Creativity and Riding the Auto Train

I recently rode the Amtrack auto train from Virginia to Central Florida. It seemed like an economical way to bring a used car back to Orlando without putting a lot more miles on it. The trip from Lorton, Virginia (just south of Washington, DC) to Sanford, Florida (about a half-hour north of Orlando)took about sixteen hours. It included dinner, continental breakfast, and a movie. The coach seat provided more room than Business class seats on planes. I was able to plug my computer in at a convenient socket, and lean almost all the way back to sleep. Not only did I enjoy the trip, when I factored in the cost of gas, motel room, and meals, the trip was cheaper than driving. It wasn't that long ago that most people took trains for long trips. Now train travel is a specialty item, except for commuters into a major metropolitan area. It also gave me time to read, think, and work on some of my current projects away from the bustle of a busy office. How does this relate to creating content? Sometimes your best inspiration can be to do something different. Although I was traveling by myself I met people at meals that I would never have met otherwise -- a nurse that was moving to Tampa, for example, and a retired couple of motorcycle enthusiasts who were transporting their bikes on the train. We never know when we're creating something what is going to spur our creativity. But I do know that you can't create something new using the same routines. We need to get out into the world and do something different. That's a great technique to use if you're stuck on a piece, but it's also great if you're starting out. You don't have to take the Auto Train. That worked for me. Do what works for you. But do something. Take your dog down a different street for your walk. Ride your bicycle somewhere you've never been. Or just go for a drive in the country and stop at the first small town you find. Or go bungee jumping. Just make sure the cord is fastened tightly. Break your routine, break your old habits, and find new inspiration.

Find a Fanatic Audience – Tony Award Ratings

Viewership for the 2012 Tony Awards was at an all-time low – by most accounts only 6 million viewers watched this year’s show on June 10, down from 6.9 million in 2011 and 7 million in 2010. This despite another great hosting job by Neil Patrick Harris, and a show that emphasized popular musical numbers like the opening from “Book of Mormon” and the live performance of numbers from “Hairspray”, live from a cruise ship. The show cut popular features like the tribute to recently deceased theatre artists, and relegated speeches from theatre icons like Bernadette Peters and Manny Azenberg to bumps leading to break. The stories after the Tonys emphasized the audience decline. But another story emerged after all the ratings came in. The Tony Awards finished 16th in the ratings that week, with a very respectable 6.0 rating. Moreover, the demographics of the show are excellent – theatre fans tend to be high income individuals that are hard for advertisers to reach. It’s my feeling that the show would have rated higher had it catered more to the theatre audience, and not tried so many populist tricks. That’s because there’s two ways to get a rating in television – you can have a lot of people watch for a short period of time, or you can have fewer people watch longer. When you have a lot of viewers watching for a long period of time, you generate Super Bowl ratings. Most shows are better off following a strategy that keeps viewers longer, rather than reaching out for new viewers. Therefore, the Tony Awards would probably increase their ratings if they aimed the show squarely at theatre lovers, and produced the show to keep them glued to the set, rather than picking strategies that alienated theatre buffs. The overall audience has also shrunk. Thirty years ago a 6.0 rating would merit an automatic cancellation; these days it gets a show in the top 20 for the week. That’s why I think CBS will continue to air the Tony Awards, and not put it on PBS like they did in past years. For those of us who create content the lesson is clear – Aim at an audience that’s going to be passionate about your work, seek it out no matter where it is, and will recommend it to their friends. We’ll talk in future posts about how to build that audience.

