Selling a TV show

I thought I’d slip in an extra blog this week after getting the following:

“Would be great if you could a blog item on how you sold your pilot … What changes were … Assume they’re bringing on someone else as show-runner… ? Details, details … my writing partners and I are about embark on same process, and would sure appreciate knowing what you experienced. Thanks.”

Sure…the way it worked for me was that I came into the pitching season with a small head of steam on the feature side. My agents would talk up my feature accomplishments, and then have the studio/TV exec read one of my features scripts. Once they dug the writing, my agent would then hammer them with, “Hey, my guy’s gotta TV show he wants to pitch you.” That’s what basically got me into the room.

The normal process of pitching is kinda like the feature side in that you will pitch a producer and then take the project into the TV networks.

But here’s where things get a little strange — sometime the studios will act like a producer. In all honesty, I myself am still a little confused by the whole thing. But you might actually pitch someone at a studio (Sony, Universal, etc.) and if they like it, you’d THEN go in with them and pitch it to a network — that THE STUDIOS OWN.

Soooo…there are regular producers and then there are studios that act like a producing entity. Both pitch to the actual TV network.

With the project that I sold, I got into things really late and was up against the strike. So, we by-passed the producer and went directly to the TV networks. One of the last places I went into was the Sci-fi channel. They agreed to buy it and then – the strike hit.

Fast-forward, the strike ends and they still want it. Soooo…they THEN put me with a group from NBC/Universal to act as a producing entity. They will be the middle men between me and the Sci-fi network. This seems so backwards to me because NBC/Universal OWNS the Sci-fi Channel. Yet in my case, my NBC/Universal gang ultimately ANSWERS to the Sci-fi Channel as would any other producer.

So that was basically it. Because of the looming strike, I didn’t really pitch that many places. While Sci-fi ultimately bought it, I pitched to about 8 places and 3 of them wanted the project — the rest passed.

But the process can be much longer. You may have to go through a WHOLE round of pitching producers first. Once you do that and have your producers attached, then you have to go pitch all the networks.

You could be talking about 20+ pitches. OR, again, it might go much quicker than that. It’s all so much more nebulous than the feature world to me.

As far as a show-runner, no one has been discussed. I’m not sure who it will be. As I by-passed hooking up with any show-runners or producers when I went to pitch, I’m not connected to anyone in particular. Sci-Fi is waiting to see if they like the pilot script I turn in. If they like it and plan on shooting the pilot, they’ll assign someone then.

In terms of any changes to my project, I’m going through a little bit of that now. I’ve turned in my outline and received my first set of notes. They were a little challenging and hyper-specific (which makes things tough), but I’m working with my NBC/Universal gang to decipher them and figure out how best to proceed. As it always is – it’s about the “note behind the note.” As I wrote about in and earlier blog.

I’m trying to please Sci-fi while keeping the integrity of the project. Keeping my voice is even more important in TV because if the show runs for any length of time, I’ll be in charge of keeping the shows consistency and vision. So I have to make sure I address their issues, but make sure the ol’ ship is pointed in the right direction when we launch.

Anyway, hopefully that answers your questions. If you want to ask more specific things, I’ll try and hit those as best I can in the message section below. Thanks for reading!