by Bob Levy
Typically, the head of the network’s research department delivers a research presentation reporting his department’s data and their conclusions to the small group of executives who make the final programming decisions. This small, elite group usually includes the president of the network, the senior development executives, the head of scheduling (if the network has one), the head of sales (if a network has one), the heads of marketing whose job will be to sell the new series to the public, and often a senior executive from the network’s parent corporation. Karey Burke is the President of ABC at time of writing, and in that role she’s in charge of all the network’s day-to-day decisions, but she reports to Dana Walden, Chairman of Disney Television Studios and ABC Entertainment, which includes not only ABC but ABC Studios, Freeform and the ABC-owned TV Stations Group. The network president has a very large say, but the network’s corporate parent company executive weighs in and approves all series orders.
When this small group of senior network executives decides the fate of a crop of pilots they take into consideration many factors. They consider the research data, the opinions of their sales executives about whether advertisers will be excited to buy time in the series, the opinions of their marketing execs about whether they see exciting ways to sell a series to its intended audience and if the pilot’s concept can “cut through the clutter” of an extraordinarily crowded marketplace of shows. The senior network execs also consider the politics of series pick ups: If they have a writer who’s generated many hit shows for them but whose current pilot might not appear as promising as her earlier hits, they’ll be inclined to want to give that creator the benefit of the doubt, in part as a vote of confidence and in part as a gesture of genuine faith that that creator is so talented that she will be able to “find the show” once it’s in series production even if she didn’t completely nail it in pilot form. The network also takes into consideration the ownership stake of its parent company in a show. While two pilots that test comparably might appear to offer equal promise, the show that is owned by the network’s sister studio division will ultimately prove more valuable financially to the network’s parent company and therefore takes priority over the comparable pilot produced by a rival studio.
While various considerations go into formulating these evaluations, at the end of the day the people who make these decisions tend to listen to their gut creative instincts. To climb the ladder to become a network president or a top exec at a major entertainment conglomerate an executive has usually logged years of work at various levels of the TV industry and has seen numerous pilots and shows come and go. One of the reasons execs get these kinds of jobs is because they’ve developed a reputation for having good taste, for having an eye and a strong instinct for what works for their audience and what doesn’t. Networks want hit shows, and as a multitude of factors and powerful interests weigh on these decision-making executives, they usually ultimately follow their best instincts to try to pick the pilots they believe will be hits. All network presidents know at the end of the day that they are judged by whether their network scores hit shows or not.
Step 12: Network Upfronts
Television networks that are advertiser-supported, broadcast, cable and online, participate each spring in the upfronts.4 The networks unveil new upcoming programming schedules at these events, announcing which shows will air on which days and beginning when. For development professionals who’ve developed and produced pilots, the upfronts are the culmination of all their work:5 Pilots are either ordered to series and placed on the network schedule or officially passed on and most likely dead and buried. Months or years of work are either rewarded with a series production order, a place on the network’s schedule and the commitment of the network to spend millions of dollars to market the show to the viewers, or all that work has been for naught and the pilot will never see the light of day. Producers, directors and cast members might not find out until just a couple of days before the upfronts if their pilot is picked up to series, or they might find out a week or two before, but rarely more than a couple of weeks before.
The odd term “upfronts” is an advertising industry term. Advertisers, advertising agencies and media buyers buy commercial time from TV networks in two ways, in the upfront market or in the scatter market. Most commercial time is sold upfront, wherein advertisers pay the networks for large blocks of commercial time months before the new programming season begins. In a sense, they’re placing a bet on how a network’s schedule of programming will perform. Most commercial time is bought and sold upfront, but networks hold back a fraction of their commercial time for the scatter market, which commences after the new schedule begins airing and networks and advertisers can see how individual shows actually perform, allowing advertisers to buy time in a more targeted way (but also potentially at higher prices). While the upfronts mark the end of the development cycle, they’re also the beginning of the new advertising cycle, as the networks unveil their new product line to their customers, the advertisers.