Why There are so many talent competition shows

The answer to this question is obvious at first -- talent competition shows dominate the ratings. Dancing With the Stars, American Idol, the Voice, and America's Got Talent are among the top rated shows every week. More competition ideas keep being announced -- Duets is on the air, The Glee Project has returned, and more are in development at every network. Cost is also a factor. Even with the outrageous salaries paid the top judges, reality competition shows cost less per episode than scripted dramas. The major broadcast networks are no longer very profitable -- some regularly lose money. They are no longer the flagship businesses but instead part of a portfolio of channels owned by major media companies -- Comcast (NBC), Disney (ABC), CBS/Viacom (CBS) and Fox (Fox). Broadcast networks provide a valuable platform for these networks' sports and news properties. They have value for these media companies even if they lose money. Understandably, the corporations want them to lose as little as possible. Hence, the move to reality competition shows. I've predicted this move in this blog. Variety shows used to be a staple of network broadcast schedules in the 60s and 70s. The Ed Sullivan Show is the most iconic, but other popular variety show hosts included the Smothers Brothers, Flip Wilson, Sonny and Cher, and Dean Martin. Howard Cosell even hosted a variety show on Saturday nights for one season, the show that introduced the Bay City Rollers to America. In television, everything old becomes new again. It's the time for variety shows, updated to include modern competition and new judges. When you're looking for content ideas, try giving an old idea a new twist. After all, how many variations of Romeo and Juliet have we seen since Shakespeare first penned the play the in 1500s?

Get in the Game!

A friend of mine who is between jobs visited me and said, "You should make a reality show about job searching." There are a lot of us out there with interesting stories." It's a shame that my friend, along with many other Americans, is still looking for work. He means well, but his suggestion shows that he hasn't really examined his idea in depth. He assumes, that if he doesn't see his idea on television, it's because no one's ever had the idea before. In fact, there's no shortage of ideas to create great content. What's lacking are creators with the skill to make their story compelling, whether they're writing a novel, making a movie, shooting a TV show, or creating a video game. That's why you can't copyright an idea -- you can only copyright an expression of an idea. Creating a believeable world with characters so striking the viewers are compelled to watch takes time and effort. Your idea is just the start. You must sit down and flesh out your characters and setting in detail. You have to be willing to spend months writing your novel, pitching your story, polishing your screenplay, detailing your character bibles. It's a cliche because it's true: You may have to work for years to become an overnight sensation. You can't create anything unless you get in the game. Carve out time in your day to create. Make progress every day. Don't suggest an idea for someone else to create; go make it yourself.

Fixing American Idol

If you've followed my blog you know I'm a fan of American Idol. I've used examples from the program to show you how to incorporate what works about it into your content. It remains one of the most popular shows on television, and its success and the success of its imitators have spawned even more music competition shows -- Duets is the latest. However, both the network, Fox, and the show's producers, are concerned about the show's 30% drop in ratings. They can't blame it on the latest Idol champion, Phillip Phillips, who had an inspiring personal story and an engaging personality. Last year I told broadcast networks to revive the variety show, and it seems like they did listen to me. Since I want to help save my favorite show, here's how I would fix the show. First, change the judges and judging. Steven, Jennifer, and Randy's supportive comments didn't help the contestants improve. Phillip and Jessica, the two finalists, were the same in the last show as they were in the first. When Simon was the judge, the audience wanted to hear his comments, because they knew he would tell the truth. Because the judges hardly said anything critical, the producers included Jimmy Iovine's taped comments to the results show. That didn't help the lack of criticism in the performanceee shows. The producers should encourage Randy Jackson to be more critical. They should replace Steven Tyler, whose comments very often were incoherent, with someone of equal stature who's going to say something interesting. The judge's comments are a big part of the show, and they were just fluff this year. Second -- promote conflict. More critical judges would help in this area. The contestants are fighting for their professional lives and the audience needs to see that pressure. They shouldn't be nice all the time, like this group was, or pretended to be. We want to see them really want this. If the contestants don't care, why should the audience? Third -- show more work. One of the best parts of Hollywood week and the auditions are watching singers make mistakes. Let's see our Idol contestants struggle more to achieve their performances. Let's have the celebrity guests tell the singers they may never make it. Wouldn't it be great to see the Idol mess up in the rehearsal and nail the performance? Essentially, I'm tellling the Idol producers the same thing that I tell all of you -- Raise the stakes. You'd think they wouldn't need to be reminded, but the main problem I see is that American Idol, after eleven years on the air, has become too comfortable. Everyone was happy on the show this year: the judges mostly said nice things, the contestants loved each other, and the celebrities kept being "amazed" at how good the singers were. No one had any problems. That makes a fun experience, but also makes bad drama. Make the contestants uncomfortable. Make the judges more critical. Make the stakes higher, and that will make American Idol #1 again.

