AIDC 2018: Get a good a title, avoid under-cooked concepts.
Industry expert offers advice on some of TV's pitfills, and recalls one Reality show that went to air too soon.
- Published by David Knox
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Electronic Programme Guides have increased the need for TV shows to have strong titles, according to an industry expert.
Caroline Spencer, Director of Development a FremantleMedia Australia, yesterday told the Australian International Documentary Conference, “When you look at how people are watching Television now, nobody is looking at a TV Week on paper. You are scrolling through hundreds of titles.
“When people are doing that it’s like being overwhelmed in a lolly shop. So you’ve got to have a title that is simple and makes people think ‘I’m curious about that. I will press that button’ and not scroll down to the next one.
“A title that tells you what it is: Married at First Sight, MasterChef, Marry Me Marry My Family. I get it.”
Sometimes it doesn’t matter how perfect the title is, if a show is put to air before it is ready it the damage to the network can cost millions.
Spencer recalled 2012 reality series Excess Baggage as being under-developed.
“This was sold really quickly to Nine, alongside 2 other paper formats Fremantle had done in the space of 6 months. But we had a trifecta: all three of them failed,” she said.
“The lesson in regard to the development of ideas is that …..networks will bully you, your CEO will bully you, your head of production will bully you. But if something isn’t right and not ready to go into production this is what happens.
“Everyone thinks it was a $15m failure, which was the production fee they paid Fremantle. But actually it was a $60m failure for Nine because their entire first and second quarter collapsed. That was the amount of money they lost in advertising revenue.”
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- Tagged with Excess Baggage, Married at First Sight, Marry Me Marry My Family, Masterchef
4 Responses
One thing that exasperates me is when channels change a programme but the EPG still has the previous show listed even though the other show is actually on at the time. They never update them. Don’t know who is responsible for updating them when that happens. And having that stupid TBA when it’s obvious it will be an encore of I’m a celebrity or whatever.
Maybe they should talk to the kindergarten kids running programming as well, having an EPG with innacurate times and wall-to-wall TBA doesn’t encourage your audience to turn up, instead they’ll just watch stuff on Netflix which has superior content at a time that suits the viewer.
What a load of dribble ! Good content is good content.
The audience will quickly tune in based on the quality of the program.
Precisely why Nine need to rename Bite Club. It sounds like a cooking showing, and a lame one at that.