One Huge Reason Your Concept Is Not a TV Show

Announcer: Welcome to Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.

Angry Man: Is this some kind of joke?

Confused Woman: Biagio-WHO???

Announcer: This episode…

Biagio: It’s episode sweet 16 and this week we just care about one thing, stopping you from making a big mistake. Found the world you want to shoot a TV show in, better ask yourself this question first. Why so many of the pitches we’re receiving are just wrong. And Joke does an inaccurate line reading from the Hunger Games.

Announcer: Music courtesy of Dave Pelman Music, davepelman.com

Biagio: Hey, everybody! She is Joke.

Joke: He’s Biagio.

Biagio: We’re married. We make unscripted film and television, and want to help you do the same hopefully by teaming up with us. Well, welcome to episode 16 of Producing Unscripted. Sixteen honey, sweet 16.

Joke: We can drive.

Biagio: We can drive. Well, we can drive and in fact I think that we may actually be driving a few of you crazy and today we’re going to sort that out. The title of today’s show, let’s see if I can get it right because I had it write down is One Huge Reason your Concept is Not a Television Show. This is very timely because we are getting lots and lots of pitches.

By the way, we’re so grateful to every single one of you who takes the time to pitch us a concept. That said, about 80% to 85% of you are making the same mistake. You’re making one huge mistake that in fact is ensuring your concept is not a TV show. That mistake is you’re coming at your show from the wrong point of view. What does this mean?

Way back in episode one, do you remember honey in episode one what your big tip was. What your big secret tip was that you shared with everybody?

Joke: Watch TV.

Biagio: Watch TV! Yes! There you go! That’s good. You’re shouting right out when you know it honey. That was good.

Joke: Is that right?

Biagio: That was right.

Joke: Oh yeah!

Biagio: Yes, you got it. Watch TV. Now, the problem that a lot of you are experiencing, a lot of you who are pitching us shows, I don’t think that you’ve actually watched TV in the last 10 or 15 years, at least not unscripted television. A lot of you…

Joke: Maybe they’ve been watching. They just haven’t been analyzing it. They’ve been consuming it but not as a professional trying to break into the business. They’ve just-

Biagio: There you go. I believe that. Our listeners are very smart people. I think that perhaps what’s happening is that you’re consuming TV without thinking about it.

Now, let me tell you what’s going on here. We’re getting all sorts of pitches, all sorts of pitches that start something like this. We get a host who will go do X or we’re going to go visit Y. It’s basically the recipe of unscripted television from 10, 15, 20 years ago. No one makes those shows anymore.

So I’m going to give you one that I literally have gotten pitched six times in the last month and many more times than that since we’ve been doing this podcast which is something to the effect of, hey we’re going to have a host who’s going to take us around and show us really, really cool vehicles.

In some incarnations it’s army vehicles and other incarnations it’s every kind of vehicle another incarnation, it’s different kinds of cars or whatever. This is what we call a mop, a most often pitched. I think that the reason is that people aren’t paying attention to what’s on TV now.

Now yes, occasionally, you’ll see a show on television where a host goes and takes us around. I think the king granddaddy of that was probably Dirty Job’s with Mike Rowe which is off the air now, right Joke?

Joke: Yes, if you look at the shows that are currently out there, if you think of the motorcycle shows, you’re looking at the West Coast Choppers, Orange County Choppers, you’re looking at those kinds of shows which are build the motorcycle but it’s also about big characters. The Tuttles are huge characters.

If you look at car shows, it’s the Restoration guys. It’s different characters and dynamics that drive those shows. Even if you look at Man Cersus Food which frankly again isn’t the most recent acquisition that’s been around a few years. There was a hook and a point of view to it and the fact that every episode, he himself, the host participated in a food competition of some sorts.

It’s important that you understand that the current like oh we’ll just have a host meet some people is very rarely, well it’s just not really being bought right now.

Biagio: No one’s buying it unless you walk in with a celebrity who has a real big passion. You walk in with The Rock, Dwayne Johnson. It turns out that The Rock has this super huge passion for military vehicles. He wants to go to Afghanistan and Iraq and all over the place to ride along in these vehicles.

Okay then maybe you have a show. Shy of that, you really don’t because that’s not the kind of show people are buying.

Joke: Because it’s not the kind of show people are watching.

Biagio: It’s not the kind of show people are watching. Let me give you two versions of this pitch. We’re going to go and explore the world of hunting and the interesting calls hunters use to catch their prey. That is the kind of pitch that we’re hearing a lot over and over again.

However, if you had amazing characters in that world for example, we’re going to follow these backwoods country guys who became millionaires selling duck calls well then you got Duck Dynasty. You see what I just did there?

