's Sisley Italian Kitchen in Sherman Oaks, Calif., to film a segment for Season 2 of his series "Pitchmen."

The happy tidings: Retailer Whole Foods was test-marketing Alba's product, a vegetable substitute for meat. Beaming and backslapping, the two turned to leave for a celebratory meal. A trio of cameras captured their movements.

"That's good!" shouted a producer, stopping the pair in their tracks.

Time to film it all again.

In the course of 20 minutes, Alba and Sullivan ran through the scene several times. It's the peculiar rhythm of unscripted TV, where producers film "surprise" encounters many times to catch the right moment. And it has been Sullivan's reality for months, after the Discovery Channel agreed to air a second season of "Pitchmen," the series he initially starred in with longtime friend and partner Billy Mays.

The two proved to be a surprise success for Discovery Channel, drawing an average of 1.5 million viewers in their first season, which concluded days after Mays' June 28, 2009, death from a heart attack in his sleep at his home in Tampa, Fla.

Much of the series' energy came from the playful friction between Mays and Sullivan, an odd couple of former rivals working together to find new inventors for their infomercials. In a flash, the show's center vanished. Mays was a worldwide celebrity whose booming voice and in-your-face sales technique were legend.

Although producers announced a second "Pitchmen" season within two weeks of Mays' death, nobody really knew what kind of program they might create. Left hanging was a question as large as the $1 billion in sales that Mays' infomercials reportedly generated:

Could any of it work without the show's biggest star?

"I'm not entirely sure if anyone really thought we could pull it off," said Sullivan, 41, who spent eight months assembling the footage for this season. "I'm happy the network gave us a shot. If I've learned one thing over the years, it's don't bet against anybody," he said. "I wanted to do it for Billy, because I think that's what he would have wanted."

Some companies that tried to keep airing Mays' commercials after his death found the public couldn't accept them.

"Half the people didn't like the fact that we were on air, and half the people didn't want to buy from someone who was no longer with us," said Bill McAlister, president and co-owner of Media Enterprises, which saw sales plummet after resuming Mays' commercials for its Mighty Putty and Mighty Tape a month after he died. "I believe the consumer felt it to be offensive. We got several phone calls to that effect."

So McAlister eventually hired Sullivan to take over Mays' pitches.

"The consumer has taken to [Sullivan]. He's really becoming the next Billy Mays," McAlister said. "I do believe there's a big void in the marketplace, and he does it better than anybody else."

Sullivan shrugged off any talk of replacing his old friend.

"The 'next Billy Mays' thing wore on me and wore on his family," he said. "There's no replacing Billy Mays, and anyone who says that is reaching for a headline. I wanted to get away from that."

So when it came time to revamp "Pitchmen," Sullivan decided to do something he'd always warned employees and colleagues to avoid: bonding closely with the inventors.

"You got hundreds of hopefuls wanting to be inventors, and you suddenly realize you're making the show for the people behind the product," he added. "I tell my team, 'Don't get too attached to the inventors. It's just business.' But I don't take my own advice."

Until the ratings for Season 2 roll in, Sullivan won't know whether he has been successful in moving past his old friend's shadow while paying tribute to his legacy.

"My idea was to honor the man, honor my friend and continue the show," said Sullivan, who promised that flashes of Mays' presence will appear throughout the season. "Everyone just kind of saddled up and [thought], 'Let's go for this.' We're going to go down in flames, or it's going to be a hit."