Television Development

by Bob Levy

  The goals of development professionals tend to vary by their different roles, but, at the end of the day, they are all ultimately more similar than dissimilar. Everyone is aware that Hollywood is a business. The ultimate goal of all of Hollywood is to make money. Television networks exist to make money. Television studios exist to make money. Talent agencies exist to make money. What this translates into for many stakeholders in development, however, is a more prominent instinct to try to create shows that work, shows that work creatively (that make sense, are entertaining, that achieve their intended creative goals) and shows that succeed in attracting their intended audience. The goal for most TV professionals is to make shows that last and that have an impact on their audience, that resonate in American society and within the entertainment industry.

  Writers and their agents are dissimilar in many ways. Writers are artists and agents are not. But they both want to participate in creating shows that work, that attract, hold and entertain the audience to whom they were designed to appeal. They want to help create shows that last and that touch many viewers’ lives. The same is true for executives – network execs, studio execs and production company development execs. Everybody wants to be involved with projects and shows that are “good.” But “good” is subjective. In general, industry professionals tend to think more in terms of effective than good. Does a show work? Does it succeed at being an effective version of the kind of show it’s designed to be? Does it appeal to enough of the audience it was made for, as defined by the network that developed and programmed it, for it to last?

  The goal of most writers working in television is to create a show that lasts, that allows them to execute their vision and tell many stories over many episodes and seasons that perpetuates that vision in a deep and impactful way. That’s a show that works. If the show lasts a long time and touches many viewers’ lives, that is to say commands high enough ratings for a long time, the show also makes a lot of money for the writer who created it, the talent agency that helped put it together (via their package), other talent agencies that place their clients in various jobs on the show, the network that sells ads or subscriptions because people want to see it, and the studio that earns all the ancillary financial benefits of the show’s long-term appeal. Shows that last make money. And shows that last have the power to have a real cultural impact on our society.

  Michelle Nader, a veteran broadcast network comedy writer (Spin City, Dharma and Greg), showrunner (Two Broke Girls) and creator (Kath and Kim), articulates the aspiration of many working TV writers: “My goal is to create something memorable.”3

  Being part of the development of a hit show also increases the standing, power and financial value of its various development professionals. Writers who create successful shows get more power, creative control, freedom and money on their next projects. Execs and agents win promotions, raises and more industry standing and respect.

  In the old days, in the twentieth century, there was one simple, bottom-line definition of success: ratings. Writers and development execs were judged by how many people watched the shows, and, if a lot of people watched, a series could last a long time and make a lot of money for all involved. Ratings were all that mattered.

  Since the 2000s, since the beginning of the proliferation of scripted series on cable, satellite and streaming channels, a second standard of success emerged: shows that make a significant cultural impact despite low ratings. Girls never had high ratings, but lasted six seasons on HBO primarily because it was widely respected by cultural tastemakers and was nominated for awards. It lent cultural and branding value to HBO, if not necessarily direct financial value. Girls, despite its small audience, is considered a development success. In truth, the ratings for Gossip Girl were never very big. But the show had great value to its network and studio and also lasted six seasons. Yet another category of TV success exists today: shows that achieve both cultural impact and high ratings. These are the unicorns of TV today, and the kind of shows most development professionals aspire to help create. The Sopranos, Game of Thrones, to some extent The Walking Dead and, in certain ways, This is Us are all examples of this lofty status, and they’ve made all their companies a lot of money and increased the value and status of all the many development professionals who helped originate them.

  Another notable aspect of the culture of TV development is that it’s very demanding work. Almost all development professionals work extremely long hours and carry enormous workloads. Writers in development often juggle several projects, sometimes while also staffing. Most TV series writing staffs work long, creatively demanding hours. The reading load for execs and agents is vast and seemingly endless – pitches, story outlines, scripts and writing samples – not to mention IP: books, plays, longform essays, comic books and graphic novels.

  One reason TV development workloads tend to be so demanding is because the business at every level has to factor in an enormous rate of failure. Success requires playing a numbers game, casting a wide net in recognition of the fact that most projects will fail. Entertainment companies know they have to pan a lot of silt to find a few nuggets of gold, and they contain costs by employing a relatively small number of people to do all that work searching for and honing the nuggets. Development execs and agents work long weekday hours and spend hours more reading at home on evenings and weekends.

  A Common Misconception

  One of the many romantic myths of Hollywood sounds a little like this: “I’ve got a great idea for a TV show, and if I could just get my idea to the right people, it could be a huge hit and make a fortune.” There are a couple of reasons why this is a myth and not a reality. First, TV development, as it’s actually practiced, places as much or more emphasis on the writer’s ability to execute a concept into script form than on the concept itself. When a network buys a project, yes, they’re buying the concept, but just as importantly and often more importantly, they’re buying the writer’s demonstrated ability to execute that concept at the highest level.

