Logo from http://www.sfpseattle.com
Matt Chan is the president of the Screaming Flea productions, which is one of the top programming producers of non-fiction in the country. He began developing his passion for the production at the University of Oregon and continued working within the TV industry in California and Washington. Today he owns Screaming Flea and its success shines through with its tripling growth and size along with the shows it created and produced for over sixteen networks worldwide.
Chan is a creative thinker and always works outside of the box. He considers various conditions when creating a unique pitch appropriate for the specific network. He looks at TV as a product and tries to understand who the end is user is and find out what they need. By talking with the networks he looks at what they currently have and what they are doing. He analyzes the trends and which shows have been working. A trick to narrowing down a target audience is looking at the commercials that are being viewed. The bottom line is that, he must produce a show that people are going to want to see a show because it is entertaining (not simply because it’s good for them).
A show that him and his team successfully pitched was A&E series Hoarders. This show documents and reveals an unhealthy living lifestyle that millions of Americans live that many people are unaware of. They are stuck in a world where every little thing, big or small, has some kind of sentiment and cannot be thrown away. The show provides therapy to help bring these hoarders back into a healthier reality of life without all the extra baggage.
When putting a pitch together, it is important to do some research about the network: find out its philosophies, what shows it has now and at what time, and which shows are successful. Chan also mentions that a good rule of thumb is to find a show that can be a successful fiction show and to find what is equal to our reality of the concept. Audiences want reality and drama and with that formula they want a beginning, middle, end, and climax. A show’s success can be felt through its tension and the drama it reveals. People like cliffhangers so they can predict what’s going to happen next. Although this seems too simple and common for programs on television today, a good thing to keep in mind is that we also must be unique and give the viewers access to something that no other show has.
My group and I picked out the top six shows that we felt were our biggest competitors in the work and life program genre. Our next step is to see what these shows have in common and why it works and really tie it together to create our own formula for our show’s concept. I feel that after every guest we have, our creative juices are flowing out control. It almost seems too overwhelming but with each step we make and with all the advice we hear and take, it becomes more exciting when it comes to putting all the pieces together.
