Netflix is picking up exclusive rights to the documentary “Virunga” as part of a broader push by the company to include more cause-related documentaries in its growing original programming lineup.
The film, about the battle to protect a national park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, will make its debut on Netflix this year. It follows a team of park rangers at Virunga National Park that includes a former child soldier, a caretaker for orphan gorillas and a Belgian conservationist. The group fights to save the Unesco world heritage site from armed militia, poachers and others as a rebellion breaks out across the country.
“Virunga” premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April, where it was nominated for the Best Documentary Feature prize.
Netflix is pouring $3 billion into content this year and is steadily expanding its roster of original programing to lure subscribers. At the same time, Netflix is charting an international expansion as its streaming business in the United States matures.
While the company has received much attention for its scripted programs, including “House of Cards” and “Orange Is the New Black,” it has also picked up a series of documentaries. Those include “Mitt,” about Mitt Romney’s presidential aspirations, and “The Square,” about the Egyptian revolution.
The documentary push at Netflix comes as a range of outlets, including Time Warner’s CNN and Amazon, also increase their offerings in the category.
Netflix does not release specific audience figures, but executives said the documentaries generated “good sized” audiences, leading the company to seek out more of the genre.
Of particular interest are cause-related documentaries with messages that will resonate globally, said Lisa Nishimura, vice president of original documentary and comedy programming at Netflix.
In addition to “Virunga,” Netflix has picked up “E-Team,” about human rights workers, and “Mission Blue,” about the oceanographer Sylvia Earle. Terms of the deals were not disclosed.
“We are really free from the constraints that other platforms have,” Ms. Nishimura said. “How many people in the world really get to go to Sundance?”
Filmmakers say part of Netflix’s appeal is that it promotes the stories to its base of more than 50 million global members all at once. (Traditional distribution models generally require that filmmakers strike deals market by market and place huge emphasis on exclusive festivals and opening weekends.)
Instant global distribution is important to filmmakers with an urgent message, said Joanna Natasegara, the producer of “Virunga.” In addition, the titles will be available on the service in perpetuity, allowing audiences to grow over time.
“I can be talking about this film for the next couple of years, and boom, there it is,” said Fisher Stevens, director of “Mission Blue.” “It is just getting more and more subscribers and more and more eyes on it every day.”
Amazon Studios asks the public to review shows before they’re made into series. Sound crazy? Not to its executives, who consider the studio “the most customer-centric in the world.”
“Fifty years ago,” Joe Lewis says of a time far, faraway, “there’d be three heads of networks and theirteams of a few people making their best guess onwhat the audience wanted to see. Forty years later, youhad tens, if not hundreds, of TV channels and moreexecutives trying to guess about niche audiences.
“We’ve transcended that entirely. When it comes to decision-making, instead of trying to guess what a million people want to watch, we just ask the audience.”
A startling, yet perfectly plausible concept: ask people what they want to watch, then give it to them. Not so startling is that it has come from Amazon, the company that figured out how to sell almost everything to almost everybody via the internet. As the streaming service prepares a second season of original programming, executives at Amazon Studios are savoring their unique way of doing business.
“Amazon Studios is the most customer-centric network studio in the world,” says Lewis, head of comedy TV development.
That’s because Amazon customers in the United States and the United Kingdom get to participate in the actual development process. They can submit their own scripts for consideration and track studio development via Amazon’s online development slate; Amazon may even reach out to a select few to garner feedback on concepts or ideas.
The studio’s pilot season is a one-month period during which customers get to watch and review the pilots under consideration. Those reviews will ultimately help define the new season.
“We can say, without a doubt, that customers and users already love any show we pick up,” Lewis says confidently.
Anyone with an Amazon account can chime in via Amazon’s familiar product review system, but to see the fruits of their labor — the actual TV series — customers need to upgrade to an Amazon Prime account, which, for $99 a year, offers access to Prime Instant Video’s movies and television shows. (It also offers free two-day shipping for Amazon purchases and other benefits.)
Currently, Amazon Studios has thirty theatrical motion pictures on its development slate (though nothing has been greenlighted yet), and execs admit they’re still figuring out how to best solicit feedback for movies.
On the TV side, however, customers are fully engaged.
The studio is revving up for a second season of Alpha House and a slew of premieres, including The After (from X-Files’s Chris Carter), Bosch (from best-selling novelist Michael Connelly and Treme co-creator Eric Overmyer), Transparent (from Jill Soloway, producer of Six Feet Under) and Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs and Classical Music (from Roman Coppola, Jason Schwartzman and Alex Timbers). Three new kids’ originals are also set to launch this summer, with two more to follow.
Meanwhile, the studio’s third wave of pilots is already picking up steam, with orders for a Marc Forster–Ben Watkins drama, Hand of God, and a Whit Stillman dramedy, The Cosmopolitans.
“Alot of people agree that television is in a renaissance,” says Roman Coppola (Moonrise Kingdom, The Darjeeling Limited), who adapted Mozart in the Jungle from Blair Tindall’s memoir. “There’s incredible, exciting work happening.”
“No more dreaming about one day,” says Morgan Wandell, Amazon Studios head of drama series development. “We can take real shots with amazing talent and have the potential to deliver it to millions of people via streaming video. I find I’m still pinching myself, because we’ve been living throughthis migration for so long.”
