Where's the annual list celebrating TV specs?

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  • Where's the annual list celebrating TV specs?

    We have the Blacklist, Hit List and Bloodlist and they all do a great job in celebrating feature scripts that are yet to be produced.

    Makes you wonder why there isn't a similar list to celebrate unproduced TV specs -- especially given the influential role tv now has with writers, directors and talent and how writers often switch from one to the other. I think we need a list. Thoughts DD'ers?

  • #2
    Re: Where's the annual list celebrating TV specs?

    My (largely ignorant outsider's) sense of the relevant difference between unproduced feature specs and unproduced tv pilots is that feature scripts are the kind of thing you would expect to kick around for a few years looking for a home, where TV pilots are seasonal.

    Look at the enormous proportion in any given year of shot pilots that don't go to series. Yes, every once in a great great while one of these will come back from the dead, and sometimes pilots do get reworked and sent out again -- but there's your baseline for what the entire town thought was or wasn't a great spec pilot. And after that year, they're done. If most of the ones people wanted to make weren't that great, and go away after their season in the sun, it's hard to imagine there's this vast ocean of great unproduced TV specs each year that agents and execs all loved even though no one made a pilot order for them.

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    • #3
      Re: Where's the annual list celebrating TV specs?

      TV pilots are also used and re-used as samples so you don't know if you're getting one that's been written 5 years ago or not so I imagine it would make it hard to do an annual list when you a lot of pilots for some writers just get recycled year after year.
      Quack.

      Writer on a cable drama.

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      • #4
        Re: Where's the annual list celebrating TV specs?

        A list does exist. It's been put out two years in a row (I believe it's two years). It's called The Staffing Survey. It's a list put together by coordinators and assistants who nominate their top staffing samples for that given year.

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        • #5
          Re: Where's the annual list celebrating TV specs?

          Originally posted by ducky1288 View Post
          TV pilots are also used and re-used as samples so you don't know if you're getting one that's been written 5 years ago or not so I imagine it would make it hard to do an annual list when you a lot of pilots for some writers just get recycled year after year.
          I see what you're saying but I'm not sure the process is any different to the feature side of things. After all there are maybe 75/80 feature specs a year that might sell out of a possible 1200 that go into circulation. Of the 1100 plus that don't sell they become calling cards/ samples and in some cases for years after for the writer. Same with a pilot spec -- reps take it out, try and get it set up with producers, studio, network and if it doesn't go it becomes a sample.

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          • #6
            Re: Where's the annual list celebrating TV specs?

            Originally posted by Mintclub View Post
            I see what you're saying but I'm not sure the process is any different to the feature side of things. After all there are maybe 75/80 feature specs a year that might sell out of a possible 1200 that go into circulation. Of the 1100 plus that don't sell they become calling cards/ samples and in some cases for years after for the writer. Same with a pilot spec -- reps take it out, try and get it set up with producers, studio, network and if it doesn't go it becomes a sample.
            I'm not saying features don't become samples and aren't used year after year. But features are usually blasted to multiple places in a short period of time (making it easier for voting because you know a wide range of people read) but TV is very targeted. You're not sending pilots to anyone and everyone. Especially when talking about staffing because sometimes it's just one studio or one production company for a specific staff opening they have.

            And features are tracked a little more formally because of tracking boards (public and private) where you can see when a feature goes out into the world. Pilots aren't really tracked formally because prodco/studio/network will get hundreds of submissions that no one else knows about. They log those internally and they could get something that's several years old.

            For example: My reps have been using one of my pilots as a staffing sample for two years -- if it came across someone's desk this year they could vote on it but someone would see the list and think "Wait, I read that in 2013 why is it on a 2015 list of xxxxxx."

            I suppose once you started a list and make it to where it's just voting on whatever you read that current year and some old stuff would make it but year after year the list would get more current possibly. Who knows.

            But I know years ago Tracking Board tried to do one for pilots called The Runway List, but it only lasted one year for whatever reason. I saw the Staffing Survey but it seemed like a small sample -- and it was voted on by assistants right?
            Quack.

            Writer on a cable drama.

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