(FORTUNE Small Business) – Lights! Camera! Invent? Starting this summer, the Home Shopping Network and the USA Network will team up on a reality show pitting eight inventors against one another in an entrepreneurial Survivor. The show, called Made in the U.S.A., will showcase its inventive contestants in competition, eliminating them in head-to-head contests in the development and marketing of their products and culminating in three finalists' peddling their creations on HSN. Jeff Wachtel, executive VP of original programming at USA, tells FSB why we should watch these aspiring Edisons duel over the grand prize, a one-year product contract with the Home Shopping channel. --I.M.

Who wants to watch inventors sit around and, well, think?

Everybody believes they have the great idea. My dad is actually an inventor. He's a dentist, and he also has a mail-order business for eight or nine inventions.

Where's the drama?

That's a challenge. It doesn't have the physical action of Survivor, but head games are the biggest part of reality shows. The Apprentice didn't have people throwing punches. It was about highly ambitious young people who want to get ahead in business. In the right hands, it's high drama.

Will they be mad scientists on an island, like Dr. Moreau?

We're not going to isolate them, but we will create a lab for them at the HSN studios in Tampa. One of the major interest factors is what an obsession with getting a product to market does to your family. Anyone who does it has to be somewhat obsessive.

Why watch this instead of, say, Wife Swap?

In a world with a proliferation of fame not based on achievement, I think there's a swing in the other direction. We're betting that people will come to watch a show that's a meritocracy.

Will the contestants be showing cleavage?

I don't think so. I don't know how many sexy inventors are out there. But we'll see. Maybe someone will invent a tear-away.