The TV Showrunner's Roadmap

by Neil Landau

  An example of a new revenue source happened during the first season when we got a lot of e-mails saying, “We know what it’s like to be a ghost whisperer, but what is it like to be a ghost?” So, Kim and I, but really Kim, came up with the idea of doing a web series from the point of view of a ghost. We pitched it to CBS, and they said, “Can you put a car in it?” So we said sure. One thing we’ve learned is if the network asks you a question, yes is usually the right answer. We went to Detroit and pitched it to General Motors (GM), and they agreed to pay for it and we put a car in it—and the web series ended up winning “Best Web Series” of the year from TVGuide. com. It was called, Ghost Whisperer: The Other Side. Not only did GM pay for the web series, but they also became a sponsor of the show’s second season. That was a big deal for CBS and us because GM had not been a sponsor the first season. We also did product integration by switching all of our regulars’ cars to GM cars for which GM paid the studios for the product integration. It was the first time that a blue chip company got to test drive a prime time network series through an original web series, and eventually, Wired and Forbes did stories on it. Whether it was mobile apps, graphic novels, our companion book Ghost Whisperer: Spirit Guide, or the four years of web series, all of these platforms ended up giving the show a branding presence that ultimately helped keep it on the air for 107 episodes, drive it into syndication on three networks and cable outlets, and be broadcast in 169 territories around the globe.

  NL: Do other producers, studios, or networks come to you now to create this “total engagement” for their series?

  IS: Yes, we now do it for other TV shows including Desperate Housewives, Ugly Betty, and Ghost Whisperer in syndication on the Syfy Network and WE. Often it’s “one-offs” instead of the whole multiplatform approach. What is important, which is much harder though, is to have this holistic approach to marketing—it takes a lot of creative energy but it’s worth it. And the other component that’s really valuable is our “AOP: Audience Outreach Program.” So now, when we go in to pitch a pilot, we will not only bring material for the pilot, like the agenda, the show description, visual aids, and an expert, but we also bake into the pitch the TEE. As twenty-first-century producers, we feel it’s our job to develop the show, pitch and sell it, produce it, and then deliver the eyeballs through our TEE.

  KM: The first time we did the TEE, we did it as a matter of survival to keep our show on the air and build an audience. But then it was so successful that we started doing it for other shows and then we started doing it for feature films—we just worked on Hotel Transylvania and Happy Feet II. Delightful! We’ve done it for Warner Bros. and Sony, as well as some of the other major studios. People have asked us, “Isn’t it hard to run a show and do all these other things?” Interestingly, it is not because it’s all a creative process and it’s all going the same way like spokes in a wheel moving at high speed but in perfect sync.

  What it’s really like is putting your show on steroids. When we go in to pitch, we do the traditional pitch, but then we bring in the whole back end as well with social media. We believe that entertainment companies have three points of engagement: (1) the content, (2) the technological device, and (3) the social conversation.

  For us as a company, we have a stake in the ground for Smart TV. We’ve been talking about second and third screens forever, and finally the entertainment industry is starting to value it. Because viewers are in the habit of using second or third screens, we want to give you an experience on those complimentary platforms which doesn’t draw your attention away from the TV show or feature film, but rather enhances the experience.

  IS: Kim gave a lecture at MIT about two or three years ago, and one of the things that the people said was, “We’ve heard this before—why bother doing it? It only helps the studio and the network.” And she said, “No, I’m here to tell you that I have a kid in private school thanks to the TEE.” Ghost Whisperer ran for five years and Profiler for four. Both shows got to syndication. Obviously, you have to have a good show. The actors, the writers, the directors are the most important part, but sometimes it’s not enough. So I’m not saying that Ghost Whisperer was only a hit because of the TEE and all our transmedia storytelling, but I don’t know if it would have been as big a hit without all of this either.

  KM: Launching shows seven or eight years ago, when all those shows were monster hits, is different than launching a show now. Today, you can’t just launch a show.

  NL: When you hear a concept initially, because you two must hear a lot of pitches, and you say, “That sounds interesting to me.” The very next question is, “Where can I sell it?”

  KM: Ian brought in several books the other day, and when I heard the second one I thought, “That’s a series!” because I knew through the POV lens that we had created—we knew we could sell it to CBS who wants to hold on to the mother lode of what they’re doing, but they also want to appeal to a younger audience, so they’re looking for cop shows with a twist.

  IS: Last fall they came out with 2 Broke Girls and now they have a younger female audience. So now the question for them is, “What’s the drama version that can platform off of that which will give us a female hit that keeps the 2 Broke Girls’ audience?” It will be a subtle change. Just like how Survivor led to Amazing Race and CSI beget the other two CSI s. Wherever they’ve had a hit, they knew how to build from it.

  NL: The Good Wife has been a big hit for them.

  IS: They like that they have a show which is getting buzz and is up for awards because there aren’t that many network shows that are competing with those cable companies for awards. The Good Wife is one of the ones that is. It’s a very highly respected show. To be able to hit the quality mark twenty-two times a year as opposed to twelve or thirteen with a year offlike some of the cable shows have—that’s impressive.