While Amazon Studios is all about giving customers a voice, development starts with the executives leading the charge, each of whom strayed from traditional cable and network television careers to explore this grand new world of streaming.
Roy Price, director of the studio, for example, spent almost six years developing animated Disney TV series like Kim Possible before branching out. Lewis, who originally hails from Comedy Central’s Tosh.0, left 20th Century Fox four years ago, “because I had this vision of the future and how television was going to be delivered.” Wandell did time as a production executive at Berlanti Television and ABC Studios, developing hits like Ugly Betty before breaking into alternative media; and Tara Sorensen, head of kids’ programming, previously developed and produced Emmy-winning series at National Geographic Kids Entertainment and Sony.
This experienced crew believes the key to creating great television is finding and betting on talent.
“A lot of shows that have done well recently have one thing in common: They have a super talented creator with a vision for doing something new and interesting with an ongoing, serial story,” Price points out. “That’s the fundamental thing we’re always looking for.”
Specifically, he says, Amazon is interested in working with creators who delve into worlds that haven’t been seen on TV, take risks and refuse to settle or pander. With so many outlets tackling scripted programing these days, Amazon sees the real battle in acquiring talent, not viewers.
“Sometimes people say, ‘Just let me know which way you want me to go and I’ll do it,’” Lewis notes. “There’s no better way to end a pitch here. I tell my team all the time, ‘The best script we could have is one we don’t have to give any notes on.’ It can happen. As developers, we can help curate the brand and the talent we’re working with, but we’re not here to make notes.”
Coppola, who’s new to TV development but certainly not the business, felt that approach from the beginning of his partnership with Amazon. “They appreciated what we’d done and were ready to be our patron and support us,” he says.
Amazon creators also don’t have to grapple with traditional TV conflicts like pleasing advertisers or writing to commercial breaks. Issues like scheduling the right lead-in or interrupting serial story arcs for baseball season aren’t pertinent, either.
“The platform is different,” Lewis says. “Therefore the product is, too. We’re not a cable, broadcast or movie platform. If you want to call it anything, it’s serialized TV. If we’re right, you will get to see a beginning, middle and end of every show on Amazon. It’s TV meets movies, in this new form.”
As Amazon is changing the waytelevision does business, the very concept of competition is changing as well.
“Here’s what it boils down to,” Wandell says. “You’ve got to be somebody’s favorite show. It’s slightly different than broadcast, because we’re not trying to be all things to all people. We want to passionately engage Amazon customers who want distinct, interesting television.”
Amazon Studios’ open submission process accepts proposals for comedy and children’s programming from “anyone in the world,” Lewis says. “We just lower the drawbridge and every script gets read.”
A team of in-house readers and executives culls the submissions, selecting the front-runners. The best of the submissions slowly make it up the ladder to the division heads. If an online submission makes the cut, Amazon pairs the newbie writer with a veteran showrunner for the pilot. The project is then added to the development slate and put to the same standards as any other contender in the slate.
This season’s Gortimer Gibbon’s Life on Normal Street, for example, came from David Anaxagoras, a preschool teacher who has an MFA in screenwriting, but was ready to throw in the creative towel. His kids’ program — about three tweens whose ostensibly ordinary suburb is a source of eccentric characters and strange events — wasn’t Amazon’s first online submission to make it to pilot, but was the first to get picked up.
“In many ways, his life right now resembles Gortimer’s: Did that frog really exist? Did I really just sell my script to Amazon?” Sorensen quips. “At the end of the pilot shoot, we asked David if he was happy with everything. How could he not be? We got an Oscar-winning director [Luke Matheny] and [actress] Fionnula Flanagan! David started to cry, because he was so moved by seeing his work come to life. This would never happen [elsewhere] — this guy was discovered from nowhere.”
And while it’s breaking the mold in its development process, Amazon is trying to do the same with kids’ content.
“We wanted to take an innovative approach to curriculum,” Sorensen says. “We looked at combining left- and right-brain [thinking] into one show. We would never do a math show, but we might do a music show that touches on math.”
Sorensen says Amazon is building an “über-curriculum for lifelong learners” with the help of educational psychologist and children’s TV expert Dr. Alice Wilder (Blue’s Clues). As in primetime, several proven, Emmy-nominated creators are in the mix, but with a panel of experts to keep the curriculum on track, the kids’ division is open to working with anyone with a creative vision.
The three kids’ series set to launch this summer are: Tumbleaf, a stop-motion series that explores science through play; Creative Galaxy, a show about solving problems through art; and Annedroids, a live-action series that follows the adventures of a home-schooled genius scientist who tinkers in her junkyard.
In the children’s division and in primetime, customer engagement comes into play as soon as shows land on Amazon’s development slate. Throughout the process, Amazon keeps its eye on users’ activity and responses via daily reports on metrics such as which scripts are garnering the most attention or generating conversations. Official pilot season, however, is the heart of testing.
For Amazon’s second wave of pilots, customers were given a month to view, rate and provide feedback online on five primetime pilots and five kids’ pilots. Millions of Amazon users reportedly weighed in on the first wave, and word is that number doubled in the second.
Though this is a totally new process, Price calls it “risk-friendly.”
