PGS Reality TV Show Update

Yesterday, Leesa and I, along with our agent, were at a well-known production/distribution company's offices presenting our reality-TV, glamour-photography show to the company's development people. It was our first, official pitch for the show!

Why go to a production/distribution company instead of directly to the broadcasters? Well, as our agent pointed out, "We're better off taking the show to broadcasters with an 800 pound gorilla backing us up."

That certainly made sense to us!

We thought the pitch went well. We brought along copies of the treatment as well as a Power-Point presentation Leesa had put together on the laptop. We figured, "What good is show-and-tell without the show part?" The PP presentation served to cue us as we pitched, keeping us on-track, and it also helped maintain the attention of those we were pitching to: Leesa populated the on-screen presentation with plenty of great examples of glamour photography.

The main person we were pitching to, the lead pitch-ee, actually uttered, "I like this," and "This is cool." I'm trying not to read too much into those words but they sure sounded better than "I don't know about this," or "This sucks."

One thing we learned is that many broadcasters are changing what they're looking for in reality programming. What many of them now want is info-tainment. They're still looking for shows that peer into the contestants' lives and are constructed around interesting jobs and endeavors--designing clothes, cooking food, trying to become supermodels, or (ahem) shooting glamour photography--but they now want shows that allow the viewers to learn something, i.e., something more than what makes the contestant's tick or what their jobs and/or industries are all about. These info-tainment shows will be designed and produced, as you might guess, to market and sell products to the viewers via the information they provide.

If our show manages to make it to broadcast, don't be surprised if, for example, all the photographers in it are shooting with the same brands of cameras and it contains "real" dialog that includes more than a few words hyping those cameras.

It will probably be a week or more before we hear anything back. If the development people really did like our idea and thought of it as "cool," they still have to sell it to their boss and their boss probably has to sell it to his/her boss... you get the picture.

Keep your fingers crossed!