Thank you Jeff Zucker! Jeffe is pulling the plug on the braindead corpse of television development.
No pilots from NBC and no upfronts. The other major players considering following suit.
The old model for people that wanted to create television was thus:
- Graduate from Harvard (lesser Ivies are okay, but let’s be realistic), where you were a key member of the Lampoon staff
- Arrive in Hollywood with a spec script of the hot sitcom or drama from last season (this year that would be 30 Rock or Ugly Betty)
- If you’re lucky, get hired as a Writer’s Assistant, or Production Assistant on a series
- Spend the next five years working up the chain to finally get to be an actual writer
- Once you’re actually allowed to write on a show, then you work your way up the producing chain, which is the same thing as being a writer, but you also get paid a lot more money.
- After 5-7 years of working your way up to being an executive producer level type, you’ll be allowed to pitch networks your ideas for shows.
- If the networks like your show, you’ll be paid to write a script.
- If they like the script, they’ll shoot it and make it into a pilot.
- If they like the pilot, they’ll order 12 more episodes.
- If those first 12 episodes get an audience, they order 12 more.
- If the season did well enough in the rating, or it’s a critical darling, it’ll get another season.
- Repeat steps 6-12 until you’re 45, when people stop calling you anymore.
Pretty bleak. According to the Futon Critic, only one in three series on the networks make it to the second season, regardless of genre.
And with such an arduous path, it no wonder why there’s such a lack of diversity in the writer’s rooms and on TV screens. Writer’s rooms are hard, bleak places to be, and people like to hang out with folks of similar interests — one of the shows I worked on, there were only two non Ivy leaguers in the building, me and the showrunner (we both dropped out of college (go Chico State!), but both were white males).
Zucker’s announcements are good news, with the big companies turning off the spigots of development, it gives indies the opportunity to develop shows, and then license (not sell) to the big companies. You’re already seeing it with the Quarterlife deal.
This is going to allow indie production companies a place at the table again, because if they can create and grow a show before a major studio becomes involved, it naturally gives them more leverage in negotiating. The production company is taking a greater risk, and should receive greater rewards.
It also helps solve the diversity problem, since production companies and capital can accumulate around voices and POVs that have been excluded from the old way of development.
The new way will be something like:
- A few creative people decide to make a show
- The show hopefully garners attention from the YouTubes of the world
- A production company comes in and helps give the show consistency and makes some money through ad sales and merchandising
- Network licenses the show once it proves that it’s gained an audience
This new model is still forming and will take years to mature, but signs are already pointing in this direction. And it keeps gaining momentum thanks to people like Jeff Zucker.
11 Comments
January 23, 2008 at 4:46 pm
So, do you think Jeff reads your blog? Maybe he should.
January 23, 2008 at 8:06 pm
If you were female, I’d say “you go girl!”. But since you’re not, I say “right on”, and since I am an older Silicone Valley dude, I can say what you are creating w/ askaninja.com is setting a standard. AH..my dog just farted…oh geezus.
January 23, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Give me a break. The new model is people put content on YouTube and eventually it makes the jump?
YouTube offers a completely different type of experience. Short-form content not going anywhere but that doesn’t mean that the compelling content created through the process of TV development should die.
The problem with killing pilots is that it impairs the development of the high quality, intelligent long-form content that networks like NBC used to be known for.
As a result we won’t get better independent content that has worked its way up, we will get more reality, more Deal or No Deal and Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader.
Maybe that’s what traditional networks will need to resort to to stay profitable in the future, but that is not a good thing. The price is worse content.
January 24, 2008 at 6:51 am
[...] it’s no surprise that in a recent post new media giant, Kent Nichols called the traditional television development model a [...]
January 24, 2008 at 7:03 am
Ben is ignoring projects like PromQueen and Sam Has 7 Friends, to name but two fiction non-comedy projects which were consciously webcentric but which cleverly dellivered a total of screen time to qualify for subsequent DVD release.
Semi-intelligent long-form content may have to sneak out in bite-sized morsels, but there is a greater chance of diversity – and some gems among the dross – when the era of the seven-million-dollar pilot is finally over.
January 24, 2008 at 8:08 am
[...] With an unending writer’s strike and web video nipping at its heels, the tradition of spending millions on pilot episodes of series that usually never get made is slowly winding down into oblivion NewTeeVee explains how the web model of cheaply building an audience organically is the way of the future. Kent Nichols of “Ask a Ninja” fame has further thoughts on the democratization of series development. [...]
January 24, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Go Wildcats!!!!!!
5-6 of the best years of my life. I should go back and get my degree.
I have a chico state buddy who is an executive producer for a comedy talk show for the last few years. It was amazing to me to hear the corp studio bullshit he dealt with to get to his position and the bullshit he continues to deal with for such a great product he consistantly helps produce.
Mike
January 24, 2008 at 2:46 pm
He’s not kidding about the Harvard Lampoon thing.
Try getting the networks attention with “Devry Technical Institute Weekly, Editor in Chef” on your resume.
January 24, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Uhmmm, your “new way” of 4 steps is a bit simplified. Lets be realistic…you skimmed over some challenges new media producers encounter as well. Its an arduous path no matter which way you go.
January 25, 2008 at 3:10 am
[...] more life online that it was ever allowed over the air). If the new, online-driven model works out the way Ask a Ninja’s Kent Nichols suggests it might, then we’ll all be better off for [...]
January 28, 2008 at 8:44 pm
[...] his post entitled rebuilding hollywood in silicon valley’s image). So on that topic, read this post by the co-creator of Ask a Ninja, Kent Nichols on the old way for creating a TV a show: 1. [...]