Television Development

by Bob Levy

  3 “Facts” of a fictional story may sound paradoxical. The author of a story offers various kinds of description of characters and some of those descriptions are “facts” within the universe of the story. The character is male, he’s 35 years old, he works as an accountant. Those are facts of a story. “The character dreams of being rich because he grew up poor,” is a psychological description that may have validity – there’s a good chance his journey through the story will reveal how valid it is – but it’s not a fact of the story like the fact that he’s male.

  4 In the fifth episode of the series, “Gray Matter,” an elaborate backstory is introduced to further deepen Walter’s victimization and our rooting interest: As a younger man, Walter helped start a tech company but sold his shares early, missing out on the literal billions of dollars his old friends have made on ideas that were really Walter’s. Walter was the victim of his own youthful stupidity, defining yet another layer of his victimization.

  5 Eastwood quoted in an interview with French screenwriter Thomas Bidegain, “Why I Said ‘Non’ to Hollywood,” interview by Robbie Collin, The Telegraph, November 2, 2012.

  6 “Stakeful,” like “rootable,” is not a word in the real world. They both, however, come in pretty handy in script development.

  7 Development professionals frequently look for hero “moves” in pilot scripts. Figuring out a great “move” for the hero lends the pilot surprise at a crucial moment and demonstrates the hero’s ingenuity, which suggests he’s an entertaining character worth continuing to watch.

  8 In the series Mort would become Maura Pfefferman, but in the pilot the character was still known as “Mort.”

  9 Author interview with Gaye Hirsch.

  10 Author interview with Karey Burke. Burke explains that, deeper into the development process, especially when it gets to pilot rough cuts, more detailed notes are necessary. But she does her best to stick to Brandon Stoddard’s advice during early script development.

  11 Author interview with Warren Littlefield.

  12 Author interview with Graham Yost.

  13 Author interview with Jane Francis.

  9

  Packaging and Politics

  The Role of Agents in TV Development

  Talent agencies and the agents who work there are an essential part of TV development. Agents are the grease that keeps the gears of TV development (and the entire entertainment industry) turning. They are the central link between art and commerce, between the writers (and other talent) they represent and the money that talent needs to get their series produced and distributed.

  Agents’ first duty is to get jobs for their clients. One of their next most important duties is putting – or helping put – new development together, packaging new pilots and series.

  Let’s step back for a moment to a macro view of agents and agencies before we zoom in on how agents package development.

  The major talent agencies in Los Angeles all have many different departments that employ agents who specialize in different kinds of clients. Agents who represent screenwriters, both TV and feature writers, are called “literary” or “lit” agents. The big agencies have MP lit departments (“motion picture” literary departments) and TV lit departments. Agents in those departments do nothing (for the most part) but rep feature or TV writers. A screenwriter who works in both movies and TV has one MP lit agent and one TV lit agent (at the one agency that reps her). The movie and TV businesses have grown closer in the past 20 years and have seen much more personnel crossover during that period than before, but the two businesses are still separate businesses and agents focus on one or the other, movies or TV, learning the business practices and creative demands of one or the other, and similarly building extensive networks of relationships with professionals in one or the other business.

  The major agencies also have “talent” departments, MP talent and TV talent, that represent actors. The term “talent” has different meanings in Hollywood in different contexts. In some contexts “talent” refers generally to writers, directors and actors. Sometimes producers are considered “talent,” sometimes not. In other contexts “talent” refers specifically to actors. “Talent agencies” represent a number of different kinds of talent, and yet they have “talent” departments that specifically represent actors. This is one of the many cases in Hollywood where terminology is fluid, and the specific meaning of the term “talent” needs to be derived from the context.

  Other agents specialize in representing only directors, TV directors or movie directors. The major talent agencies also represent book authors, both fiction and non-fiction. The American publishing industry is based in New York, so the book lit departments of the major talent agencies are all in New York, where the largest Hollywood (LA-based) agencies have branches. The big agencies also have book-to-film departments where agents do nothing but sell (and package, more on this in a moment) books and other IP to film and television. When it comes to selling IP to Hollywood, the book lit agent who reps an author typically “co-agents” with a book-to-film agent. The book lit agent is a specialist in selling manuscripts and book proposals to publishing companies; book-to-film agents (sometimes known as “media rights” agents) are specialists in selling IP to Hollywood.

  The big agencies also have agents who rep playwrights and actors who focus their careers on acting for the stage, “legit lit” and “legit talent” departments. “Legitimate theatre” or “legit theatre” has always been how Hollywood distinguishes the business of live theatre from film and television. The big agencies also rep musical talent (some Hollywood agencies have branches in Nashville), composers, voice-over talent, stand up comedians and numerous other kinds of talent.

  My focus in this book is on TV lit agents, but let’s continue the macro view of the agency world before zooming back into TV lit agents’ role in development.