The American advertising industry is based in New York City so the upfronts are always held there. The larger networks rent huge spaces like Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center to hold their upfront presentations before thousands of advertising execs and entertainment press. Networks unveil their new programming lineups not only to the advertising industry, but to the world. While the networks want their scheduling information disseminated to the public, only advertising execs, accredited media and invited TV industry guests (including many LA-based agents) are invited into the halls to watch the network spectacles live. Network presidents typically host the events. They stand on stage before their large audiences and unveil their new series, show a trailer for each new series (edited from pilot footage), and introduce the lead actors who are flown to New York to walk across the stage, wave at the audience and inject a dose of glamour into the business proceedings. Networks, TV studios and talent agencies typically host parties and formal dinners to celebrate the end of one season and the beginning of the next. For development executives and producers who’ve won the development lottery and had their pilots picked up to series, it feels like a big party after taking the last final exam of spring, a chance to finally breathe a sigh of relief after a long, hard effort and to celebrate a brief victory before much more hard work begins.
The effort to turn a simple idea into a TV series that began months or years earlier is over. The upfronts and a series production order mark the end of the development process.
The Development Calendar
The broadcast networks’ development calendar is based on the longstanding American tradition that the new TV season begins in late September, after summer holidays are over, kids are back in school, and Americans move leisure activities indoors as the days grow shorter and colder. The entire broadcast network development cycle is built around this tradition of fall premieres. Most cable channels and streaming platforms don’t follow the broadcast network development calendar but do conform a calendar similar to this one to their own distribution schedules. For many years the cable channels that programmed scripted series employed a “counter-programming” strategy to offer new programming when the broadcast networks didn’t (e.g., during the summer when most broadcast network shows were in repeats), but cable and satellite networks now schedule their scripted series year-round, and non-linear streaming programming is obviously available anytime, anywhere. The five broadcast networks, however, work within the same development calendar that’s informed their workflow for decades. Even though there are now many more cable, satellite and over-the-top streamers than broadcast networks, the broadcast networks still develop and program a huge number of scripted series, order a large number of pilots, and, to this day, a hit show on a broadcast network is more profitable than a comparable hit on a cable or streaming channel. For those reasons, the TV industry is still very much attuned to the annual broadcast network development calendar.
The five broadcast networks, their dozens of dev
elopment executives, the many studio development executives who sell to them, the talent agents who package projects for them and the hundreds of writers and producers who participate in the network development process each year live by the network development calendar below:
July: Networks brainstorm “network needs”
July–October: Pitch season
September–December: Writers write pilots
Christmas–January: Network presidents read pilots
January–February: Networks announce pilot pick ups
February–March: Pilot casting
March–April: Pilot production and post
April–May: Networks screen pilots
Mid-May: Networks announce series orders at upfronts.
July: Networks Brainstorm “Network Needs”
Most broadcast network development execs take their annual vacations in mid- to late June and return to their offices following the 4th of July holiday. July 5 effectively commences the start of the new broadcast network development season, which typically begins with network development executives, under the leadership of their network presidents, assessing their previous year’s development, evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of their upcoming fall programming and devising strategies for the new development season. Many networks and TV studios go on development retreats to brainstorm new development targets for the upcoming development season and create what are known as “network needs,” a list of the kinds of shows a network will look to develop that coming year. When the network development execs return to their offices following their development retreats they codify their network needs lists and disseminate them to TV studios and talent agencies. The agencies share the various networks’ network needs with their writer and producer clients, while TV studio development executives brainstorm their own series ideas in hope of appealing to the new sets of network needs.
July–October: Pitch Season
“Pitch season” occurs in summer and early fall when writers, producers and TV studios descend upon the broadcast networks to pitch their new TV pilot and series ideas. While the networks have invested time determining and disseminating their network needs to the development community, they’re also open to the many ideas they never imagined that writers, producers and studios have been working on for months in anticipation of the new development cycle.
September–December: Writers Write Pilot Scripts
After the summer’s over and the networks have bought all the pitches they’re going to buy, usually in October or November, they inform agents and studios they’re “bought up,” that their development budgets are spent and they’re “closed,” i.e., done hearing new pitches for the season. This period is the prime script development phase of the annual process. Writers write multiple drafts of their pilot stories and scripts, receive notes from producers, studio and network executives, and development execs of all stripes work with writers to make the season’s pilot scripts as strong as possible.
Christmas–January: Network Presidents Read Pilot Scripts
The network development execs receive final rewrites from their studio counterparts and deliver them to their respective network presidents by Christmas. The presidents read all the pilot scripts their comedy development and drama development departments have developed that season to decide which pilots to pick up to pilot production.