  NL: What are the essentials of a pitch? I would imagine that you need a very strong logline.

  KM: Yes, and you need a great title. Last year started the year of you’ve got to have a great title.

  NL: What’s the difference between a logline and a hook?

  KM: A logline is a marketing tool for the network and the studio. They need it to sell up (to their bosses and sponsors) and to sell out (to the press and viewership). Now everyone knows you can’t summarize a great show in one sentence. There are supposed to be so many different levels and nuances, but the logline needs to tell you what world you’re in and what the characters represent in that world—and it has to communicate the tone too.

  IS: Keep in mind that usually when you’re pitching a show, you’re not pitching it to the person who’s ultimately going to put it on the air. It will have to be re-pitched. So you have to give them something they can use. Sometimes it’s a logline, sometimes it might be material like a book, or it may be a poster or an expert. You want to give them as many tools as you can, so they can pitch up.

  NL: What about a hook?

  IS: A hook is almost like a copy line: “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.”

  NL: Now, franchise is tied to the question of, what’s the element each week? With Ghost Whisperer, it was a new spirit each week.

  IS: For the most part, the best network television shows are shows where the audience can be satisfied by the end of the show with some closed-ended element. There are exceptions. Lost being one of them. Underneath that, we have what we call a mythology which gets people to come back every week. Often that’s an ongoing quest or a mystery that’s unfolding. So, you want something that is satisfying, self-contained, but has an underlying mythology. With Profiler, for example, you had the case of the week, but you also had the fact that our lead character, Sam [Ally Walker], was being stalked by someone who killed her husband, and he was manipulating her life in strange and fascinating ways. She wanted to catch her stalker and he wanted to catch her—a great cat and mouse game on both parts. If you have both of those things going, that’s a home run.

  NL
: When you pitch in the network room, are you going to pitch all of these out: the arena, the tone, the world, the characters, the tease, and maybe the basic elements? How much will they present? A basic, bare-boned pilot episode?

  KM: The best pitches are when we set the project up with why its culturally relevant, why here/why now and why this writer specifically. Then the writer does the world, the characters, the triangles between the characters, the themes and then launches into the teaser and first act of the pilot, ending with some juicy cliffhanger. From there on, the writer does not pitch from beat to beat to beat. It’s more of a broad pitch of the A, B, C stories and why we’re supposed to care about those stories and the characters and why they’re relevant to the series. During the pitch, there’s a little bit of dialogue and maybe a scene or two which dimensionalizes the characters. Then, the pitch ends with the pilot finale. Finally, we go into a couple of episode ideas to demonstrate the “legs” of the show, and an arc for a couple of the main characters to demonstrate how this fits into the mythology. I always feel it’s important to get two things across with writers: (1) setting up the world before you go into the characters and (2) why this writer is passionately connected to this material. We sold a show to NBC last year, and they told us that the reason they bought it was because both ourselves and the writer were so passionate about the material. When we go into the pitch in the first place, Ian and I always clearly set up the room because you never know when they’re running from room to room if they remember what all the loglines are. We set it up with the title and the logline and why we’re there. I think it’s unfair for us to assume that the executives are going to be able to embrace the material without you setting the table.

  NL: Can an unknown first-time writer without staff experience or movie cred sell a pitch?

  IS: It’s hard. You have to make your pitch and your show unignorable. If there’s any way to ignore it, they will—how can they not with hundreds of pitches swirling around them? Maybe you do this by attaching a book that went through the roof or the writer of a book or feature film that went through the roof. Or an expert or director they can’t ignore. Or even if you can attach a star, but that’s harder to do.

  KM: I don’t think it’s fair to say that you can’t roll the dice in this business or look for your entrée. It’s only because over these last two years (and I think it’s going to change again because everything is cyclical) it’s been all about: Who are the eight-hundred-pound guerillas and how do we get into business with them? The Internet has made our business a much more democratic process. We have a friend, Kevin Tancharoen, who was a dancer and a choreographer, and then he directed Fame. But instead of doing another movie right away, he took Mortal Combat the game and shot a web series, which was about six or eight minutes long, that he paid for out of his own pocket. He was so smart because he picked this material where there was a huge following—every kid in America was playing Mortal Combat at the time. The reason we know about it is because he is a friend of our son, Aaron, and he shot some of it at our house. One morning, a few months later, our youngest son comes running into the house and says, “Kevin’s video is on the front page of YouTube!” By the time Declan told us that, it had already had 1.2 million hits on the first day’s posting. In the next two days, it had 6 million hits and was building. Then, Kevin got a call from Warner Bros., who owns the property, and was scared to death that he was going to get sued. But they had called to ask him if he would direct the Mortal Combat feature. It’s hard—the odds are against you, but there are still opportunities, if you’re clever and industrious. You don’t have to get in line like we had to get in line when we started in the business.

  Note

  1 The marketplace where networks present new series to their affiliates and, based upon their enthusiasm or lack thereof, decide which pilots will be picked up (green lit) to series.