I took the big mistake we’re talking about. The wrong POV, which is we’re going to go explore a world and show you about the world. And I flipped to a POV that people are watching and networks are buying, which is we’re going to follow these hilarious characters that happen to be in this world.

Now, that said you have to find those characters. You can’t come to us and say, hey listen, I’m going to find this hilarious family that restores cars or I’m going to find this hysterical set of best friends with a love-hate relationship that happen to be basket weavers. You got to find those people first in order for your pitch to have any value.

I can’t give details but we we’re out with a pitch right now that we’re super excited about. It’s something that a lot of one liners have been pitched around this particular world. We actually found real people in a world who are far more interesting in the world and that’s when you know you’ve got a successful show.

So, for instance coming back to our vehicles idea that I keep getting pitched over and over and over and over and over again. If you wanted pitch a vehicle’s show, one way you might pitch it is we found the dog, the bounty hunter of vehicles.

He is the guy that will travel to the ends of the earth to reclaim Ferraris and Lamborghinis, and even tanks, and boats, and airplanes from people that haven’t paid on them. He goes on these covert missions not only to retrieve the vehicles but along the way, you get all the high jinks between him and his crew of big characters who argue and fight and make jokes.

The show really becomes more about their relationship and their agreements and disagreements on the missions than the vehicles themselves. Then you would have a show that would be pitchable.

On the other hand, if you’re like hey we’re going to go and profile these different vehicles. That’s not a show. However, for whatever reason those are the kind of shows people pitch over and over and over again.

Joke: For example, a show that you could hear pitch is like, oh there’s these amazing tree houses out in the world. We’re going to go visit all these amazing tree houses and see how they’re built. Or the show that’s actually on the air on Animal Planet is the guy who actually builds these tree houses. And you follow him in every episode.

You’re building a new tree house and there’s the story of the week in terms of the customer and the story of the week in terms of the challenges that he has to face with this particular tree house and then the reveals. Again, think about the idea that you’re playing with or the world you’re playing in and see if there’s a different point of view to it. Find the best point of view before you go out and pitch the show.

Biagio: The worst point of view is I’m going to get a host who’s going to travel around or better yet I’m going to host a show and I’m going to travel around. These are not the POVs of shows that are selling today. The POVs are character-centric, following real people, doing funny, dramatic things in an interesting world.

I think one other example I want to make about this, I might have said this in another episode. But if you think about let’s take a cut, let’s borrow from the world of scripted for a minute. If you think about pop shows, police shows, right.

When you watch a police show, it’s not about the process of visiting different police precincts and seeing how they arrest people and getting an inside look at the world of being a police officer.

No! It’s about which cop is sleeping with who? Which cops don’t get along? What the story of the week is. Basically, it’s stories of real people set against the world of police officers.

That’s why when we get these pitches again like about this vehicle pitches we get over and over and over again, I wish that I would get the pitch where it’s like this is the father and son family business who get flown around the world to tackle the toughest vehicle jobs that come up. Only one problem they can never agree how to get it done. Now it tells me right off the bat okay it’s in the world of vehicles but the interesting part of the show is the father-son dynamic.

Again I wanted to make this a quick episode this week because so many of you are pitching. We’re so grateful and keep those pitches coming. We’ve already teamed up with a few of you. I think pretty soon you’re going to be hearing a story about us selling a show with one or two of you so stay tuned for that.

But what I want you to think about is your POV. Please don’t pitch shows that are driven by a host or that are survey style shows where we travel the world to look at something or learn something or see something.

Try to think about your shows as being character first. If you do that, your show’s going to have such a bigger chance of getting on the air. They are going to be so much more exciting to hear and for us to consider. You will do yourself a big favor because you’ll be playing the odds. The odds will be working in your favor instead of working against you.

So please don’t pitch these shows that were on TV like 10, 15, 20 years ago. Look at what’s on TV now. And if you have a world that you want to play in, a world that you’re really passionate about, ask yourself this question.

What kind of big, giant characters could I follow in this world? Not how do I explore this world. Then you’ll have a much better show. Anything you want to add to that honey?

Joke: May the odds be forever in your favor.

Biagio: May the odds be ever in your favor. Yes, we can’t wait to see Catching Fire. All right. Anyway everybody thanks so much for tuning in. I hope this tip helps you because we really, really, really do want to team up with you. We will always be honest with you.

And yes, sometimes when you submit, it will take us a few weeks to a month to get back to you. We get hundreds of submissions. We’re off making television shows ourselves. So it’s not always easy for us to get through them but we do and we’ve teamed up with some of you. And we will team up with more of you.

If you keep taking our advice, I guarantee you you’re going to increase your odds of either teaming up with us or selling a show somewhere else. Either way, we wish you nothing but the best. We’ll see you in a couple of weeks.

Joke: Bye!

Biagio: See you later everyone.

Announcer: Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.

www.producingunscripted.com