Network Partnerships:
Who Gets The Best Deal?

I suppose that at some point in the life of almost every independent producer-director, one has to make the decision of when to cease becoming a "gun-for-hire" and take the plunge in forming one's own production company. That time for me was at the completion of my first year as Line Producer on MacGyver. I became involved with an idea to bring a very successful Japanese prime-time program to the U.S. in hopes of producing an American version. That program was Tokyo Broadcasting System's Waku Waku. It was a game show that used specially-shot animal footage in both a quizzical and comical way. I fine-tuned my pitch and heralded the program as 'Wild Kingdom meets Hollywood Squares". I think I coined that phrase in my thirtieth pitch meeting. One hundred and six pitches later, the phrase paid off as the show was sold to ABC Children's Television. Squire Rushnell, VP of Children's Television, was replacing American Bandstand and was in need of a program he hoped would capture both a youth and female market. My version of Waku Waku, which I called Animal Crack-Ups, fit the bill for him.

The scenario was quite simple; Rushnell needed a cost-efficient half-hour program and I a low-cost way of producing my show. We decided that a partnership would provide the best of both worlds for each of us; the network could share in the profitability on the back-end of the program while offering me facilities and office space at a very reasonable rate. Keep in mind, this was a true 'Mom & Pop' operation, with a staff of only seven people. Through the three-year run of Animal Crack-Ups, two important patterns emerged: a string of quality weekly shows was produced and trust in my judgment was established at ABC.

In terms of trust, I should not minimize another relationship that was established, that with the Tokyo Broadcasting System, through the success of Crack-Ups. To my knowledge, this was the first time a Japanese program had traveled from East to West and established itself as a successful programming concept in the U. S.. There was a great sense of pride and respectability at Tokyo Broadcasting that a Japanese format could find a home for itself with American television viewers. Prior to Crack-Ups, only the reverse was true: Japanese television welcomed American product. This benchmark was the real break-through for me; from this time forward the Japanese were very eager to share programming concepts with me. Launching a second series became an important goal for TBS.

The location, Cannes in the South of France; the event, M.I.P., 1989. Programmers from around the world were gathering to look at the newest programming concepts from Europe, South America and the Far East. Aisle 6 - the home of Tokyo Broadcasting - became a laugh magnet. TBS was showing clips from a variety program, Fun with Ken and Kato Chan. The clips were home videos. It was astounding to watch the crowds of 150 to 200 people at a time, all squashed together, laughing hysterically at the home video clips. Every producer in the world was taking a quick lesson on how to bow courteously, Japanese-style, so as to be able to greet TBS executives and, hopefully, capture the rights to the home video program. I'll never forget the moment when Joe Bellon, the worldwide representative for Tokyo Broadcasting, ushered me through the crowd and introduced me to the Vice President of Programming for TBS. Quite simply, I asked if, once more, I could represent their programming in America and create a U.S. version of their home video hit. He graciously turned to me and said "Yes." An entire group of American producers stopped bowing.

Three weeks later, I distilled all the raw footage from several Tokyo Broadcasting home video programs into a 12-minute presentation. Four minutes into my pitch to Hank Cohen, then Director of Specials at ABC, he turned to me and said, "We're going to buy this program." Five days later, we had a deal for a series of 4 prime-time specials. My agent, Richard Brustein, and I began discussing the idea between us of a partnership with ABC. However, because Animal Crack-Ups was with the Children's Division, the Prime-Time Specials Division really had no knowledge of how successful our partnership had been on the Saturday morning series.

Richard and I theorized that launching a video show nationwide would be both costly and, quite frankly, risky. There was no data on how many funny tapes were tucked away in the closets of American households. In fact, the network asked some top producers if they thought the project was viable. Most of them said no. To hedge our bet, Richard and I proposed a budget that would allow at least $100,000 above the license fee on each special to cover the cost of full-page TV Guide and People Magazine ads. The ads were specifically designed to solicit tapes. We asked ourselves, what would convince the network to spend $100,000 above the license fee? The answer: a partnership.

November 29, 1989: The first America's Funniest Home Videos special became the most successful program airing in the Sunday night 8 o'clock time slot in 12 years. The network hotline rang the next morning and Bob Iger and Ted Harbert offered a ten-show pick-up. We said, "Yes" and then took bets on how many funny videos were still out there in the American marketplace.

The experience of producing the pilot taught us a great deal. We quickly learned that screening home videos is an incredibly labor-intensive task; also, as mentioned earlier, publicity and promotion was key to spreading the word. Keeping in mind that we were now a somewhat larger, but nonetheless, "Mom & Pop" operation, the concept of the partnership was still most important to us. From a producer's standpoint, we knew we needed a larger license fee to handle the demanding and costly screening process. The Animal Crack-ups experience on the ABC lot taught us how to negotiate pricing for studios, office space, and editing facilities. Also, five weeks into the launch of the Home Videos series, an 8 o'clock showing of the program ranked #1 while an 8:30 PM re-run of a program that aired 4 weeks earlier ranked #2 the same week. Fortunately for us, that very week we were at M.I.P. selling AFHV to the foreign markets.

The ABC sales force capitalized on our success and aggressively sold the program to 68 foreign markets. Basically, before Videos, ABC did not have a big library of shows; having a new series made them more aggressive. Were they more aggressive because of the partnership? I would tend to think so. Was it more profitable for me? Yes. The one major negative is painfully obvious - fifty percent of the back-end profit goes to the network. However, with the Fin-Syn rule about to vaporize and the networks realizing they have an abundance of dormant muscles to tone, I believe reality-based or comedy/reality programming will be produced mostly on a partnership basis.

I believe putting the money on the screen is the key to any program's success and if it takes a special deal or a partnership to accomplish that goal, I'm for it.

Vin Di Bona is Executive Producer of Vin Di Bona Productions.