Posted by nobody special on 09/10/06 22:39

I had a friend try to pitch a show to them. Discovery has a small
number of "favorite son" production companies that feed product into
them. Your only real hope is to go thru one of them, and once you do,
they basically make you sign over the idea and most of the control over
the idea to them (as well as most of the profits). You get a small
piece of it unless you can retain some producer credits on it.
Discovery and TLC get many more pitches than they know what to do with,
so they cherry-pick the very best packages, those where the production
values will be the highest, where the visuals will be stunning, where
you can get celebrity hosts or narrators, that sort of thing. On the
reality show front, they look to over-hype the interpersonal conflict
aspect, what I call the "American Chopper Effect". It's not enough to
have a story full of heroism, adventure, personal sacrifice, high-tech
and science, the principal characters involved have to drop everything
and get to a near-fistfight at least once an episode, or Discovery
isn't interested.

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