Say I come up with a really neat idea for a great new program. Its funny and dramatic and at time thrilling. If I don’t have the financial backing to produce a pilot on my own then how do I pitch it to a network? Do I need to have a pilot or can I just show a review board (or something like that) some poster size sketches and hope that they give me buckets of cash to make a pilot?
How do I get a show idea made without money?
If you’re you? (I assume you’re not already a celebrity, like a popular comedian or established screenwriter.) You have no shot to pitch an idea to anyone with the power to say Yes, or even Maybe.
Now, if you had an idea, and a sample script or two, and some agent were to read them and feel so positive about them that he or she would set up an interview with someone with that kind of power…you’d still have almost no shot. But that would be the way to go.
Mailing your idea to network execs or phoning their offices to beg for a chance to pitch your idea is a waste of your time and money.
You need more than an idea. You’ll need a complete script or two, as well as outlines for additional episodes.
In addition, you’d need to move to Hollywood and schmooze your way into a position where you can make a pitch, either to an agent or to an executive. You can’t do it cold off the street, but if you work your way into the industry, you may be able to make the right connections.
Get an agent. If you can get an agent to take you on based on your show outline, then the idea has some merit and they will take it from there.
Good luck.
Write a couple of scripts and then hold a big name Hollywood producer hostage in his own home while you convince him to make your series unless the series is about a guy who writes a couple of scripts and then holds a big name Hollywood producer hostage in his own home while convincing him to make a TV series.
You’re opening a door for the networks to steal your idea. A safer bet, I would wager, would be to submit scripts to a publisher. In your case, first seek out literary agents with experience working with TV Networks and such. (Check the library in books about getting published - specifically re:scripts). If you and your agent can sell the idea that way, you will be in a better position to pitch it to TV.
Maybe a Doper can confirm, but you are best off joining ASCAP, or whatever the heck the actors’ guild/union is. I don’t think they’ll even get you the time of day without a union card. (Geeeee, why wasn’t Reagan trying to break up this Union? Isn’t that conveeeenient hmm?)
Keep a log of everything you do, who/when/what you submitteed, spoke to, etc. Keep all rough drafts, notes, etc., with dates. This can carry a lot of weight if your idea was stolen - as proof of your hard work as the father of said idea. Send more important docs by certified mail - keep all receipts, etc., to complete your collection of documentation. Remember, always CYA! (Cover your ass.)
Hope this helps. It’s not just a neat idea you are submitting…it is a business matter. Treat it as such. Also, even amongst friends and family, do not share your idea with the world. (This includes using your cell phone in public, talking face to face in a restaurant,…the walls have ears.) Always talk to your agent, etc., behind closed doors. I don’t know if this is standard practice, but you might wish them to sign a statement of non-disclosure. At least with patents, I understand, this is common procedure…but inventions deal with legal-oriented individuals, anyhow (patent attys or patent agents).
Don’t go at it alone…
Maybe the other SDopers can help me formulate this idea, but what about exploring local colleges offering courses in TV and the media. I would visit the offices of such profs - once hunting them down of the arts and lit dept - and see if you could pik their brains for ideas…without giving your idea away. Just speak in general, open-ended terms and hypotheticals. You might learn a lot about the process to tackle your goal, or gve you a boost to get you started! - Jinx
I teach script writing at a university. Come into my office as someone not registered in my courses, rambling about your vague ideas for a script, and I’ll have you escorted out by security guards. Very rude.
Since this is about television, I’ll move this thread to Cafe Society.
bibliophage
moderator GQ
There’s actually an answer to this and it involves not doing anything the previous posters said to do. 
You go to the annual conference of the National Association of Television Program Executives,
I believe it’s always held in Las Vegas.
You’re too late for this year’s conference, but if you catch reruns of Leno you’ll see clips of presenters and their shows. He had the audience vote on whether they were bought or not bought. Not surprisingly, the really, really amateur ones were not bought. Surprisingly, some of the really amateur things were.
Be prepared, be thorough, and be totally manic.
Geez. Talk about not being PR-sensitive.
What city/state is this university in? At the university I used to work at, none of the faculty or staff would ever have tried to rub anyone the wrong way in the fashion that that behavior would.
Every professor I ever worked with would have either assisted such an individual, tried to steer that person towards admissions, or referred the individual to an appropriate professional in the occupation most capable of assisting said individual.
Even private universities receive substantial government subsidies, and generally try to assist the community in any inexpensive fashions possible.
I have a friend who is a screenwriter and this is exactly how she did it. It took her 7 years, but she did make it - she started off working as a production assistant for Steven J. Cannell Studios and used that position and subsequent ones to make connections. She’s written for Beverly Hills, 90210, Picket Fences, and Touched by an Angel, among others.
Unfortunately, this method of operation is the reason why so much of television is utter dreck - the entertainment world goes by favor, not merit.
