With a foot in both news and entertainment, I frequently find myself getting “pitched” story ideas. In my opinion, good stories contain the same elements – regardless of the genre.
Why is it two such simple things as a red team and a blue team running into each other on a lighted box on the wall will, on the most biological level, draw our eye? In his seminal work Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan describes TV as the ultimate “cool” medium. As such, the best television frequently involves generating heat. Which explains why football, war and reality television make “good” TV. Add to that conflict, competition, and a compelling storyline and you will create a gut level connection to viewers. If these elements are not present, look to add them. Such things as competition and time pressure are common artificially added components in TV.
Probably the least of the most effective ways to get on TV is to have a human-interest component. Better suited to longer format programming, this works ultimately because every good story has an element of conflict, be it man vs man, or nature, or himself. Since these stories contain more nuances, they take more time to tell. Most movies end happily, but take two hours to get there. Further, character development is crucial to sucking the viewer in and giving them a reason to care. Charity events, stories of extraordinary human achievement and the like will work, but if you are looking to get news coverage, aim these stories at weekend coverage and the lifestyle section of the paper when the news hole is typically larger and less demanding.
Finally, a good pitch requires something in writing - keep it brief - a page or less. Follow the 5 W’s and 1 H: who, what, why, where, when and how. Any combination of email, fax, mailing or web site can be effective. Condensing it to one-page forces the person making the pitch to focus making the project that much easier to understand and therefore sell.
Next week, why SARAH PALIN can’t win….
I can't wait to read more! Great post to start things off!
ReplyDeleteBTW, this is Patty Fiegel. I know it's posting as Shutterbugs...that's my blog name.
All of your pitch points were valid enough 20 minutes ago but as TV has turned into a quagmire of crapola...the rules of engagement have changed...and I mean visual engagement and the changes are happening even as we speak.
ReplyDeleteNobody reads the paper anymore and nobody watches the news anymore and those who do don't fit the demographic needed to sell the crap that needs to be sold in order to keep the other crap flowing.
Just look at the ADs on network news. Mostly all insurance and drug ADS for old people...us actually.
Nobody has the time or patience to..."stay tuned" long enough to get the 10 to 15 stories offered up. Pitching story ideas to the crap purveyors assumes they know a good story when they see one. They care not about a good story but more about what will keep a viewer engaged long enough to...yeah...sell more crap.
The real problem with TV news in general is that the real focus of purpose was lost...maybe like...30 years ago? The early days of TV news, while sponsored, also fell into the public service arena and was never meant to be a means of generating profit. News was a public service and if the presentation was good enough, maybe the viewer would hang around after Douglas Edwards and watch some prime time. Somewhere down the line TV news started being more concerned with bottom lines than with story lines and as such, they become huge machines that needed constant oiling in the form of revenue. It's just like our police state. It used to be that if a cop stopped you for speeding and you weren't an axe murderer, you had a shot at getting a warning. Nowadays the ticket books don't even have warnings in them. If you get stopped, you pay. You pay because the police have created such a monster of cameras, cars, radar, laser, high speed highway chasers, etc...that it needs the money just to keep itself in business. How many cop cars do you see with..THIS VEHICLE WAS PURCHASED WITH CONFISCATED DRUG MONEY? The more stops they make, the more money comes in and so on and so forth. So now they have to increase their road patrol budgets for more stops and of course we motorists pay for that by getting popped.
TV news kind of did the same thing. They got so big with so many staff covering so many stories in so many places...they imploded. Nobody watches them so nobody buys enough TV spots to justify their expenses so they start cutting back on staff, equipment and stories just to stay alive.
Pitching a story with human elements one thing but IMHOP, that model no longer holds true because both the networks and the audience don't care enough to care enough.