Typed by hand and revised by Biagio. It may differ slightly from the recording.
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 10. This week, Top Secret: Which TV networks buy what and why; something you should never do when pitching shows; yet another reason why you should be watching television, and who really controls the remote…even if admitting it hurts me on the inside.
Announcer: Music courtesy of Dave Pelman Music, davepelman.com.
Biagio: Hey everybody. She’s 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. Today’s a landmark episode, Joke. Episode #10.
Joke: 1-0. We reached double digits.
Biagio: We did. We reached double digits which means I now have the awkward web address for this episode of producingunscripted.com/010.
Joke: Uh-oh.
Biagio: I guess it will get better once we get to episode 100 which will be some time…in the next 2 years.
Joke: It’s too early for the math.
Biagio: It’s too early for the math. Anyways, why don’t we take a quick moment to give a shout out to a guy by the name of Robert Magnus. Robert works over at EVS which is where we bought our Canon C300 from. Apparently, our office coordinator was walking thru the store the other day when he was shouted to from across the room by Robert who said, “Hey, tell those guys I love their podcast.”
Joke: Thanks, Robert.
Biagio: Thanks, Robert. Well, we love buying stuff from you.
Joke: Yeah, if you need any camera gear or anything, check out EVS and tell them we sent you.
Biagio: Yeah, they’re pretty awesome. No, that was not a paid endorsement. We know we’re not getting paid endorsements on this show yet.
Joke: No, but I do hope it means we get a better discount next time.
Biagio: You never know. For the last couple episodes, we’ve been recording out in the field with our top secret new show. We haven’t been able to tell you what it is, but today…we still can’t tell you what it is but we’re back in our offices because we’re not shooting for a week. We’re down for a week. We are posting simultaneously.
Joke: Posting and prepping for the next half.
Biagio: For the next half of the shoot. We got 4 weeks of shooting left on this show.
Joke: This is crazy, by the way. It’s like we’re doing 2 seasons of Scream Queens back to back
Biagio: It is. We would do a season of Scream Queens and shoot for 4 weeks straight. This show, this top secret new show we’re shooting for 4 weeks, catching our breath for a week—if you can call it that since we’re editing at the same time—and then going back out for another 4 weeks straight.
Joke: You need to talk for yourself about catching your breath. Like we have to prep for 4 weeks.
Biagio: I guess not literally catching our breath. It’s going to be a crazy week here but it has been a wild show. I know I said this last time, but I’m telling you every single department said it…they say this is the hardest show they’ve ever worked on.
Joke: So I hear. Speaking of which, they’re outside my door in 5 minutes for a location meeting.
Biagio: For a location meeting. That means that I will only make you 5-10 minutes late for that meeting.
Wise Young Man: My father always told me you can’t sell ice to Eskimos or peanuts to people with peanut allergies.
Impressed Woman: Whoah.
Biagio: Today we want to talk about understanding which networks buy what and why. We’re going to give you 3 pieces of advice that are going to help you decide where your show might work. Today we are going to be talking about some stuff that I really think you’re not going to be able to find anywhere else.
Joke: Unless you’ve been watching television. If you’ve been doing the home work we gave you in Episode 1 which is watch a lot of television, then you may have started seeing some of this already which would be really great. When you’re creating shows and pitching shows, it’s important to know your audience, so it’s important to know which characters in the world will play best in which network so you know where to sell them to.
Biagio: Listen, I want to say this right upfront, especially for any of our network executive friends that might be listening. These are not hard and fast rules, but these are the rules we tend to play by. When you’re going to go out, you’re going to pitch shows, sometimes you need to play the odds. You need to know which shows are a long shot and why, and you need to know which shows might have a better chance of selling and why. Yes, you will always find exceptions to these rules, but I think this is a good jumping-off point. Do you agree?
Joke: Agreed.
Biagio: Our first piece of advice to understanding which networks buy what and why: Understand if the network is male-skewing or female-skewing.
Joke: Here’s the reason why this is important because sometimes we’ll have people come in and pitch us a show, and when we ask, “Where do you see this?” they’ll say, “Spike or Bravo.” That’s the first clue that you haven’t really been watching television because there is no show on Spike that would also air on Bravo and vice versa.
Biagio: That’s the worst. I get emails like this all the time. So, I’m really not selling anybody out. I mean literally tons of emails which are like, “I have a great show idea that I think would work equally well on MTV, Spike, Bravo, Nickelodeon or TLC.” I’m like, “Those channels are completely different.” You haven’t done the homework from episode 1. You haven’t watched any TV because they would never program the same kind of shows.