“You always want to be right on that line of edgy, safe, loud and provocative,” Lewis says. “We can push things farther and then put it in front of the audience and say, ‘Did we go too far?’”
Wandell enjoys Amazon’s customer-review process for another reason.
“As someone who’s spent a lot of nights in a testing facility in North Hollywood with fifty slightly grumpy people who are aspiring to have careers in this business, it’s interesting to see what real viewers and customers think about the shows,” he says. “That’s an incredibly unique proposition, for creators to hear directly from the audience how they’re responding to the worlds they’ve presented.”
The creators can read the reviews, just like anyone else, if they so choose.
“When it first came out, I was excited and I tracked it — ‘Oh, we have five stars!’” Coppola says. “It seemed there was a lot of interest in the show and a couple of people said, ‘Wow, a show about this world [of classical music] is long overdue.’ That made me happy.”
But Coppola hasn’t checked back in since the beginning.
“I’m curious, but tentative,” he admits. “The chatter online can sometimes be less than kind. And when you’re making work, you have to go with your instinct, be observant and put your radar out for comments. But to crowd-source and be too involved with those comments can be disruptive.”
That’s where the execs and techies step in to analyze the data, which is about more than just comments and rating scores. Case in point, The Rebels pilot did not get a pickup, in spite of a healthy customer rating of 4.3 out of a possible 5.
“We see a lot more granular detail about how people watch things,” Lewis explains. “We not only look at how many people start an episode, but how many finish it. Then, who are those people? Are they twelve-year-old girls or thirty-something men and women? Do people tweet about it? Do they rewatch it? Most of the time, we find our thoughts have aligned with the viewers.”
Amazon TV executives admit that they’re still figuring out their system for series production and release.
With its first original series, Alpha House and Betas, Amazon initially made three episodes available to any and all viewers, followed by weekly episodic releases for Prime members only.
“Before us, it had been done two ways: all at once, or one at a time,” Lewis says, referring to the Netflix-style of releasing entire seasons at once and the traditional network format. “There are a million derivations. We’re open to any form, and I don’t know if we’ve come up with the perfect one yet.”
Price agrees that certain elements are “inherently experimental — for now. It’s a completely on-demand world, and that creates a new dynamic. You want to operate in a way that takes that into account. At this early stage, you can overdo it with rigid plans that don’t work with reality.”
Of course, there are some areas with less room for experimentation, even at Amazon Studios.
“There are aspects of narrative storytelling that haven’t changed since Aristotle’s Poetics,” Price maintains. “Hopefully, we’ll find a hybrid of practices that take advantage of the old and the new.
“The plan is to make Prime Instant Video more and more awesome,” he adds. “We are working on that every day. We’ll figure out the sweet spot.”
Elizabeth Banks will produce “Resident Advisors,” a comedy series for Paramount Digital starring “Veronica Mars” actor Ryan Hansen and “Hangover” actress Jamie Chung, the studio said Wednesday. Banks, who will make her directorial debut with next year’s “Pitch Perfect 2,” is working on the show with Max Handelman, her partner in Brownstone Productions.
The show is a workplace comedy set in a college dorm that chronicles the resident advisers who try to contain their students while having fun at the same time.
“We are thrilled to be collaborating with Paramount Digital Entertainment on this outrageously funny take on modern day dorm life in America,” Banks said in a statement, praising president of Paramount Digital Entertainment Amy Powell and her team for their “terrific track record for creating boldly entertaining content in this comedic medium and we look forward to a successful partnership.”
Paramount’s digital division has had its most success with short-form comedies like “Burning Love,” a spoof of “The Bachelor” in which Hansen also appeared. It is working on another reality spoof, “The Hotwives of Orlando,” for Hulu.
“No subject is off limits for the talented creators and cast of ‘Resident Advisors’ with its irreverent take on the absurdities of freshmen year at college,” Powell said in a statement. “Elizabeth, Max and the team at Brownstone have developed an ambitious and fun comedy that is perfectly suited for this format, and we are thrilled to have it mark our first collaboration with them.”
Not exactly — though it’s easy to see why a well-resourced company would want to.
Why? Because, quite frankly, there is nothing else quite like YouTube. Sure, there are some competitors in the video space that are open platforms with video embed functionality like Dailymotion and Vimeo. But neither have the competitive scale.
But as we’ve learned repeatedly over the past year, YouTube is not exactly the best for building a profitable business if you rely solely on it for revenue. And where there’s weakness, there’s opportunity.
And there’s a handful of companies gunning to take a bite out of YouTube’s business.
While various companies are not building “direct” YouTube competitors, there are six companies starting to build syndication plays for subscriber-dominant YouTube creators looking for additional revenue ops.
In a way, it’s windowing in the YouTube economy, where the commodity is the creator and the relationship with his or her fans, instead of any particular piece of content he or she creates.
Six companies are strategically making moves to swoop in on YouTube’s business. Click below to read why and how each is doing so.
The Messengers: Janet Mock is one of mainstream media’s smartest voices on how to cover trans people. If there’s anyone journalists should listen to, it’s Mock.
7/28/2014 Advocate
Because Janet Mock is part of the media, she has an uncommon authority when explaining to other journalists for the hundreth time why some questions are just plain wrong to ask her and other transgender women.
