fealola wrote:Looking forward to it!! (I hope we get it!) Could you tell us more? Is it a competition, will you showcase old or new bands? Could you tell us mor about the format?
It's merely a showcase show...no competition although from filmings bands will be chosen to go on and some obviously won't make the cut.....different styles but emphasis on rock.....bands who make the show will be seen all over the place and their website and contact information will be made available as well.....they will also be given the chance to sell product through an affiliate on line store and receive edited tape and dvd format broadcast quality of their performances.
Originally the income...(there must be an income stream you say, or why would they do it?) will come from venue fees, local sponsorship which we will get a piece of, and side merchandising deals. In my case, it will also boost my visibility as a personality and who do you think will headline these shows for a fee? Could it be Cirkus? A lot of bands will fall all over themselves and probably even pay an entrance fee to come in and play the shows and end up with TV exposure and broadcast quality performance video to use in their promo packs, although we are not trying to turn it into a merely play for pay type thing. Meanwhile with the correct promotion the venue gets a packed house and LOTS of alcohol sales. The club where we're filming the first one has bought a huge ad package with the local radio stations to promote this, so do you think the radio stations are happy? Damn right they are, and so I'm going to make sure that the music and the copy in their spots emphasizes the fact that Cirkus is headlining this 6 band show, and afternoon of, I'll be in the studio live doing an on air to promote it during drive time and the station will be happy to let me. I'm also supplying the audio and lighting production for an additional fee, because they want to look as big as possible for the TV audience. My arrangement for the band is that we get the door. All of it. Everyone involved in this project gets exactly what they want from it, and goes home happy. It's a win win. Contrary to my appearance as the village idiot on these threads, I'm a businessman and I'm about doing business.
Make no mistake though, this is my friends baby, I'm just making it work on the ground. He is dealing with the tv people and supplying all the broadcast, film crew and post edit stuff. That's not my area.
Worst case scenario of course is that it is not picked up and fails, but in between the worst and best scenario(a long run as a National show) is to buy the time slots ourselves and produce the show any damn way we like, selling it here and there to enough venues to cull out a weekly show,running late night and keeping income derived from various fees and side deals, which itself can produce a lot of income. The WB will go that route with us if nothing else because of our track record.
You can run a show of this kind at 3:00 am on Sunday morning and people will get up for it and have their friends and relatives up for it believe me. In the mid nineties I had the Carolina Karaoke show on a small independent station in Raleigh that eventually became the Fox and later the WB affiliate here. It ran at 2 or 3 in the morning or something like that, was a low budget two camera job. We filmed singers at various locations, mine or another operators, but soon my venues were paying me extra for exclusivity, and filmed the hosting segments either in my living room or live for insertion. Sold a couple of local sponsors and ran with it. My point is that during this time we couldn't go on a family outing without people stopping us and me signing autographs, and to this day when we go out if someone is not stopping us saying aren't you the guy from Cirkus they're saying aren't you the karaoke man and my karaoke profile is tiny now (by design) compared to what it was, so I know people are hooked on seeing themselves on TV.
This format has been hugely successful for my friends in the karaoke format for several years which is why the big networks are willing to run some pilots on it. Should it be picked up as a network show, I'm sure their programming "experts" will want to make changes, quite possibly making it a contest format and, because I live in the real world, wanting to get a host who they consider younger and hipper which is fine. My deal is going to be structured with that possibility in mind and a nice buy out fee or some sort of nice income producing position written in.
Anyway, that's what it's about, and it'll be fun to do. Dick Clark can still rock, and he's 213 years old. :wink:
meanies! 