Joke: While maybe the world could be similar or you look at a poster and say, “Those characters kind of look alike.” The tones of the shows are completely different. The fabric of the ensemble cast would be completely different, and what they focus on is usually different depending on which network you pitch it to.
Biagio: Watch some TV. If you just use your noggin, you’ll be able to figure out what we’re talking about here. But we’re going to start by giving you a brief list what networks scale a skew male and what networks skew female. Joke, why don’t you talk a little bit about that?
Joke: I’m going to focus on the cable networks because broadcast is an entirely different beast.
Biagio: Future podcast episode.
Joke: But in cable, obviously, some of the female-skewing networks are Bravo, E!, Oxygen, Style, Lifetime, TLC, WE, OWN, VH1. Those are kind of the main ones that you think of when you think female programming. So if you look at the female-skewing landscape and you start with – obviously Nickelodeon and Disney have the kids covered – but really look at them from a rite of passage type. If you’re trying to find out who are the high school/college age, you’re talking about MTV. Anything coming out of college, you’re still single, you’re probably watching channels like Oxygen and E!. Then when you start getting worried about getting married or babies and stuff like that, you’ll mature into more of the OWNs and the Bravos and the WEs and the Lifetimes, the Styles, etc.
Biagio: Great! What about male-skewing networks?
Joke: Male-skewing networks are your Spikes, your Discovery, your Historys. Your Tru, even A&E although they’re more of split between male and female. Think of it this way. The female networks really don’t cater to men at all, but the male networks never push away the women. That is because – the next big point.
Biagio: Our next big point is who controls the remote.
Joke: We do.
Biagio: Women do. Sorry guys. Research has shown again and again when it comes to who runs the remote in the household, it’s the women.
Joke: Here’s the thing. If men control the remote, I got to tell you they’re watching ESPN so when it comes to these kinds of programming when we’re talking about story-based, character-based, world-based programming, the women are still involved. Yes, the guys might want to watch and at least catch it, but their wives will watch it too. Where the women may want to watch Say Yes to the Dress, the guys are running to the other room.
Biagio: I have occasionally watched Say Yes to the Dress for professional purposes only.
Joke: Good! You were doing your homework.
Biagio: Yes, I was.
Joke: Excellent! Keep that in mind. Even for the male networks, you can’t really alienate women. It has to be something that women will still watch. The truth of the matter is when men just want to watch television, they’re probably just watching sports.
Biagio: Yes. That brings us to our third piece of advice. Related to knowing what networks buy and why. That is you probably shouldn’t pitch a female world that stars men. Right, Joke?
Joke: Yeah. Here’s the thing. It’s something that we also learned the hard way when you find these great characters. We had this great group of guys. Their world just happened to involve parties and pop culture. It was a very female-skewing world. They were very hard to sell. Everyone loved them and everyone loved the world, but they can never quite match the two of them up together. The reason why is women love watching women. Even when you look at the female networks where there are males in the show, they have big female ensembles with them so that it’s balanced out. Women want to be able to relate to someone they watch on television which is usually another woman. Even if you have a big flamboyant gay character in a female world and there’s other women there, that will work just fine, but if you have a bunch of straight dudes in a female world and there’s no other women in that ensemble, it’s going to be a very uphill battle.
Biagio: To wrap things up this week, you want to remember there’s 3 important pieces of advice that will help you understand which networks buy what and why. First of all, know if a network is male-skewing or female-skewing. Just do your homework, watch some TV and you will be able to figure it out. Number two: understand that women control the remote. Sorry guys. Just the way it is. And number three: don’t pitch a female-skewing world where the star is men.
Joke: One more thing to all of our network executive friends out there. If I forgot to mention your network, I am so sorry.
Biagio: We love you anyways. You know we do. That’s it everybody. We tried to keep this one short and tight this week. We hope this is some good, useful information when you start putting together your ideas and thinking about who they might be right for. Please don’t ever email us again and say that this show could work for TLC, Spike, Discovery, MTV, Nickelodeon and E!.
Joke: If you do, and in that same email say how much you love our podcast, then we know you’re lying.
Biagio: Exactly! Don’t lie to us. Alright everybody, we love you. If you really do love the podcast, we’d like to ask you one quick favor. It will literally take you less than 60 seconds. If you could head over to producingunscripted.com/itunes - that’s producingunscripted.com/itunes. That will take you right to our iTunes page. If you can leave us a rating or a comment, that would mean the world to us. That’s all I am going to ask you to do this week. If you could take that one minute for the 10 minutes we gave you today, we’d really appreciate it.
Joke: Thank you so much, and we’ll see you soon.
Biagio: See you soon.
Announcer: Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.
