Breaking News: Too many cooks - News Paper

Nowadays when someone goes to a major broadcast network he brings an army in with him. There is a non-writing “pod” producer attached and he generally has one or two execs, a studio involved so there are three more suits, an agent and possibly a manager. Also figure in the network exec you’re pitching to and three of his or her assistants and suddenly you have ten or so people in the room besides yourself. Wait. If the pod producer is part of an actor’s production company you might also get the actor, his development executive, his agent, and his manager. And if you have talent attached, tack on that person along with his posse. You need to rent out Radio City to pitch a pilot.

When David and I came up with the idea for BIG WAVE DAVE’S  in 1993 we didn’t have any development deal in place with a studio. This was before the era of the “pod” producer. We called CBS ourselves and said we wanted to pitch a show. An appointment date was set.

If CBS bought the pilot we would then shop for a studio to partner with. But even that wasn’t a requirement. If we were really industrious we could start our own independent company, get our own financing, and own the show outright, a la MTM, or Carsey/Werner Production. (But that wasn’t us. We were happy to use this pilot commitment to swing a development deal with some major studio.)

So it was just me and my partner, David Isaacs, and the VP of development for CBS. Three people.

He bought the pilot in the room; David and I went home and wrote the script. We didn’t have to run it by anyone at a studio, production company, TV star with a deal, focus group, etc. There weren’t seven drafts before it went to the network. There was one.

Now it was time to turn it in. It occurred to us that we had never directly turned in a script to a network. The studio always did that. So we had no idea who to submit to, how many to submit, etc. I called this VP’s office, found out the answers, went to Kinko’s, made the appropriate number of copies, and drove over to CBS myself to drop them on her desk. No fancy studio covers, nothing.

Once a script is turned in today, fifteen network department heads weigh-in with their thoughts and suggestions. A conference call is arranged and twenty people hop on as notes are given for a second draft. You don’t even know who is giving the notes. Voices just chime in with opinions. (This can be problematic because you need to determine whose notes are important and whose you can just ignore.)

Thus begins the second round of seven drafts before everyone on your "team" is on board. That script is turned in and you hold your breath for weeks to see whether you get the green light. Often networks will wait until everything is in to make a decision. Or your show is on the fence and they need several days of internal debate.

We turned in our first draft at 5:00 on Friday. At 10:30 the following Monday our agent called to say CBS was greenlighting the show. Just like that. I asked if this was contingent on a second draft and they said no. They had some minor notes and to call them at our convenience but get the ball rolling, hire a casting director, shop for a studio, etc. We were a go.

So when you have a process that three people can handle all by themselves and you have twenty other people involved who are superfluous – there’s something wrong with the system, wouldn’t you say?

from By Ken Levine http://ift.tt/2iDN4mj
Breaking News: Too many cooks - News Paper