My descent into and out of Reality Television Part 4

Here’s how it works:

- A cable television channel puts out the word to production companies that it is looking for something to bolster their 13-16 teen advertising revenue

- Production companies come in by the boat loads, pitching show ideas

- Cable Channel picks a handful for development

- Short treatments are created, sometimes short mock-videos of a segment

- Cable Channel greenlights their favorite

- Production Company makes a pilot

- Cable Channel test pilot with various audiences

- Cable Channel requests re-shoots and re-casts based on numbers

- Production company produces 2, sometimes 3 version of the pilot

- Pilot tests well, cable company orders a tentative batch of episodes, say 3. They cut their first check. (this is important. Cable company is only out money paid to employees who run this process, production company has paid all other expenses with deficit finanance)

- Production company produces 3 episodes

- Cable channel runs the 3 episodes and tracks audience response

- Cable finds response great, orders 13, 26, or some number of episodes.

- Cable company makes it clear it now owns the show, and can hire any production company to produce it, if the originating production company is deemed wanting in any way.

- End game – Production company makes it’s money in the margins of production, the cable company owns the show outright, and leverages it’s copyrights into all the markets it can get into.

So MTV, VH1, History Channel, Comedy Central, etc. have made up approximately Zero content. All original programming concepts come from the production companies. Picture American Idol where the channels are the judges, the production companies are the contestants and the award is that the winner gets to have their property owned by the channels, and the channels may or may not continue employing the talent, even though the channels can use the talents image and production piece into the distant future.

We made it to the finals. More on that next time.

My Descent Into and Out-of Reality Television – Part 3

When a property gets picked up by one of the cable channels, many opportunities arise. Most importantly, doors open up. My partner was a consumate salesman. Now that we had a “show in development” at VH1, he is on the war path. He phones every production company and cable network in town. Even though our show is not produced yet, we get meetings. My partner’s plan is to pitch as many shows as possible, hit them with dozens of show ideas. The more people we meet, the more possible shows to make.

We were striking when the iron was hot, and we knew it. Reality television had not really hit big yet. There was no Apprentice. There was no Dancing with the Stars. Survivor was new and American Idol was in it’s first season. We pitched shows at Comedy Central, HBO, Bravo, MTV, History Channel, Nickelodeon, Spike, Oxygen, Animal Planet, PBS, Discovery Channel, FOX, ABC, NBC, CBS and numerous production companies you’ve never heard of. This was a great education. I learned about the inner-workings of the television industry as a fly-on-the-wall at many of these meetings. I was an unknown quantity, even to myself in a sense, and I was seeing things with fresh eyes.

My first impressions were:

#1: Everybody knowns everybody else in TV. This is a small universe. The geneologies of past working relationships come up in every conversation. Who worked with whom on what project at what network with which manager and on and on and on. And I’m not speaking of the celebrities. These are program directors, developmet people, writers, producers, executive producers(our title), department heads and legal. Everybody seems to furnish enough info. to establish their level in a virtual cast system of programming progeny. I, being of broadband bloodline, am harder to place but tolerated because I am an idea guy.

#2: Reality TV was changing everything. It was changing the business structure. It was shrinking budgets. Editors were becoming the storytellers, not the writers. Reality was being poo-pooed in the media-news side of things, but behind the scenes, everybody saw the writing on the wall and we were getting meeting after meeting because we had ideas. I think at our peak we had more than 30 one-sheets. We weren’t famous, we didn’t have a celebrity attached to any one of these properties. We didn’t have a writer. We didn’t even have an agent. Although William Morris eventually got into the act, kind of, we did this all as two guys with ideas and a good connection.

#3: It helped to be in New York. In LA, everybody was getting reality show agents. Agents ran the show. But in New York, a small town – media-wise, all it took was establishing your family-line, having a show in production, and a bag of good show ideas… Voila’, a meeting. If the execs got it, then BOOM, a pilot order was placed and the production was off an running. Reality TV was cheap to produce and test. Compared to a CSI:, or Law and Order, Reality TV was a crap-shoot everybody was willing to test. When Joe Millionaire hit big the following year and American Idol had it’s breakthrough first season, things started to get wild. But until then, we were able to get all these meetings; two guys with a powerful connection (the CEO of Viacom) and a bag full of ideas.