How to End a Series

When I was growing up in the sixties television series did not usually have a finale. With rare exceptions (the two part finale of the original Fugitive series comes to mind), series just ended, going off TV. The castaways on Gilligan's Island, for example, were not rescued in the last episode of the series. That took the TV movie, "Rescue from Gilligan's Island," which wasn't aired until several years after the series was cancelled. In the 70s show creators and network executives learned that series finales could generate great ratings and critical acclaim. The finale of the Mary Tyler Moore show, where the cast finally exits the newsroom singing "There's a Long Way to Tipperary," may have started the trend. The finale of MASH, whose series run lasted much longer than the acutal Korean War, was the highest rated series episode and remains one of the highest rated shows of all time. These days, almost every series that's been on the air for more than one season trys to plan their finale in a way that will satisfy fans of the series and tie up loose ends. Of course some series, like The Sopranos, end controversially. As a fan of that series, I thought creator David Chase didn't honor the series with his jump cut to black at the end. I didn't like the Seinfeld finale, a bizarre fantasy that made no sense to me. Which brings us to the finale of House. Spoiler Alert. I'm going to talk about what happened. I loved House when the series launched. I own the first four years on DVD. Like many viewers, I found the lead character fresh, funny, and interesting. I enjoyed the non-so-subtle Sherlock Holmes hints. I did think the series lost its way the last two seasons, and it was time to end it. I am glad that it ended with House faking his death, just like Sherlock Holmes did at the end of the first series of stories. I liked the character of House, and am pleased that he chose life, even if he had to kill his old persona to find it. Endings are tough, particularly in episodic television. When you're running a show, you're doing everything you can to keep it running by keeping the audience interested. A series that lasts several seasons leaves loose ends dangling all over the screen, making it difficult to tie them up. When you're creating your content, you should be thinking about how it might end, even at the beginning. I'm not saying you need to chart the plot, or outline it in detail. But if you know where your characters and story are going, you can shape the characters and events to make them get there. I hope we all have the success of a long running series, and the chance to end it gloriously.

Create Great Characters - Game of Thrones II

What your characters do is ten times more important than what they say. As a program executive, I read character bibles for proposed sitcoms. They would include each character's backstory, which is their history before the show starts. Backstories often include the character's feelings about the other people in the show. That's standard. However, a great proposal -- one that would move along in the development process -- always included information about the actions the character would take, based on their feelings. There's a reason they call it Acting, not Feeling. To act is to do. Hamlet, one of the most famous "indecisive" characters in English literature,in fact does a great many things during the course of the play. He goes to the top of the battlements to confront the ghost. He feigns madness. He hires actors to play the play and writes an additional scene for them, while also delivering some of the most lucid instructions to actors in the English language ("speak the speech, I pray you, trippingly on the tongue"). Hamlet kills Polonius, sends Ophelia to a nunnery and gets in a big fight with Ophelia's brother over her grave. The one thing he doesn't do until the end is kill his uncle, Claudius -- but that's because he wants to be sure, not because he's afraid to act. A character's behavior is what makes them memorable. Tirion Lanaster, played by Peter Dinklage in Game of Thrones, certainly looks different from the regular-sized characters in the show. But it's not how he looks, it's what he does -- saving Lady Stark from Barbarians, weaving a web of spies around his sister, the Queen Regent, slapping the boy king, hiding his mistress in plain sight -- that makes us root for him. You're a creator, but you're also an audience. When you're creating behavior for your characters think about what you find compelling about characters you like to watch. Are your characters as interesting? If not, it might be time to do some revisions.