Sorry. I should have indicated some other acceptable options. Phone for an appointment. Write me a letter. Send me an e-mail. But knock on my office door and start pitching your ideas for a TV script? Please.
If you do one of the choices I listed, I’ll tell you to send me the finished script if I think I might be able to help you. But more likely, you won’t have a polished version to send me, nor will you know how to compose a script, which is what TV writing courses are for.
I’ll allow the students who are enrolled in a course with me the chance to show me an original script AFTER I’m convinced they understand the rudiments of script-writing, so why should I extend extra courtesies to rude people off the street? Because they want to check out their ideas for free? You must be joking.
All your questions can be answered here: www.tvwriter.com Be sure to check out the message board.
Highly recommend Larry Brody’s Television Writing from the Inside Out. He really knows his stuff, especially the social climbing, run-with-the-in-crowd side of the business. Another great book is Straczynski’s The Complete Book of Scriptwriting. Both Brody and Straczynski are TV writer-producers with decades of experience.
Creating TV shows (by either becoming a good screenwriter yourself, or hiring good screenwriters) is a whole profession unto itself. A single episode of an hour long drama series costs over a million dollars to produce, and no one wil bet a mil on an untested newcomer. If you had a mil to spend on a new house would you trust your money to a guy who had a few good ideas on how to build a house but who had never studied architecture, never worked in a firm, never actually supervised the construction of a house?
As with any other super lucrative, hyper competitive profession, you work your way up, slowly and painfully. PA, writer’s assistant, staff writer, story editor, junior producer, senior producer, showrunner. If you’re extraordinarily talented or lucky, you can jump several rungs on the ladder. Write the screenplay for a hit film, and prodcos, agents, studio execs etc. will be approaching you, asking if you have any good ideas for TV shows. Last out several seasons on staff at a hit TV show, and the suits will be hounding you for pitch meetings.
The above refers specifically to the H’wd based US TV biz. Things works slightly diffferently in Canada. If you’ve got questions about that, ask them at the misc.writing.screenplays newsgroup - Canadian writers hang out there regularly.
If you really can get the ear of a top network exec or TV producer, the best way to pitch a show to them is to ask them what kind of show they think would be good and then start drooling about what a great idea it is, that you are suddenly on fire with all sorts of script ideas and you want to work day and night to turn that wonderful idea into a reality.
Stealing an idea from a already-written script isn’t worth the potential headache for any network or individual. Seriously— if someone likes your idea, but hates your script, they’ll just buy it from you and hand it to someone else to rewrite it.
If you have an idea, write it down. But don’t obsess about documenting every single person you mention the idea to because you’ll irritate people, and more importantly, parallell developments happen all the friggin’ time. eg. Deep impact & Armageddon
I’m guessing this is every network exec’s/TV producer’s worst nightmare–some nobody shmuck pitching yet another “killer idea” that promises to take the Nielsens by storm, yet hasn’t a snowball’s chance in Hell of succeeding. They’ve probably heard these wild-eye pitches hundreds of times and seen none go anywhere. My sense is that, unless you’re really plugged into the network grid, the Powers That Be will see you as a gadfly, or possible nutcase.
OK so TV network execs are not too keen on un-solictited material. I should have figured since formula programs do well and they would not be too keen to tinker with what works. As for new programmming I looked at community TV but the problem is that the station owns the show and I want to keep ownership. My question is what about the chances of success when the show is given away on the internet? The expectation being that an audience can be developed and then using that demand as a tool to gain a chance to pitch to broadcasting stations. I heard this plan for books with amazon.com involved in some way. Has this happened before?
Have you heard of a show developed for the Internet that was ever purchased for television? No? That pretty much answers the question right there.
(Movies are a different field, and you can get noticed by making a really cool short film. This will not work for television.)
I’m afraid you still aren’t hearing what people have said. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Every writer worthy of the name can reel off a bunch of great ideas that have never been tried before. I could myself. Ideas are meaningless: execution is everything.
As others have said, the people who succeed in television are those who have given up everything else in their lives, gone to Hollywood, and toiled their way up from the mailroom to the point at which they can make a pilot for a show of their own. Do you think that after years of this effort they will have any interest in using some nobody’s idea instead of the pet one they have been nourishing and polishing for ten years?
As for formula, remember, a television show is a gamble of tens of millions of dollars of somebody else’s money. An audience in the millions of viewers is still too small to keep a show on the air. Producers want to make money, not take artistic challenges.
You really have two choices if you want to pursue this. One, drop everything and go to Hollywood. Two, turn your idea into a novel. (The odds against selling a first novel are horrendous, but are still many times better than selling a tv pitch.)
One caution: tvwriter.com may have good information on it - in fact, it appears to tell you that you have to go to Hollywood and break in, which is the only info worth imparting - but it also charges for feedback on a script. In the book world, we call these sites scams. It may very well be different in the tv world. But the real question is whether any of the content “winners” ever go on to get a script produced. My guess is no.