Ever heard of Stephen Chao? He’s the former VP of News Corporation who helped launch “America’s Most Wanted” and “Cops” on Fox in the late ‘80s. Those shows were both huge successes, and for four or five years, Chao was a rising star in the TV world, creating innovative, low-budget shows that attracted large audiences. His career, though, soon became as controversial as the shows he produced, as he screwed the pooch in memorable fashion. Chao always had a penchant for raising the ire of his bosses, but there were two incidents that will be forever remembered in the great history of career suicide.

The first strike against him came when Chao nearly drowned Rupert Murdoch’s dog at a company party. Chao reportedly heaved the purebred into Murdoch’s pool to test its swimming legs; he then had to jump in the pool a few moments later – in a suit – to save it. Then, at a Fox conference in Colorado in 1992, Chao delivered a speech on “The Threat to Democratic Capitalism Posed by Modern Culture,” which was accompanied by a male stripper who performed on stage as he spoke. Murdoch, sitting alongside Dick Cheney, had front-row seats to the performance, and he promptly fired Chao after the conference.

After leaving News Corp., Chao went on to USA Network, where he worked on the detective show, “Monk,” but he was unable to establish a good relationship with USA executives, and he left the network in 2001.

This week, Chao is back in the news with the launch of a new “how-to” video site, WonderHowTo. The site is an aggregate of DIY-style how-to videos that range from practical tutorials in tying a necktie or baking bread to more controversial videos that offer instructions on “how to build a cable TV de-scrambler” or “how to hack Google”.

Chao partnered-up with E.W. Scripps, which owns the DIY Network, and he got a venture capital firm, General Catalyst Partners, to fund the startup; Chao claims that the “how-to” market generates up to $1 billion annually. Also, to sidestep copyright infringement issues that YouTube has encountered, Chao plans to link to copyrighted material, rather than hosting it on his site. The only instructional video missing from the site is how to keep Chao out of trouble now that he’s back in the limelight.

photo by Ann Johansson, via nytimes.com