I have my #1 rule for pitching TV shows. “Only pitch fully developed ideas”. Pretty simple, right?
I swear by this rule. Always have. But in a pitch meeting a few weeks ago the Exec didn’t like any of the shows I was pitching but he really liked me.
He kept pressing; “do you have anything else?”
“Nothing that’s developed enough to pitch” I responded.
I knew where this was going and I didn’t like it. He was pushing me to pitch a raw idea “just in case”.
That was 3 weeks ago.
Ah yes…that conundrum. You have a pitch meeting, you’ve pitched all your developed ideas, the Execs aren’t into any of them, and they ask if you have anything else. Of course you do. You have at LEAST one other idea that you’ve always liked but haven’t gotten around to finishing.
Do you pitch it or don’t you?
There are two answers. No. And yes.
On the “no” side if you DO pitch a half baked idea they are going to immediately ask questions directed at the gap(s) in your idea, at which point, you have to say “and that is the part I haven’t figured out yet” and they respond “well than why did you pitch it to us?” and you’ll say “but I TOLD you it wasn’t ready!!”
On the yes side, you pitch the unfinished idea and they say “hmmm…yeah…what about that middle part”, and you tell them it’s not done yet but they stay with you…stay with the conversation…stay with the show idea…and they say they like it and would like to know more when you’ve filled in the gaps…
And that’s exactly what happened 3 weeks ago. I pitched everything I had (and he liked none of it), asked what else I had, and going against my better judgment I threw out my #1 rule and pitched him a raw idea for a show.
In a week it went from my raw unfinished idea to combining that with an unfinished idea THEY had and boom – they’re pitching it at the Banff TV Festival.
But let’s be clear about one thing here: this is the exception, not the rule.
I would never recommend doing this with a company you don’t have a good relationship with. And by good relationship, I mean, I’ve pitched to them before, they KNOW that I do good thorough work, and they KNOW I don’t generally roll in with half-baked ideas.
So again, this “win” comes down to everything I’ve been telling you in all my other blogs and in the Members Area; in order to properly pitch your TV show you need to thoroughly develop it from a raw idea to a pitch-able TV show.
Because only AFTER you’re known to be the person who does great thorough work can you get away with breaking the #1 rule.