  There are dozens of talent agencies in LA, but they’re dominated by a handful of the biggest and most powerful. CAA (Creative Artist Agency) and WME (William Morris Endeavor, the combination of the oldest talent agency, The William Morris Agency, and a powerful 1990s upstart agency Endeavor, which merged in 2009) are the two largest, most powerful and most successful agencies in Hollywood today. They represent more TV creators, showrunners and more “A-list” feature talent than the other agencies. UTA (United Talent Agency) is considered the next most successful and powerful agency, followed by ICM Partners (International Creative Management Partners). Those four agencies (and their pre-merger iterations) have dominated TV development for decades.

  Gersh and Paradigm are next in stature in TV lit. Gersh probably rivals the bigger four agencies in representing actors, its original and most successful business. Beyond these six are many “boutique” agencies, smaller agencies that tend to specialize in repping one kind of talent, lit or talent. Verve, the Kaplan-Stahler Agency, Rothman Brecher, and Writers & Artists Agency are among the many smaller boutique agencies that rep high-level TV writers, creators and showrunners.

  Traditionally, writers, directors and actors begin their careers by signing with the “best,” most powerful agent and agency that will sign them and then “move up.” Sometimes talent decides to part ways with the agents who repped them when they were younger and less successful, and moves up to more powerful, more successful agents. Sometimes talent gets “poached,” aggressively seduced by more powerful, successful agents who sell the rising talent on signing with them. Sometimes, though rarely, successful talent stick with the less powerful agents who helped them launch their careers even as the talent becomes very successful themselves.

  All of Hollywood is competitive, but the TV industry is surprisingly professional and collegial. The talent agency end of the business, though, tends to be the most competitive, bare-knuckle part of the business. The agencies are extremely competitive with each other and often vie aggressively for top talent. In many ways the agency world tends to be one of the more aggressive and combative sectors of the in
dustry and one more dominated by men. Internally, the culture of the agencies also tends to be similarly more aggressive and competitive than other businesses in the industry.

  TV Lit

  As mentioned, agents’ first responsibility is to get their clients jobs. In TV lit that primarily means fulltime jobs on the writing staffs of TV series, or freelance jobs writing scripts for series (which represents a small fraction of TV episodes; the great majority of episodic scripts are written by writers on staff1), and writing pilots. Traditionally, agencies earn 10% commission on the money their clients are paid, the writer’s weekly salary if they’re on a staff, their fee for a freelance script or their fee for writing a pilot script. Television series production – along with the writers’ rooms that deliver the scripts to feed series production – is now a year-round process, but TV lit agents are busiest each spring during what’s known as “staffing season,” when the numerous broadcast network TV shows hire, fire, replace, expand and start up their writing staffs. Television lit agents work longer than their normally long hours from March into June to get writer clients staffed on shows, submitting material to showrunners, network and studio current executives, and pushing for their clients to meet those people and get hired. Lit agents might work 12–14-hour days during the height of network staffing season.

  Television lit departments also employ “packaging agents” who specialize in development. Packaging agents, as I discussed briefly earlier, specialize in leveraging the huge roster of talent repped by an agency to put new TV development projects together. The example I discussed earlier was the packaging agent who took a new novel written by an author repped by the agency’s book lit department and packaged it with a screenwriter and a non-writing EP also both repped by the agency. Or a packaging agent might come up with an original area or concept for a series, then identify a writer and star actor client the agency reps to package into the project. The packaging agent’s job is to assemble the pieces the agency represents to create big, sexy development packages that the agency then shops to networks and/or studios. One of the popular buzzwords in Hollywood as of this writing is “undeniable”; packaging agents try to package projects packed with an agency’s biggest “A-list talent” that every possible target network buyer will find “undeniable” and will want to bid aggressively and competitively to get.

  Television packaging agents historically have been considered more senior and higher status than regular TV lit agents (who traditionally focused primarily on getting writers staffed on shows). Packaging agents were also considered a bit more hands-on creatively. The distinction between packaging agents and other TV lit agents has blurred over the last 15 years, however, as more junior writers (repped by more junior TV lit agents) find more opportunities to pitch development to buyers. Even relatively new TV lit agents perform packaging functions now – mixing and matching different creative elements repped by their firms – to advantage their clients. Some agencies don’t even designate packaging agents anymore – all lit agents are packaging agents at those agencies now. Agencies hold regular “packaging meetings” where numerous agents discuss emerging projects and bat around client names to help package one another’s projects. One of the goals of most lit agents is to groom every TV writer client to become a series creator.

  If an agency sells a package to a network and studio, the agency is compensated in the form of a “package.” If an agency earns a package on a TV series, the agency becomes a profit participant, typically earning 10 points (or 10%) of profits if and when a series enters profit. The profitability of TV series is much lower than it was in the broadcast network/syndication model of the twentieth century, but the most successful TV series can still earn hundreds of millions – and in limited cases, billions – of dollars of profit. Commissions constitute a large share of talent agencies’ revenue, but packages on hit TV series are the brass ring of most large agencies, the revenue source that separates rich agencies from successful agencies.