Another thing I learned, is that I had no idea where TV shows actually came from. That I was naive about the process. I had this idea that Nickelodeon, MTV, History Channel, etc. had great staffs of writers, producers, and directors. This idea was shattered when we were was introduced to the creator/executive producer of one of MTV’s most popular afternoon shows, Room Raiders. (Room Raiders did incredible numbers with girls 13-16) He didn’t work for MTV. He didn’t fit the model of what I thought MTV programming people would look like. Nothing in TV, as they say, is as it appears. Especially not behind the scenes.

The Room Raider’s premise was: invite a young man to go through three different young women’s bedrooms while the young women sat in a remote location viewing the humiliation. The young man would have tweezers, a black light, and permission to go through all her drawers, all her garbage, her closet, etc. Then he’d have to pick which girl went with which bedroom later, when they all met face to face. I forget what happened if he picked the right one. A date? A prize? I don’t know because I never saw one episode all the way through. But I was at it’s launch party. And the launch party wasn’t at MTV. It was at some company named GranadaUSA. Never heard of them before? Me neither. We were invited to the launch of Room Raiders because, due to my partner’s persistence, it’s creator/exec. producer was interested in one of our show ideas. This was the man who’d taken Room Raiders from a one-sheet show idea, and turned it into a 10 million dollar franchise. We were all ears.

Oh, and another thing, and Room Raider fans would be mortified if they knew this…

Room Raider’s creator is an Englishman in his fifties. More about him in the next installment

My descent into and out of Reality Television – Part 2

Back in 2002, “The Iron Chef” cooking show was kind of a cult favorite amongst television programmers. It was on late night television and hadn’t amounted to much in the states, yet. Of course, in Japan it was a phenom. It was also my favorite show. The dub was terrible. The english voice overs were hilarious. The seriousness of the master chefs was over the top. It as operatic in tone. Chefs riding in on horses. Swooning sycophants everywhere. There wasn’t anything like it yet on American TV. Over the top cooking. I was mesmerized.

Around this time, an associate from pre-dotcom boom times called up said, “I have a meeting with the higher-ups at Viacom tomorrow. I know they are looking for shows for kids 14-19. They want fashion, music, celebrity, and humor. Got any ideas?” He went on to say that his meeting was with Judy McGrath and Brian Graden, He was going to pitch them dozens of shows, but he needed one more that fit an MTV, VH1 vibe.

These people meant nothing to me, so I Googled them. OK. So these were people in the stratosphere. These were real players. How did he get a meeting like this? Turns out my soon-to-be-partner was best friends with Mel Karmizan. He could get any meeting he wanted at a Viacom company, or anywhere else in entertainment for that matter. And now he had, and was asking me for help.

I remember where I was standing when I came up with the idea. I was walking between the bedroom and the bathroom at home. It hit me fast. The idea for a show that would fit my friend’s bill. I called him back on my cell right there in the hallway between my bedroom and bathroom. Kind of in limbo between the nap room and the crap room; an appropriate zone to talk television.

“You know, why don’t you do an Iron Chef type thing, only use fashion instead of food. Bring designers together, put some kind of material undercover, like a bolt of silk. Then reveal the material, tell them they’re going to make hunting outfits or evening gowns or swimwear, and let the designers design and cut and stitch like crazy for two or three hours, follow them with cameras, have celebrity commentators doing play-by-play and Voila’, you would have a show. So in other words, use the Iron Chef format but plug in everything these television companies are looking for: entertainment, models, celebrity, fashion, and music. (you could certainly have a DJ in the background)

My friend was ecstatic. He love the idea. Called me a genius. Asked me to tap out a one-sheet and send it to him. My first TV pitch one sheet. Took me about half an hour. I sent it. And that was that.

