#35: Can I “cash out” in reality if I pre-attach sponsors to my pitch?
If you’ve read my book and this blog or attended my seminars, or seen the sometimes irate responses to both, you will know that people are insistent on seeing selling a reality show as a “get-rich-quick” scheme…and I am insistent on saying, this is not even a “get-rich-slow” scheme. I do admire the persistence with which show creators try to come up with a different approach to allow them to sell a show and walk away with riches. That persistence absolutely will serve you when the step into the show selling process for the first time!
A common question, which I address in detail in The Show Starter Reality TV Made Simple System, is if you can go out and pre-sell the advertising for the show by bringing sponsors on board with your pitch before approaching a network distributor. And if so, can you keep part of that money, or get a better payout when the show gets picked up?
The quick answer is NO, NO, NO! You don’t want to bring money to a table that may not want it. Say you bring Home Depot and the network has a buyout with Lowe’s. There goes your show. Next, that money is Ad Sales’ money to earn, and they will cripple you if you take commissions out of their pocket. Third, brand integration is not simple to acquire, and there are considerable controls to be exercised, particularly with conflicting placements or language. That is what experts are for. The best you can do is bring letters of interest, which are tough to get without a series order, but no committed money unless it is critical to the show being made (if, for example, you implode a casino in episode 1, you’ll want a letter of intent from Steve Wynn that he is in for blowing up one of his buildings).
If you are trying to cash out in this business, take a closer look at writing a screenplay, where you actually will be paid to walk away. It is not the reality business model. And for all the work you would do trying to hunt down advertisers and pay attorneys to hammer out deals, you could be shopping a script and trying to make that sale.
Think of it another way. Take away the entertainment industry aspect of your questions because I know Hollywood is portrayed as one big lottery ticket with a zip code, no matter how much professionals insist it is otherwise (and it IS otherwise). Is there another industry you can think of where you would comfortably expect to start at the top of the industry with no experience and be able to do the job properly, at least as well as the leaders in the field, and expect to be paid top dollar for it? In my screenwriting book, I talk about expecting to do open heart surgery the first day you walk into a hospital because you’ve watched E.R. and have a passion for medicine. No one would let you operate on them, obviously, and you would not argue with them about that because you would not think you could actually do it. And you probably would not expect to be paid the hundreds of thousands generally charged for the surgery either, given that you are not a med school graduate.
This is not an easy business. Not (just) because it is hard to make the contacts you need to succeed. It is actually hard to do what we do. Crafting a show takes actual skill, understanding of legal issues, of how your client (the distributor) operates, of who you will need to make each piece work correctly, of what kind of money is spilling off of the page of creative, of the insurance issues that might crop up without critical changes to concept, of casting strategies, etc. And that is just in preparing to pitch, not in running it, which I know is not part of your note below.
Take a moment and remove the term “cash out” from your goal of making this show. Is there any other reason to make it? Will it change the world in some way? Will it change your life in some way? Is it worth all of the hard work required to craft it and get a series order? How much money were you hoping to make to walk away? Is there another way to make that same amount of money in the next 6-8 months, which is the amount of time it may take for anyone to see any kind of check even if the show is picked up on the first pitch? Even if you brought money to the table, why should you be entitled to keep any of it since it is there to pay for production and distribution, neither of which you are supplying?
If you have a contact to pitch a solid show to, I trust you have already read my book, gone through the blog and prepared a powerful, compelling, entertaining treatment with that key element that attaches you to the sale. If you want to make money, staying attached and working the show is the way to go. All the best with your pitches!