  Because packages are so valuable, agencies fight over them. However, if one talent agency represents one or two elements of a new piece of development and another agency reps other elements, the two agencies may split the package, each receiving “half a package” and half the backend participation that comes with it. (Remember that, while agencies package projects exclusively with their own clients, other entities package projects too. If a producer or studio exec packages a project, he or she might package talent into the project from two or more different agencies.) Agencies sometimes divide packages into thirds. While the history of agency packaging is based on agencies putting together true packages of multiple creative elements, that quickly devolved to agencies demanding packages or shares of packages if even only one significant element of a package, like a very successful TV writer, a brand-name producer or a piece of hit IP (like a bestselling novel), participates in the project. Packaging agents, agency senior partners and network and studio business affairs executives (and sometimes other senior network and studio management) negotiate granting packages and shares of packages during the development and series greenlighting and dealmaking phases.

  One interesting byproduct of the agency packaging business is that when an agency has a package on a series the agency’s other clients who work on that series – writers, actors, directors, etc. – don’t have to pay their agency any commissions. The industry would consider an agency to be double-dipping if it received both its share of backend participation while also commissioning its clients’ pay on the series.

  One way that agents become more powerful and increase their stature (and make more money) is by representing successful creators and showrunners. An agent who signs a young client who works her way up the ranks of TV writers and creates and runs a big hit show gains stature by dint of his client’s success. In scenarios like that an agent can 1) develop a reputation for having an eye for spotting talent, 2) use the success of one client to help attract more “hot” talent (“Look at the success I helped her achieve; I can do the same for you!”) and 3) leverage the success of his roster of clients both within the agency and externally to network and studio executives. Agencies reward agents who attract and nurture clients that become successful, and always implicit in the agent/agency dynamic is the fear that a successful agent will leave for a rival agency and take her most successful clients (and their earning power and future packaging potential) with her. Network and studio executives notice which agents represent the most talented and successful clients and they treat those agents with special respect in the hope of working with that agent’s many rising stars.

  Agents and development executives need each other and work hard to build strong relationships. From the perspective of agents, network development execs hold the keys to the kingdom. They are the gatekeepers of the real estate that networks control. Studio development executives are gatekeepers of huge development budgets that are doled out to writers in the form of pilot script fees and development deals. From the perspective of network and studio development execs, on the other hand, they want to win their companies the best, most attractive, most promising development projects and packages and, even more rudimentarily, to be in business with the most talented, most successful and most promising TV writers.

  Executives work hard to build positive relationships with agents and vice versa. They need each other and want to build the best possible relationships to position themselves at the best possible advantage versus their competition. Agencies and agents compete with each other to sell their clients to the market of network and studio buyers of talent, and conversely networks and studios compete with each other to attract the most talented and successful writers. The marketplace of TV development goes in one direction, but the marketplace of TV talent is more complex.

  Agency TV lit departments have “covering agents” for all the buyers and all the larger studios. All lit agents talk to execs at all networks and studios regularly, but one agent at each agency is assigned to “cover
” a specific network and to watch most closely for news and information about that network relevant to his agency and to share his intel with the other agents. Conversely, network and studio execs and producers with studio deals often approach each agency via the covering agent who covers their network or studio.

  Entertainment is an extremely social business. People work long hours and transact business over meals, drinks meetings and at parties. Professional relationships can become very intense and intimate. The TV business is actually a relatively small one. Executives, agents and many writers work with each other over and over, year after year, and powerful professional and sometimes personal relationships form.

  Agent Representation: An Industry Requirement

  Representation by agents is an essential step for all aspiring talent: writers, actors and directors. It’s impossible for writers and other talent to get jobs without an agent, including development opportunities. Here’s why.

  Producers and development execs at networks, studios and production companies can’t look at scripts, pitches, treatments or even one-liner ideas unless they’re submitted by talent agencies because they’re at risk of claims of intellectual property theft against them if the material is unrepresented. Los Angeles talent agencies have agreements with all networks and studios that material agencies submit for consideration won’t be considered evidence of idea theft except in rare cases.

  Here’s a hypothetical: A network development exec reads a written pitch about an accountant who becomes a superhero, sent to him by an unrepresented writer from Indiana, and he emails the writer back, passing on the pitch. Three years later the network that exec works at orders a series from J.J. Abrams about a superhero who happens to be an accountant and it becomes a hit. The writer in Indiana says to himself, “That was my idea! They stole it from me and gave it to J.J. Abrams, and now everyone is making a fortune on my idea except me!” The writer sues the network and has the email “paper trail” as evidence that not only did he submit his pitch but the network executive read it and replied. The network has to potentially incur the expense of defending against this claim.