[Susan Ellis]

Dear Sterling,

My husband and I completed a pilot for a travel series a few years ago. We took our work to the Reel Screen Summit. This annual conference (usually in DC) was tremendously helpful in both educating us about the kinds of programming various channels were looking for and establishing contacts in the programming dept. of each. With the pilot we were able to get immediate feedback on whether or not there was interest. Its very clear that there are a lot of travel programs out there looking for a home and the secret is finding a good match between what you are selling and the existing threads on a network. (Our program highlighted people journeying around the world on a “volunteer vacation”. While we received a lot of praise for the visual quality of our program and most networks were not interested in that angle- at the time they were on the hunt for “Extreme Travel” or “Makeover Travel”. Since that time we’ve been busy with other work and haven’t really tried to take it any further. We did get a call from one channel that liked it and wanted to air it “for exposure” but they had no budget to pay for even the most basic costs to cover the music rights.

As far as budget, the price per episode seems rather low to me. I would think about finding an agent/distribution house who can help you market the work at a better rate. It would also be helpful to have someone else do the legwork if you are busy with a 9 to 5 job. It takes a lot of persistance- and connections are good to have. You can also make contact with these people at Reel Screen.

We also went to NATPE but found Reel Screen was more focused toward “documentary” programming, it was a smaller crowd and gave us more opportunities to meet with decision makers and fellow documentarians. We also took the train over to Discovery outside of Washington and met with several folks out there. (Travel, Discovery Times, etc.) In the end we decided that the kind of program they were interested in didn’t match what we had so we just shelved it rather than try to fit a square peg into a round hole. When programming trends change perhaps we’ll pull it out again. We’ll see.

Why not produce this as a one hour program rather than a 3 part series? An 80:1 ratio would make a smokin’ one hour doc don’t you think? I don’t know if this was helpful at all, just thought I’d share our experience with the whole thing. Good luck to you! I hope your program is exactly what they’re looking for!

Best,
Susan