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From 150 pitches a year to 7 dramas in development

ABC's Head of Drama Sally Riley gives some insight into the dense world of drama development.

TV execs often talk about the ratio of projects that progress from pitch to production.

Yesterday speaking at Series Mania Industry Day, Sally Riley, ABC’s Head of Drama, Comedy & Indigenous, gave some insight into the numbers involved, as well as how notes from networks to producers are often received.

“We have probably 150 pitches come in a year. In the last year we’ve only put 7 into development. In active development we have about 13 dramas. We don’t make those decisions lightly,” she said.

“We absolutely love the show and we are here to help you make the best show it can be. We come from an audience’s perspective. Sometimes we’ll say ‘the tone is getting too dark, our audience isn’t going to want that’ and try and keep them on track.

“But I don’t apologise for giving notes. We certainly don’t sit around going, ‘I’ve got nothing to do today, I think I might just write two pages of notes for Tony Ayres and drive him crazy.’ We don’t have time to do that.”

Very occasionally a script will be near perfect and be close to shoot-ready, but usually development entails notes from the broadcaster to producers.

“The difficult thing for us is when we get push back,” she said whilst recalling one producer who applied a fairly simplistic approach to developing a second season with writers.

“He just took the the ratings paper to the into the storyroom and said ‘This is where you killed a character in the first season and look at the audience.'”

But Riley added, “We don’t write notes for the sake of it. That’s not what we’re here to do. I want to be part of the cool gang who are making the show.

“Sometimes probably less experienced producers think ‘The enemy’s coming, we’ve got to protect what we’re doing,’ …. but we can all be grownups and adults.”

One Response

  1. This is what they mean when they say that ideas are ten-a-penny. A lot of laypeople will say “I have a great idea for a TV show” and think that’s enough to get it moving. I am no different, I frequently still do the same thing, because it’s fun to come up with fan casts and storylines, even though I am well aware that there’s so many steps before it can go from one-sentence-idea to actual workable project. Not that they’d let me into the room to pitch it anyway. This kind of insight into how TV gets made always fascinates me.

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