Mock was working as a staff editor for People.com, then only 28 years old, when she publicly revealed herself to be transgender in a May 2011 Marie Claire profile. To that point in her life, her identity and history as a transgender woman was known only to a few, select individuals.
Her own coming out brought with it a number of people questioning her authenticity as a woman. Others accused her boyfriend of being gay, and through it all, she was forced to confront the hate, bias, and anti-transgender sentiment that permeates society. She still confronts it, often with an audience watching.
In February, while on a media tour in support of her New York Times best-seller Redefining Realness, Mock appeared on Piers Morgan Live to promote the book. What ensued became emblematic of all that is wrong with how trans people are treated by the media at large. The now-infamous interview overwhelmingly focused on Mock’s personal medical history and all but ignored the book she was there to promote.
“You used to be, yourself, a man,” the show’s eponymous host added at the tail end of a question about disclosing one’s trans status to romantic prospects. On the night the pre-taped interview aired, what seemed like one poor word choice by Morgan was amplified as an on-screen chyron appearing under Mock’s image, reading, “Was a boy until age 18,” and the show’s Twitter account tweeted, “How would you feel if you found out that the woman you are dating was formerly a man?”
Mock then angered Morgan by tweeting, “‘Was a boy until 18.’ @PiersMorganLive get it the f*k together. #redefiningrealness.” Her tweet launched thousands more from users all around the world, criticizing Morgan’s lack of tact.
Ever one to make the best out of a bad situation, Mock agreed to appear on the show the following night in hopes of discussing why so many people were so upset by the prior night’s show, and to clarify that no, she was not “a man” or “a boy” up until the moment of having genital reconstructive surgery at age 18. Sadly, Morgan appeared less than open to having a true dialogue with Mock; instead speaking over her, and later using his Twitter account to rail against transgender viewers who were angry with him.
In April, Mock teamed up with Fusion TV’s Alicia Menendez for a faux interview to illustrate how uncomfortable and invasive questions and comments like Morgan’s can make trans individuals.
“What’s so amazing is if I were to look at you, I would have never not known that you weren’t trans,” Mock said to Menendez in the light-hearted and informative flipping of the script. “Do you have a vagina? Do you feel like your idea of self, your cisness, holds you back in any way?”
The faux interview took a creative approach to addressing many of the unsettling and frustrating questions trans people find themselves asked during interviews.
The latest big news for Mock came last week when Marie Claire, where she’d once published that life-changing essay, is now hiring her on as a contributing editor. The now 31-year-old New York City resident is one of the world’s most well-known trans individuals, appearing on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, in the HBO documentary The Out List, and making repeat appearances on Melissa Harris-Perry’s MSNBC show. In 2012, she founded #girlslikeus — a movement established to celebrate trans womanhood — and earlier this year, she released the New York Times best-seller Redefining Realness.
In the nearly six months since Redefining Realness came out, trans issues have begun gaining steam with mainstream America.
“The biggest advancement [during those six months] has been a hunger in our nation to have and advance the conversation about trans people and our diversely lived experiences — beyond the body,” Mock tells The Advocate. “For decades, the media only spoke about trans people in the framework of what we do to our bodies, rather than what it means to exist, live, and dream in our bodies.”
When asked what she’d like to see another six months from now, she answers, “I’d like that conversation [go on] to enact change, ensuring that our bodies are given shelter, safety, employment, greater agency and freedom from policing, profiling and incarceration. I want our bodies to be even more centered in collective liberation.”
This is one of eight profiles The Advocate is releasing this week for our annual 40 Under 40 list. Starting this Friday and lasting through August 8, readers can vote on which of these eight you think should be on the cover of a special digital edition for The Advocate. Then the names of the remaining 32 honorees will be released in August. Keep checking Advocate.com’s “40 Under 40: Emerging Voices” section for the other seven profiles throughout the week, and your chance to vote.
NOTE: GrowthBeat — VentureBeat’s provocative new marketing-tech event — is a week away! We’ve gathered the best and brightest to explore the data, apps, and science of successful marketing. Get the full scoop here, and grab your tickets while they last.
7/29/2014 VB News
More details have emerged about the new video startup Vessel from founder and former Hulu CEO Jason Kilar — specifically, how the company’s business model might make YouTube sweat.
Vessel is apparently targeting top content partners currently uploading their work to premium YouTube channels, according to a new report today from The Information. The report indicates that current YouTube partners might be willing to ditch the streaming video giant if Vessel can promise them better contract terms offering a larger payout. (It’s also something I predicted might be Vessel’s business model when the company announced its massive $75 million round of funding last week.)
Vessel declined comment to VentureBeat about its plans for video creators.
In addition to better terms, the report also said Vessel is offering to pay for guarantees of temporary exclusivity (30-day exclusive window) on content produced by those YouTube partners. That’s definitely something YouTube hasn’t really done much of but may have to start doing if it wants to keep up.
In the past, YouTube has set aside upwards of $200 million to both finance and promote content from its premium channel partners. Additionally, YouTube set up studios in select locations to help those creators produce high-quality videos at a low cost, and it launched a crowdfunding button on channel pages. Also, Reuters reported that YouTube is offering some creators the chance to pitch new episodic series with the goal of getting picked up on another medium (television). But if those creators can’t maintain a lucrative business through YouTube’s ecosystem, it might not matter.