January–February: Networks Announce Pilot Pick Ups
Network presidents return from Christmas/New Year vacations and sit down with their development execs to discuss which pilots to order to production. The development execs make their recommendations and lobby for their favorite projects, but, at the end of the day, it’s the network presidents’ decisions that count and, one by one, they begin announcing (to studio execs, writers, producers, agents and the industry press) the pilot scripts they’re greenlighting. This is known as a “pilot pick up,” as opposed to a “series pick up” that may or may not happen a few months down the road.
February–March: Pilot Season – Casting
For actors, casting directors and talent agents February and March is known as “pilot season,” the time of year that working actors spend most weekdays driving from one casting office to another, auditioning for pilot after pilot. Casting directors hold their pre-reads and producer sessions, followed by studio and network tests. At the broadcast networks about 100 pilots are picked up each year, so there’s a mad scramble to cast all the pilots and connect all the dots between casting directors, agents, actors and available (and potentially life-changing) pilot roles.
March–April: Pilot Season – Production
Pilot season continues as network pilots shoot all over North America and sometimes places as far flung as Hawaii and South Africa. Local crews in film production centers like Vancouver and Atlanta shift from shooting series episodes to shooting pilots.
April–May: Network Screenings
Network executives gather together to screen and assess the season’s crop of pilots as they also evaluate which older shows will return for another season or get cancelled.
Mid-May: Network Upfronts
The annual development cycle concludes as network presidents host upfront presentations in New York City, announcing to the world and to the many development professionals which pilots move forward to series and which ones don’t make the cut, dying a painful, bitter death.
Notes
1 At some streaming networks like Netflix, “straight-to-series” orders have supplanted the process of producing and evaluating pilots. Most of the steps described in this chapter still apply to that process, however, and we’ll discuss how “straight-to-series” and “script-to-series” development differs from typical pilot development in Chapter 10.
2 When I say two writers, I mean a writing team, not two different writers both delivering a pitch. Most TV writers work solo but writing teams consisting of two writers who form a strong partnership and always work together are not uncommon. Writing teams of three writers are very uncommon but not unheard of. A writing team is considered one writing “entity,” the equivalent of one writer, and is paid as one writer. Writing teams are always noted in credits with an ampersand – like Shaw & Thomason who co-created Castle Rock – while two separate writers who co-write a script but have not joined together to permanently form a team are credited with the full word “and” – like David Benioff and D.B. Weiss who co-created Game of Thrones. Writing teams typically alternate delivery of the pitch, passing back and forth as they work through the pitch’s various sections.
3 Author interview with Susan Rovner.
4 The online space instituted its own “upfronts,” dubbed the “NewFronts,” in 2008.
5 Returning shows that haven’t already been renewed learn their fate at the upfronts as well; they might be renewed, moved to new time periods, or cancelled.
3
Format, Genre and Concept
In this chapter I’m going to press pause on the nitty-gritty of series development (which I’ll get back to in the next chapter) and shift to a more macro perspective. We all watch TV, and we’re all eager consumers of TV, but while people working professionally in development approach television as its biggest fans – and passionate advocates for the audience – they also approach their work as pragmatic professionals.
In this chapter I’ll look at three of the basic units of TV programming that industry pros use to describe, differentiate and evaluate their work of developing TV shows: format, genre and concept. Every TV series fits into one of a handful of standard TV formats, many series fit into one of a number of TV genres (while other series invent new genres or intentionally eschew traditional genre conventions altogether) and every TV series has a unique concept that distinguishes it from other series within its format and genre (if it’s part of one).
These subjects – format, genre and concept – will probably be familiar to anyone who watches a lot of TV. Some of this stuff might even seem a bit obvious. These ide
as are worth a close look, though, because they’re essential to the thought processes nearly all development professionals use (whether or not they use these exact terms) in their daily work. I hesitate to invoke one of the great textbook clichés, but the subjects of this chapter are the true building blocks of TV development. As I examine how development professionals use them you’ll hopefully uncover new and constructive ways to think about them.
In professional practice many of the ideas discussed in this chapter are so fundamental that they go without saying in the actual exercise of TV development. Working development professionals don’t necessarily need to articulate them because they’re often implicit. Some of these ideas, on the other hand, are so essential to development that they’re explicitly referenced over and over throughout the development process. All TV development professionals understand these ideas as second nature; they understand them and refer to them intuitively, sometimes implicitly and sometimes explicitly, often in shorthand ways.