Steven Katleman watched a promising reality project he represented and “loved” get optioned by a big production company, only to see it wither in a desk drawer when it didn’t get picked up by a network.
That was until earlier this month when the production company called and asked to extend the option, which was about to expire.
“I thought it was dead,” said Katleman, who represents television writers, producers, actors and directors as an attorney for Greenberg Traurig LLP. “They got a call from a major and have renewed interest in it now. It came back from the dead.”
Aging reality projects aren’t the only ones getting dusted off in Hollywood these days. With members of the Writers Guild of America possibly heading for the picket line when their contract expires later this year, all sorts of TV series proposals are getting a second look and possibly a second life.
While the Los Angeles County economy would take a multi-million dollar hit in a strike, the prospect of a work stoppage especially with other guild contracts expiring next year has driven deal-making and shortened the development process.
Earlier this month, NBC moved quickly to renew summer shows “Last Comic Standing” and “Singing Bee,” while Fox renewed “Don’t Forget the Lyrics,” which initially lagged in ratings. Meanwhile, smaller production houses that can mobilize in a hurry are finding themselves in a position to pick up some extra business.
Television filming in the county jumped 19 percent in the second quarter to 5,378 days, making it the third-busiest quarter on record for TV work, according to data released by local permitting agency Film L.A.
“A lot of companies are rushing production,” said Eduardo Martinez, an economist at the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp. “The latest data saw some pretty healthy gains.”
‘Strike-proof’
Should there be a strike, all aspects of TV will get hit hard and fast far more so than in the film world so networks are building a stockpile of content to counter the guild’s strike fund. The programming frenzy is playing out differently in the two main areas of TV:
Scripted series, which are being renewed and shot at a much faster rate than ordinarily would be the case, and unscripted and reality or so-called “strike-proof” programming. The latter encompasses game shows, talk shows and reality-type fare that for the most part does not require union talent.
“We’ve already seen plenty of reality programming in times when nobody worried about a strike. So if there’s a strike and it goes on, reality (programming) clearly will be one place the nets will turn for more product,” said Lindsay Conner, an entertainment lawyer with Dickstein Shapiro LLP.
Still, any jump in unscripted work may be of relatively smaller term due to the large amount of reality shows already on TV.
“There’s already so much of it out there filling the schedules; it’s not really anything new,” said Jody Simon, an entertainment attorney with Raskin Peter Rubin & Simon LLP. “The cable networks all have a vast amount of unscripted programming and may look for more. They run 24/7 and need to fill that. That’s less true of networks.”
The guilds, and some other critics, have expressed concern that the rush has studios and networks stockpiling product that could be mediocre at best, given the shortened schedules.
But the alternative for the networks and studios is to risk having no product with which to fill schedules and distribution pipelines something they can little afford, given the intense competition for viewers in the digital media era.
Indeed, this concern echoes the 1988 WGA strike, in which the walkout was believed to have started the erosion of the network audience in favor of cable channels. In this case viewers could depart for new media outlets like the Internet.
“If television as a whole gets weakened then that’s bad news for everyone – guilds, networks, producers and all,” Katleman said.