To top it off, Vessel isn’t even the only one going after YouTube top talent, either. Yahoo is also rumored to be offering YouTube channel partners its own set of lucrative terms for content that will be featured on a yet-to-be-announced Yahoo-branded video service.
But we still don’t know Vessel’s entire business strategy, although I think it would be a safe bet to say it isn’t trying to become just another multichannel video network like Maker, Machinima, or Fullscreen.
Ashley Kaplan is the head of content for Fullscreen (since December 2013).
Previously, Ashley was vice president of digital content and strategy for the Magical Elves production company. In this role, Ashley oversaw the development, production, and content partnerships for all media adjacent to the company’s television properties—most notably the Emmy-winning series Last Chance Kitchen, which ranked as the most viewed web series in Comcast history. Ashley was also responsible for the development and production of various original branded entertainment projects and spearheaded the launch of the Elves’ Latin programming division.
Before joining the Magical Elves, Ashley helped launch Logo’s digital content department, producing the first online original series for the channel. There she went on to create a vast library of content for the collection of Viacom websites. Previously, Ashley served as a producer at Current TV and as a development executive at Evolution.
Experience:
Multiplatform Producer LOGO/ MTV Networks
August 2006 – 2013
Manager of Development Evolution Film & Tape Inc.
June 2004 – June 2006 (2 years 1 month)
Manager of Development Evolution Film & Tape
2004 – 2006 (2 years)
Education:
Washington University in St. Louis
1999 – 2003
Ashley Kaplan spoke at Born to Stream: The Economics and Ideals of Internet-Originated Television on April 29th.
With online video consumption rising fast, a new breed of television channels is emerging directly from the broadband Internet firmament. Professionally produced, built around strong brands and attracting significant audiences, this new programming wellspring offers viewers exciting new choices and paves the way for partnerships with traditional television networks and distributors. Find out what’s driving a fresh new content category – and where cable fits into the picture.
Seasoned Media Veteran with a Proven Track Record for Pioneering Online Content for Traditional Media Joins the Company to Supercharge Video Storytelling for Creators and Brands
Fullscreen, Inc., the media company powering the creation and sharing of video with the connected generation, has selected television and digital media veteran Ashley Kaplan as the company’s new Head of Content. Kaplan brings her knowledge and expertise in content creation, development, production, and content partnerships for traditional and online media to the company’s leadership bench. At Fullscreen, Kaplan will be charged with overseeing the ongoing production and development of premium content with talent and brands.
After years of producing both award-winning television programming and digital, short-form content, Kaplan was sought out by CEO George Strompolos to head up and build out Fullscreen’s original content division and production capabilities. “The connected generation prefers streaming video to traditional programming,” said Strompolos. “We’re continuing to witness increased viewership across our network online and on across mobile devices—from 9% to more than 40% over the past two years—and Ashley is the perfect person to capitalize on this growing audience through the creation of stories that these new viewers can shape, influence, and personally engage with.”
Kaplan’s passion for short-form digital content began in 2005, when she served as a producer at Current TV. She later went on to create a vast library of content at Viacom websites. Notably, Kaplan helped launch the digital content department for Logo (a Viacom property), and produced the first online original series for the channel.
“The conventions of storytelling are changing,” said Kaplan. “The younger generation craves media that is drastically different from what traditional television programming offers. They want personalized content that is available across devices at a moment’s notice. Fullscreen embraces these new conventions and offered me the perfect environment to create premium content with and for this generation.”
Kaplan joins the company after serving as Vice President of Digital Content and Strategy for the Magical Elves production company, where she oversaw development, production, and content partnerships for all media adjacent to the company’s television properties. Her work included the Emmy award–winning series Last Chance Kitchen, which ranked as the most viewed web series in Comcast history. Kaplan was also responsible for the development and production of various original branded entertainment projects and spearheaded the launch of the Elves’ Latin programming division.
Fullscreen Names Ashley Kaplan Head of Content to Develop Premium Online Video (3/5/2014)
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/fullscreen-names-ashley-kaplan-head-686129
Fullscreen, with its software and analytics tools, has positioned itself as one of the most tech-focused of the YouTube networks. But the Culver City company is putting a greater emphasis on premium online video with the appointment of Ashley Kaplan as head of content.
Kaplan joined Fullscreen in December from Magical Elves, where she was vp digital content and strategy and oversaw such projects as Last Chance Kitchen, the web series companion to Bravo’s Top Chef.
In her new role, Kaplan will oversee ongoing production and development of premium content with Fullscreen talent and brands.
“I’m really starting almost from scratch and building a full-service, world-class production facility,” Kaplan tells THR. “Fullscreen has become one of the leading MCNs on YouTube — we have the opportunity to continue our evolution into a media company. The connected generation and content is a big part of that.”
CEO George Strompolos founded Fullscreen in 2011. Today the company, which is backed by The Chernin Group, Comcast Ventures and others, works with online talent including The Fine Brothers and violinist Lindsey Stirling. It was the No. 3 YouTube partner channel in January with 26.4 million total unique viewers behind Vevo and Zefr, according to comScore.
Kaplan says the company wants to continue to grow that audience, especially on mobile. Mobile was only 9 percent of Fullscreen’s traffic in 2011, she says, but had grown to more than 40 percent as of late 2013.