  Writers demonstrate that ability to execute at the highest levels before they’re granted the opportunity to pitch their ideas to networks. They do this either through years of work in the industry, serving on shows, writing numerous episodes and other pilots, or by demonstrating a unique voice and creative vision with work in ancillary fields of writing that demonstrate extraordinary talent, like Lena Dunham did with her indie feature Tiny Furniture.

  Julie Plec, the co-creator of The Vampire Diaries and The Originals and the creator of Legacies, offers a healthy warning to young writers:

  By and large, there are no new ideas. If you come into the room as a young writer thinking you’ve got the thing no one’s ever heard, they probably heard it Tuesday. If you walk into a room and pitch that idea that isn’t as fresh as you think it is, and they say, “Actually, we just heard ten pitches like that,” and then a week later Shonda Rhimes sets up a show with that pitch, they didn’t steal it from you. They want to be in business with Shonda Rhimes. They’ll do anything Shonda Rhimes wants to do. Shonda Rhimes taking on an old idea becomes Grey’s Anatomy. Because Shonda Rhimes is the voice, and she is the visionary. And when all is said and done, TV writing is about being a voice. The idea is the least important part of the process. The voice is the most.4

  But what about Lloyd Braun who inspired Lost simply by saying, “Let’s do TV ensemble Cast Away?” Isn’t that just an idea that someone pitched that turned into a hit? Yes, but that was Lloyd Braun’s job; he was the president of ABC. He earned the standing to pitch that idea and developed the insight to arrive at precisely the correct and unique combination of cultural phenomena that would become a hit show as a result of years of work in entertainment. He had insider status at the highest levels within the industry because he had earned it. Many network presidents and development executives pitch similar ideas that go nowhere, that float into a room as momentary bubbles then burst and disappear in seconds. The challenge for people with great ideas for TV sho
ws is to earn their own standing in Hollywood by committing to years of hard work, climbing the ladder of TV development, observing what works and what doesn’t, and creating the opportunity to have your ideas heard and taken seriously.

  Development Personalities

  Television development professionals come from differing backgrounds, but certain personality types tend to find success.

  Because development is such a team sport, people who thrive tend to have a strong social intelligence. They’re comfortable speaking and working in groups and are good at “reading the room,” sensing how others are thinking and feeling and finding ways to adjust their own behavior and communication to work with disparate, sometimes even difficult colleagues. Another level of sophistication most have is a political intelligence, an ability to assess people’s differing personalities, power statuses and egos, and to calculate a strategy to manage colleagues and collaborators to achieve their own agenda. There’s a “three-dimensional chess” aspect to development, and people who can navigate layers of multipronged relationships and competing agendas while managing to stay true to their own personalities, values and creative instincts tend to thrive.

  Most people who succeed in development are process-oriented. They’re doers who understand the intricacies of a challenging process like development (of the infinite variations of which this book can only scratch the surface), and can stay organized, focused and even-tempered throughout the marathon process of moving their projects forward inch-by-inch to success.

  The best development professionals have a high entertainment IQ. They get what works. They have good storytelling taste. They understand what other people find entertaining, they have an eye for material, can imagine how a pitch will translate into an actual series, and can read a script and visualize it on its feet and dramatized on the screen. They understand stories and story structure and can figure out why a story doesn’t work and how to make it work better. They can take a raw concept and work with a writer or other development professionals to figure out how to make it a stronger concept that can last for many seasons on TV.

  The Club

  To a great and surprising extent, the world of development professionals who guide the creation of TV series in Hollywood is very much like a club, a large exclusive club with a strict admissions policy. To pitch a show to a network you have to be a member of the club – or at the very least be guided in by an established member of the club. To have your calls and emails returned by working TV development professionals you need to be a member of the club. Within the club there exists a hierarchy of power and success, but, once you’re in the club, by and large, all other members acknowledge one another, provide each other with access and treat each other with respect. While the club is largely sealed off from the rest of the world and its gates can appear daunting to outsiders, the good news is that the club welcomes new members all the time. The next chapter explores how people earn entrée to the club, get their first jobs and climb their way up the hierarchy of the club.

  Members of the club buy and sell to each other and seek out various forms of partnerships. Because the demands required to succeed in TV development are so high, and therefore development professionals’ lives are typically so consumed by work, work relationships – social, romantic and family relationships – that begin or exist within the world of the TV industry club are an inevitable and organic outgrowth of working in development. The head of original content at YouTube is married to the creator of The Office. The head of development at National Geographic is married to one of the heads of programming at FX. A partner at WME is the daughter of one of the founders of ICM.

  The walled-off nature of the club of TV development professionals has its drawbacks. The community is in many ways a bubble that echoes its own ideas, values and views of the world. Hollywood has traditionally not been a very diverse community, and this is finally beginning to change. People of varying backgrounds and life experiences are gaining seats at the table. Like many industries, Hollywood traditionally tended toward various forms of nepotism. Scarce development slots sometimes tilted toward projects because of friendships, romantic relationships or sheer familiarity, to the exclusion of potentially more fresh ideas and voices. Today, finally, more fresh ideas and voices are being welcomed than ever before.