He called up a few days later and said we’d hit the jackpot. (operative word – “we”)

Graden and McGrath heard all his show pitches and had loved the Iron Chef thing, and only it. Turns out they too were fans of Iron Chef. They loved the idea of replicating it on some level. He now had their blessing and had meetings lined-up with numerous people down the Viacom food chain; the MTVs and VH1s and things like that.

He then offered me participation in the equity of the project. This surprised me. All I’d done was tossed an idea his way on one piece of paper. When I protested my innocence, he insisted I come along for the ride.

I hesitated. This could be a springboard into to getting an education in TV. A possible new channel of clients in a time when internet was limping along. TV is a legacy industry. It wouldn’t go away like the internet had. At least I could foster this until broadband came back. And even though I was primarily an adolescent media specialist, it would be interesting to see pop-culture machinations from the inside.

After some thought, this offer seemed like a life-line for my fledgling firm. And it was in a way. but it was attached to a speed boat without a driver, as I was soon to find out.

My Descent Into and Out of Reality Television – Part 1

What follows is a behind the scenes story about the development of a reality television show. I personally experienced everything I’m about to describe. I’ve changed some names to protect the guilty. My observations are from an “accidental executive producer” point of view.This experience is much funnier to me now than when I lived through it.

Our TV show was in full production mode. Since the green light, producers had been hired, the sets designed, the model search was on, the celebrity panelists were being interviewed, and, most improtantly, the legal side was sewn up. If we get an order for series, it will mean hundreds of thousands of dollars, net, to my partner and I. If not, at least we’ll nab a kill fee running in the tens of thousands. If you would have told me 2 years ago that I would be executive producing a semi-reality television show for a major cable channel, I’d have thought you nuts-O. But, out of the thousands of pitches by some of the biggest names in TV production, they were going with our property. This was a once in a lifetime shot. At least that’s what I thought at the time.

This wasn’t bad, for Plan B.

I’d spent the 1990s as an advertising art director and software creative director. By decade’s end, I’d won almost every award in my field and decided to started my own firm in March 2000. My space was on 102nd and Broadway in Manhattan. My clients included AOL, HBOFamily, United Way, and several high-end media design firms. Broadband interactive design for every client. We expected, at the time, that broadband would soon be so ubiquitous, we’d be lining up subscribers and taking advantage of Seven years of internet infrastucture pipe laying, finally! Things were looking good. Except for the date. March 2000 was the beginning of the dot-com bust.

For those younger than 26, the impact of the bust is hard to fathom. For those of us invested in broadband content development, in New York City, it was “The Great Depression”. We went from futurist euphoria, egged on by the broadband ubiquity we are only now experiencing in 2008, to the absolute bottom of some unseen well of digital dankness. For those of us who had enough cash to survive those first dozen months, there was 911. This deeply disorientingly other world event put an end to hopes of business in broadband.

Then a call came from a sometimes creative partner. “I’ve got a meeting with some TV guys next week, can you come and do some creative for the pitch.” Hmmm. Television was still around. Perhaps that could keep me busy until broadband recovers.

Worst decision of my life…

Youtube beats Hollywood

This month’s Vanity Fair caught my eye at the local salon. Michael Wolff’s piece called “The Plot Sickens” is a classic riff on the demise of two channels; movies and television.

Here is how he puts it in his conclusion:

“The epochal point is that Hollywood, which has been the center of the culture, the coolest place, the ruler of the Zeitgeist, is out of it. It’s on the industrial sidelines. It’s just a bunch of crabby managers and a sullen workforce in a dysfunctional relationship in a declining industry, quarreling over an ever smaller piece of the pie.”

You really have to read the whole thing. Do you think it makes a point?

The Book Channel. Micro-Movies for Book Lovers

For years executive summaries of popular business books have been produced by many companies — in a Cliff Notes fashion.

Vidlit produces executive summary videos of popular novels and business books. Yet another example of someone thinking up a new channel and making the media sing. If you like “coming attractions” at the movies, here is the same for the book store…