Fullscreen’s mobile focus is not surprising given its January acquisition of Supernova, the developer behind video sharing app Viddy.
Kaplan adds, “What’s really interesting is an intersection between technology, product and content. That’s what makes me really excited about the future of Fullscreen.” Fullscreen Is Building An Off YouTube Subscription Video Site For Millennials (Exclusive) (5/22/2014)
No word yet on when Fullscreen’s subscription initiative is scheduled to launch, but we’re told the company’s new Head of Content, Ashley Kaplan and team are already working on securing premium comedy programming that will be distributed on the site.
New Form Digital Studios http://newformdigital.com/
Twitter: @NewFormDigital https://twitter.com/NewFormDigital (no tweet) Instagram: http://instagram.com/newformdigital (no photo)
Brian Grazer, Ron Howard Launch ‘New Form’ Digital Studio With Discovery 4/2/2014 THR
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/brian-grazer-ron-howard-launch-693189
Discovery Communications is teaming with Imagine’s Brian Grazer and Ron Howard to launch digital studio New Form.
The new studio will be lead by chief creative officer Kathleen Grace, formerly head of creative development at YouTube Space LA, and will make scripted programming for Discovery’s online networks.
The studio will receive less than $5 million in funding a year, according to a report from the New York Times.
Discovery has built up a roster of digital properties. It acquired San Francisco network Revision3 in 2012 for $35 million and launched science-themed TestTube and humor site Animalist in 2013.
“We are excited and proud to have the most accomplished and creative minds in all of film and television investing with us in New Form,” said Discovery Communications president and CEO David Zaslav. “Brian and Ron are best-in-class storytellers, and we look forward to developing compelling programming for today’s digital viewers. This creative powerhouse, coupled with Discovery’s strong programming expertise and our ability to engage viewers across our global platforms, is an unparalleled combination.”
Grazer added, “Technology is rapidly changing the entertainment landscape for studios, producers and audiences, and Ron and I could not think of a better partner to invest with than Discovery to expand beyond film and television and enter into the digital frontier.”
Grazer and Howard noted in the Times report that their involvement in the studio would be limited. Others involved include attorney Craig Jacobson, former Tribune Broadcasting president Ed Wilson, former William Morris CEO Jim Wiatt, Imagine co-chairman Michael Rosenberg and CAA.
Noted Howard, “By investing with Discovery, New Form is poised to re-imagine storytelling and reach new audiences online and beyond.”
DISCOVERY COMMUNICATIONS, RON HOWARD AND BRIAN GRAZER FUND ‘NEW FORM’ DIGITAL STUDIO 4/3/2014 Discovery
http://press.discovery.com/us/discovery-digital-media/press-releases/2014/discovery-communications-ron-howard-and-brian-3022/
Based in Los Angeles and helmed by Kathleen Grace, who has been appointed Chief Creative Officer, New Form will focus on developing high-quality, scripted and unscripted programming for today’s digital viewers. Partnering with key distributors and brands, New Form’s series will be available through a series of partnerships, with the possibility of expanded distribution across Discovery and partner platforms globally in the future.
Discovery to Make Scripted Online Videos With Oscar Winners 4/3/2014 The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/04/business/media/discovery-to-make-scripted-online-videos-with-oscar-winners.html
LOS ANGELES — A cable giant that specializes in nonfiction programming is teaming up with two movie superpowers to make scripted online videos.
The new studio will seek to create three- to six-minute episodic video series and stand-alone videos à la Funny or Die, Will Ferrell’s comedy website.
“We want to connect with a scalable amount of people and have an impact on the culture,” said Mr. Grazer, whose recent TV and movie projects have included “Rush,” “Arrested Development” and “Cowboys & Aliens.”
The financial commitment is small. New Form, which will be run by Kathleen Grace, a former YouTube executive, will receive less than $5 million annually in funding, according to a person briefed on the investment who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss private information.
Lots of production companies have experimented in this arena, but few have had Oscar winners involved: Mr. Howard and Mr. Grazer won multiple Academy Awards for “A Beautiful Mind” in 2002. In an interview, the two men at first said their involvement in New Form would be relatively limited, but in a follow-up call they emphasized deeper creative involvement.
“We’re super excited about exploring this new world,” Mr. Grazer said. “We intend to participate to the extent that we can.”
Mr. Howard noted that he had directed Funny or Die videos. “This is now going to be the place to go and do that,” he said, calling the partnership “creatively exciting.”
Discovery Teams With Ron Howard And Brian Grazer To Create Digital Studio 4/3/2014 Deadline.com
http://www.deadline.com/2014/04/discovery-teams-with-ron-howard-and-brian-grazer-to-create-digital-studio/
Kathleen Grace will be chief creative officer of the LA-based operation. Her mission, the companies say, is to develop “high-quality, scripted and unscripted programming for today’s digital viewers” — and to create alliances with “key distribution partners and brands.” Digital productions typically have low budgets, and generate low revenues on the Internet, but the ones from New Form have a “possibility of expanded distribution across Discovery and partner platforms globally.” The announcement comes ahead of Discovery’s upfront presentation today in NYC, where Ron Howard will appear to introduce the digital JV. “By investing with Discovery, New Form is poised to re-imagine storytelling and reach new audiences online and beyond,” he says.