  The increasing trend toward ethnic diversity of character ensembles on screen on American TV in the past 20 years isn’t only the result of Hollywood liberal do-gooderness. It’s also the result of a business imperative: The shows needed to reflect the diversity of its changing audiences to attract viewers to watch them. Slowly, Hollywood is similarly realizing that to serve increasingly diverse viewers it needs to empower more diverse voices in positions of power and creative control behind the camera, at the head of writers’ rooms and in the executive suites of networks and studios. Diverse faces and voices not only reflect the demographics of a changing audience, they also offer new ways to reinvent tried and true stories.

  For people from all backgrounds and life experiences the community of Hollywood development professionals can be hugely exciting. The one factor that unites the disparate people who work and thrive in Hollywood is their passion for entertainment. They love it, appreciate it and consume vast quantities of it. The work is too hard, the hours too long, the personal sacrifices too many and the frequency of failure too high. If you’re in the TV development club, you’re there because you love TV and are dedicated to making stuff that lasts. The experience of sharing a very challenging task with like-minded colleagues, and surmounting the odds to see your work, your ideas or your vision entertain the world, can be utterly thrilling.

  Notes

  1 The “producing-director” role has become an increasingly common one in recent years as many series pursue cinematic aspirations. Where most directors are freelancers who move from series to series, directing one episode here and another there, a producing-director is hired as a fulltime producer on a series to book and oversee all the directors of a season’s episodes to ensure the look and tone is consistent with the series’ standards. Often credited as an Executive Producer or Co-Executive Producer, the producing-director typically directs several episodes of her series per season herself.

  2 Author interview with Lesli Linka Glatter.

  3 Author interview with Michelle Nader.

  4 Author interview with Julie Plec.

  13

  Preparing for Careers in TV Development

  It’s easy to be intimidated by the prospect of pursuing a career in Hollywood. I was. That fear delayed my decision to move to Los Angeles for several years, and I regret it. If you’re interested in a career in TV development (or any other Hollywood career) and prepared for an adventure, go for it. The earlier you are in your career, the younger and less encumbered you are, the better.

  The TV business in Hollywood is a thriving, exciting, booming business. America makes scripted television for the world, and Hollywood is where almost all of it is developed. Yes, Hollywood in general and TV development in particular are very competitive fields, but the TV business is so vibrant (and always has been) that there’s an overwhelming demand for labor and talent at every level. There’s a steady demand for fresh blood and entry-level labor. It’s difficult to get a toe in the water, but it’s doable.

  The paths to careers as talent (writers, directors and actors) are different from the paths to executive roles (network, studio and production company development executives, producers and agents). It’s possible for talent to zoom to the top of their chosen fields at very young ages. Lena Dunham wrote, directed, EP’d and starred in the Girls pilot when she was 25. (She wrote, directed, produced and starred in her first indie feature Tiny Furniture when she was only 23, winning the best screenplay award at the Independent Spirit Awards and attracting the attention of HBO’s development execs.) Josh Schwartz created his first TV series, The O.C., when he was 26. It’s virtually impossible, on the other hand, for people that young to ente
r the senior executive ranks of development without climbing the hierarchical rungs of the executive ladder first. I’ll tackle the executive jobs first and then talk about career paths for talent.

  In this chapter I’ll look at two primary strategies to pursue careers as development execs at networks, studios and production companies. The most common pathway is to enter the business as an assistant to a development exec or at a talent agency. This strategy is most useful to young people fresh out of school or a bit later. I’m going to devote the next several pages to describing those assistant jobs for three reasons: 1) to illustrate why they’re such effective launch pads to executive careers, 2) to prepare readers to pursue those jobs and 3) to expand our picture of the culture of Hollywood. Assistants are ubiquitous to development; seeing it from their perspective will hopefully add another dimension to the portrait of that world. Then I’ll talk about a second strategy for aspiring non-writing development professionals that can be more useful to people older than their early to mid-20s.

  Development Exec Career Strategy One: The Assistant Route

  Most people who work as development execs or agents in television today began their careers as assistants. Just about every development exec at every network, studio and production company has an assistant, and those jobs are great entryways to careers in development. I’ll talk about those jobs and who gets them in a moment, but the job that’s widely considered the single best entrée to TV development is a job as an assistant at a talent agency, specifically as an assistant in an agency’s TV lit department.

  The goals of any entry-level job in TV development are: 1) to learn how TV development is practiced, 2) to build a network of relationships among development professionals at as many levels of the field as possible and 3) to begin to establish a knowledge base of TV literary talent, in other words to begin to get to know TV writers. These three goals are probably best accomplished by working as an assistant to a lit agent.