Is My Idea A Good Idea?

How do you know?

I mean, you've thought up an idea for a show. You think its a good idea - how do you know? Who do you ask?

Don't trust your Mom, Wife, Husband, Boy/Girl Friend, Dog, Cat, Budgie, Fish - because they love you and they'll love everything you do. So they're out. Can't be trusted.

And you can't trust your friends and co-workers. Because as William Goldman's "First Rule of Showbiz" tells us: Nobody Knows Anything. So the only way to know if its a good idea is...

Let the Market Decide.

In simple terms - if it sells, its a good idea. If it doesn't - it isn't a good idea. Which isn't to say that good ideas don't sell - I have a whole file cabinet full of BRILLIANT STUFF that hasn't sold for one reason or another. But if it doesn't have market acceptance - if someone outside your circle of family and friends isn't willing to put bucks into it - you might have a problem.

And that's where the pitching comes in. When I pitched Freaky Stories, I did it cold - with no knowledge whatsoever of the industry. I knocked on 3 doors before I made the sale.

At the CBC, their Head of Creative - a former member of a well known sketch comedy troupe, kept pontificating about the colour blue. To this day, I have no idea what he was talking about.

The second pitch, I don't remember.

The third pitch was to YTV - and it took a couple of additional meetings, but I got a development deal and some money from them. The rest is history. It took 10 years to bring Freaky to TV, but because I had some real market interest, I knew that I was onto something.

Just saying...