Ron Howard, Brian Grazer to Launch Digital Studio with Discovery Communications 4/2/2014 Variety
http://variety.com/2014/digital/news/ron-howard-brian-grazer-to-launch-digital-studio-with-discovery-communications-1201151019/
New Form, which will also produce unscripted content, expects to license content to a wide range of digital distributors and will not operate a standalone website. Discovery may take some projects for itself but will be counted on more for its expertise in ad sales, marketing and distribution.
……
New Form isn’t the first time at the digital rodeo for Howard and Grazer. Way back in 1999, they were part of a dream team of Hollywood players including Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Paul Allen who attempted to launch Pop.com, a digital studio in the pre-broadband era that quickly fizzled. “We were a decade or two early,” joked Howard. “It was fascinating then and entirely exploratory, but it’s even more fascinating now.”
YouTuber Tony Valenzuela on his pitch to Ron Howard venture, New Form 7/9/2014 Stream Daily
http://streamdaily.tv/2014/07/09/tony-valenzuela-on-his-pitch-to-ron-howard-venture-new-form/
New Form Digital announced on Tuesday that it has launched the New Form Incubator to help develop and fund 14 short films produced by top YouTube talent this summer.
Those chosen for the incubator’s inaugural round of projects include 5SecondFilms, Anna Akana, Craig Benzine (WheezyWaiter), Joe Penna (MysteryGuitarMan), Joey Graceffa, Meghan Camarena (Strawburry17), P J Liguori (KickThePJ), POYKPAC, Sawyer Hartman and Tony Valenzuela (BlackBoxTV).
Valenzuela pitched New Form chief creative officer Kathleen Grace a horror mystery titled The Fourth Door that will use YouTube’s clickable annotations to an interactive storytelling experience.
The New Form Incubator shorts will initially be distributed through each creator’s YouTube channel, with the possibility of extending the deals to include additional content and expanded distribution across global platforms.
Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s New Form Digital to Fund 14 Short Films from YouTube Creators 7/8/2014
http://entertainment.msn.com/news/article.aspx?news=876566
New Form Digital, the studio formed by Discovery, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, announced on Tuesday that it has launched its first creative venture, New Form Incubator, through which they will develop and fund 14 short films with popular YouTube content creators.
The first 14 shorts will be produced by Youtube personalities 5SecondFilms, Anna Akana, Bertie Gilbert, Chris Riedell and Nick Riedell (The Brothers Riedell), Craig Benzine (WheezyWaiter), Joe Penna (MysteryGuitarMan), Joey Graceffa, Meghan Camarena (Strawburry17), PJ Liguori (KickThePJ), POYKPAC, Sawyer Hartman, Tim Hautekiet, Tony Valenzuela (BlackBoxTV) and Yulin Kuang.
The short films created under New Form Incubator will be distributed through each partner’s YouTube channel, with the possibility of extended content deals and expanded distribution across global platforms if successful.
“The New Form team is excited to be working with some of our favorite online content creators to make films that, while short in nature, are truly unique in today’s multiplatform landscape,” said Kathleen Grace, chief creative officer of New Form Digital. “Our New Form Incubator partners represent not only some of the most successful channels on YouTube, but also a new breed of filmmaker for a new generation.”
Kathleen Grace, Chief Creative Officer at New Form
Personal Website: http://kmgrace.com/ (Her works and reels are on it.)
From the website:
I am a writer / director / producer based in Los Angeles. (Yes, that is a lot of slashes) I am the Chief Creative Officer of New Form Digital.
Prior to New Form Digital I was the head of creative development for the YouTube Space LA, a 41,000 square foot facility where YouTubers make videos for their channels, collaborate with other creators, share their experiences, and learn how to build a YouTube channel. In my life before YouTube I was the Vice President of Production and Programming at Next New Networks (acquired by YouTube in 2011) where I produced original series and worked with emerging YouTube creators through the Next New Creators program. I created the critically acclaimed web series The Burg that got the attention of mainstream media (NY Times, Wired, LA Times, SF Chronicle, Reuters), hipsters, and media moguls alike. I created, produced and directed Michael Eisner’s new media studio Vuguru’s mockumentary The All for Nots. It premiered on HDNet and the Internet.
As a keynote speaker on Cynopsis Digital’s Big Monetization Summit, Kathleen Grace gave a speech “It’s All about the Fans”. Here’s the slides:
http://www.cyndigitalmonetization.com/files/2014/06/cynopsis_monetization_kathleenPDF.pdf
(It Gets Better was mentioned.)
Twitter: @kmgrace https://twitter.com/kmgrace (707 followers)
“A writer, director, producer who makes stories for the Internet, TV, and film. I am the manager of creative development for the YouTube Space LA.”
Jamie Spafford, left, with Ben Ebbrell, Barry Taylor and Mike Huttlestone, the creators of Sorted Food, in their studio in London.
LONDON — When Jamie Spafford, a 27-year-old Briton, passed through airport passport control during a visit to New York a few months ago, the immigration agent seemed skeptical about Mr. Spafford’s stated occupation.
But a week later, via email, the immigration officer said he had subscribed to Mr. Spafford’s website, Sorted Food, one of the most popular cooking channels on YouTube.
