How to pitch to Nine boss

Producers looking to pitch to Nine could be forgiven for going straight to the top after CEO Hugh Marks yesterday said he didn’t get many ideas in his in-tray.

“Ultimately when we are ordering a show, we want to look at who we are ordering that show from and go, ‘You’ve got the creative capability, the financial capability, and the resources for us to be really comfortable you can deliver it,” he told delegates at the Screen Forever conference.

“That means only certain people will get (shows ordered) from commercial networks, I suspect.”

Marks recommended producers with show ideas could talk to other producers who had shows ordered.

“It might be hard to get to me at the moment, but I don’t get a lot of things landing in my in-tray saying ‘Hey Hugh, I’ve got this great idea, here it is!'” he continued.

“I can probably count on one hand the (pitches) that have landed in my in-tray as CEO of Channel Nine.

“But there are probably 2 ideas where I have said to (Director of TV) Michael Healy ‘Hey, this is not a bad idea, what do you think?’

“The people in the business that I really like are the ones who are on the hustle and don’t give in. They are persistent.”

Questioned on why Nine was down on revenue last year he bluntly replied, “Our revenue was down because we had shit content, basically. So what did we do? We took some risks and made some new content. Guess what, it worked. And guess what our revenue is up.”

Marks was also asked to nominate a show he enjoyed watching on another network.

“I found myself watching The Bachelorette with my 3 teenage daughters with some passion. Thank god for Sophie Monk for making Australians feel good about bogans again.”