What Many Unscripted Producers are Getting Wrong about Incentives
It's time to switch up the strategy.
You’ve come up with a great show idea, developed it, and fine-tuned your pitch materials.
But before taking it to the network, you plan to see if the shoot location offers incentives.
Smart, right?
Not so fast.
During these challenging times, when commissions are harder to land and budgets shrinking, it’s time to rethink how we’re doing things.
And it starts with development.
For a certain portion of your development slate, try starting with incentives, and developing content with them in mind.
How?
An example: A network is looking for a series about haunted houses to air around Halloween.
Rather than casting a wide net, try starting your search in Louisiana, which – in addition to offering lots of local color and haunted lore – boasts a generous 25-40% refundable tax credit on local spend.
The benefits:
Your development process becomes more targeted.
From the outset, you can plan production in a way that maximizes local spend.
When it comes time to pitch, you can lead with, “Because of Louisiana’s incentive, we can do it for less.” Music to any network exec’s ears!
There are other reasons to develop your show starting with incentives.
As we’ve all experienced, it’s easy for a content commissioner to become wedded to a location once the concept is pitched – and often difficult to change it afterwards.
For example: you’ve developed a survival competition show in Alaska that the network just LOVES.
But you could have saved fat stacks of cash by filming in Mongolia, with its 30-45% rebate on local spend, or Canada’s Yukon, where productions can benefit from both federal and local incentives.
Alaska, tho? No incentive.
Yet the network’s already tied to the idea of Alaska because that’s how you pitched it, and there’s no going back. And oh yeah: they still need you to shave 20% from your budget or it won’t fly.
Starting with incentives allows you to kick off your pitch with an enticing plus: a competitive price.
And that can make the difference between a greenlight and a pass.
It won’t work for all shows. Sometimes your talent or subject is tied to a certain location. With or without an unscripted incentive, some food/cooking shows are always going to want to go to Italy, because, well, Italy. Or the network may already have too many shows set in a particular location. It’s not a bad idea to do your research and/or ask.
Still, for the right types of shows in your development portfolio, it’s worth it to experiment with letting incentives drive the process.
Need a hand figuring out where to start?
We can help match your company’s production and development slate and strengths to applicable locations that offer incentives.
Just drop me a line at carrie@globalcontentstrategies.com.
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