You Never Can Tell...

In my experience, you never can tell what is going to happen in a pitch.

I mean, you've done your homework and hopefully the pitch is honed to the point where you have it down perfectly. You've rehearsed it. You have every base covered. You can anticipate every single one of their questions - and...

They hit you with the curveball that you're not expecting. There's always that one last question...

I had a meeting yesterday with a major web carrier about my new show. We'd met before. They not only like my show - they LOVE IT! So here's the curve: Their sales force will have to sell it - and although the numbers are right, they've never seen projected audience numbers as high as I'm forcasting them.

I was ready. I produced my data - the sources are accurate - but they've never seen a show like this. It's an entirely new model. They didn't know what to do with it. They didn't want to let it get away, but they can't justify the cost of the entire series.

So I suggested a pilot. We're going to do 4 episodes - and see what our numbers tell us. This is the ideal way to do a show. No focus groups. No guesswork. We're just going out and doing it.

Which is exactly what happened with Freaky Stories - we did our low budget pilot, that blew everything else away. The following week, we were greenlit for our series...