  2

  Explore a New Arena

  Great television series provide us with a glimpse into an unknown world or a world we think we know—until we see it from an insider’s perspective. I always tell my feature film screenwriting students to think of the principal setting of their screenplays as another character in the story. This guidance applies equally, if not more so, to the world of a TV series. The “arena” of your series is its setting, but also encompasses time period, geography, weather, local customs, vernacular, style, traffic, values, social mores, and cultural, political and religious influences.

  Sons of Anarchy, created by Kurt Sutter, shows us the inner workings of an outlaw motorcycle club based in the fictional town of Charming (in the Central Valley of California). As we discover more about the characters and the almost-Shakespearean power dynamics of the show, we get a closer look at protagonist Jackson “Jax” Teller (Charlie Hunnam) as he begins to question his position in the club and, by extension, his humanity.

  The Sopranos invited us into the work life and family life of Tony Soprano and provided us with a glimpse into the New Jersey mafia. Breaking Bad shows us how an unassuming high school chemistry teacher, Walter White (Bryan Cranston), learns to cook and distribute crystal meth. In this case, we’re inside Walt’s head. As he learns, we learn.

  Six Feet Under granted us an all-access pass to the Fisher family through their funeral home business. Big Love showed us the quotidian existence of a polygamous family.

  There is validity to the ol’ writing axiom to Write what you know. But I think that’s way too limiting. Sure, write what you know, but what you don’t know, research! Whether you’re a naturally curious person or not, the only reason for a writer to avoid research is sheer laziness. For me, research can be invigorating, fun, and, let’s face it, much easier than writing. Instead of staring at the blinking cursor on your computer, you get to go out into the field, explore new places, and interview real people (instead of dauntingly inventing them from whole cloth).

  Researching a New World

  When I decided to write a pilot about the Federal Witness Protection Program (officially known as Witness Security or WitSec), I knew virtually nothing about this branch of the U.S. Marshals Service. What intrigued me about this series concept was the thematic question of whether or not a person can ever truly escape the past. I also liked the high stakes of danger and reinvention for survival. I knew this was a ripe arena to explore because, at the time (before In Plain Sight was developed and picked up by the USA network), there had never been a TV series about WitSec. I also knew it was viable because it was extremely difficult to penetrate the veil of secrecy that hangs over the WitSec program. I knew if I was going to be able to write about the specifics of WitSec, I would need to become an expert on the subject. Easier said than done. How does a screenwriter get an inside view of a branch of government dependant on secrecy? I did months and months of extensive research via websites, non-fiction and fictional books, and interviews with FBI agents (U.S. Marshals and WitSec, for obvious reasons, declined to talk to me). The more I researched, the more fascinated I became with the arena. In addition to impressive stats about WitSec—such as the fact that not a single protected witness who has followed WitSec’s stringent protocol has ever been killed since the inception of the program—I also needed a window into how it all worked. Who got into the program, under what kind of circumstances, and how did they manage to stay alive? I also needed to decide on the POV of my arena. Should the series be from the perspective of the witness and his family, or from the perspective of the U.S. Marshals (known as WitSec field inspectors)?

  Once I felt confident that I could effectively capture the verisimilitude of this world, I then needed to find a way into my pilot episode. For example, I knew that the canvas for my intended arena was much too large. WitSec is a national organization with thousands of witnesses and field inspectors. I knew I had to narrow the field to one regional office, and I decided that my series would work best from the POV of a chief inspector so that each episode logistical could focus on a particular witness. In doing my re
search, I also learned that the majority of the witnesses are relocated to the Midwest for both logistical and safety reasons, and that most, if not all, of the witnesses in the program were guilty of something; at best, they were angels with dirty faces. At worst, they were murderers and drug dealers who the U.S. Department of Justice was willing to use as bait to reel in bigger fish: drug lords, mafia capos, and terrorists.

  My research showed me how a typical protected witness enters the program. But I, more or less, already knew that it would include: new names, new social security numbers, new zip codes, new jobs, new schools, etc. It was my deeper research that revealed lesser-known aspects of the program—and I knew that was my vein of gold. I wanted my audience to discover something new in my pilot. For example, what would happen to a protected witness whose new identity is inadvertently compromised? I’d read about a protected witness’s wife who accidentally ran into an old friend at the supermarket. And when the witness and his family had to be immediately airlifted out of their new neighborhood and relocated for the second time—new identities redux—I got excited. I had legal pads filled with these kinds of discoveries about my arena. What if a protected witness’s teenaged daughter turns eighteen and decides to leave the program? (She’d never get to see her family again.) What if a protected witness wanted to attend the funeral of a beloved relative not in the WitSec program? (They’d need to resign from the program permanently if they chose to compromise their new identity.) Could a protected witness who also happens to be a concert pianist ever be allowed to publicly play again? (No. Never.) I also found humor in unexpected places: like the WitSec agents tasked with getting a morbidly obese former mafia kingpin into shape (à la The Biggest Loser), so he would be less conspicuous and easier to protect.