“Just had a chance to check out your videos and thought I would let you know just how good and interesting they are,” the man wrote. “Keep up the good work!”
Created in 2010 by Mr. Spafford and three British partners, Sorted Food has quickly attracted more than 865,000 subscribers. More than a quarter come from the United States — the channel’s largest audience segment, followed closely by Britain. The rest are spread worldwide.
This quick success has helped Mr. Spafford and his partners — like thousands of other YouTube entrepreneurs — turn a do-it-yourself side project into a business supported by advertising, sponsorships and other digital revenue.
What started as a part-time venture is now a full-time job for Mr. Spafford, his partners and their 14 employees, who work in a studio in North London. Sorted Food expects revenue to reach $3.5 million this year.
It is remarkable growth for a site that generates more than 11,000 hours of viewer traffic a day and whose most-viewed video is a three-minute segment, watched about 800,000 times, showing how to make a microwave cake in a coffee mug.
While still not as popular as comedy or gaming channels, which measure their audiences in tens of millions of subscribers, cooking and food is the fastest-growing genre on YouTube, according to Google, which owns the video-sharing service.
Last year, YouTube’s top 20 cooking channels generated nearly 370 million views and more than doubled their subscribers. Among cooking channels, Sorted Food is YouTube’s top global performer, according to OpenSlate, an online video statistics provider. The site leads OpenSlate’s rankings in “audience engagement, consistency and interaction,” as measured by subscribers, likes, comments and sharing of the videos.
Mr. Oliver, like another well-known British chef, Gordon Ramsay, has a YouTube channel to complement his television programs. Mr. Oliver’s channel presents his own recipes but also promotes segments from other YouTube cooking channels — including Sorted Food.
Online cooking offers “an immediacy that you just can’t get from traditional programming,” Mr. Oliver wrote in an email exchange. “The beauty of Food Tube is that we can film something in five minutes and have it up on the site for people to watch within the hour.”
Audience interaction with online cooking is a function of the digital environment itself, said Joshua Green, a media scholar and co-author of “YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture.”
“Networked culture allows for little pockets of fascination to bubble up and YouTube allows us to marvel at the skills of others,” Mr. Green said. “And food is one of those things that are very human to be curious about.”
The typical video for Sorted Food features one of Mr. Spafford’s partners, Ben Ebbrell, the only trained chef in the group, creating dishes as varied as a simple mac-and-cheese and elaborate-looking îles flottantes — “floating islands” — of soft meringues enveloped in a caramel cage.
“It’s all about easy, cheap and tasty recipes that look great,” said Mr. Ebbrell, whose signature finishing touch on many dishes is a sprig of fresh mint.
Mr. Ebbrell, Mr. Spafford and the other partners, Barry Taylor and Mike Huttlestone, met at school in Hertfordshire, north of London, and went their separate ways to attend different universities. But on visits home, they would meet in a pub. And the talk often turned to food.
“At university,” Mr. Spafford said, “we were all eating complete rubbish. With one exception: Ben.”
So Mr. Ebbrell, who at the time was studying culinary arts management at University College Birmingham, started sharing cheap and easy recipes with his friends using the backs of beer coasters.
Those recipes grew into a self-published cookbook, and, in May 2010, the four started the Sorted Food YouTube channel. “It became an obvious way of sharing the recipes with more of our friends because it’s a platform we kind of naturally had in our pockets anyway,” Mr. Ebbrell said.
Then the videos started gaining traction beyond their circle of friends. “It began by ‘Wow, we’ve got a hundred views,’ ” Mr. Ebbrell recalled. “But we’ve only got 40 friends on Facebook, so who are these other 60 people?”
That following quickly grew.
“My dream as a child was to be a chef, to create my own recipes and cook in a restaurant for 50 to 60 people a day,” Mr. Ebbrell said. “What we are doing now is exactly the same, but it’s not just 50 or 60 people, it’s hundreds of thousands from all around the world.”
And those users often play an active role. With the video for chocolate cake in a mug, for example, many comments raised questions about the instant coffee powder listed as one of the ingredients.
“I don’t like coffee. So can I just leave out?” asked one user, Lauren Burnett. Sorted Food responded, “It’ll be fine without it.”
But others offered their own suggestions. A user named Vic Chaotic said he had replaced the coffee with a tablespoon of Nutella, and the cake “was absolutely decadent.” Another, BeaSan95, had a different suggestion: “I also added some rum instead of the coffee, so good!”
Sorted Food is part of the YouTube Partners program, in which operators of the channels share advertising revenue with Google. The program features more than a million creators from over 30 countries.
In addition to ad revenue, Sorted Food relies on partnerships with companies like Tesco, the British supermarket chain, which recently sponsored a Sorted Food trip to Ireland to explore the production of chocolate. Another partner, Kenwood, the appliance maker, supplies the group with equipment in exchange for product placement in the videos.
So what next for Sorted Food? A cooking show on television?
Mr. Spafford and Mr. Ebbrell say that is unlikely.
“We are yet to find a way that TV would work for us,” Mr. Spafford said. “With YouTube we have complete control of what we put out, when we put it out and what we edit. It’s also much more interactive.”
Mr. Ebbrell recalls approaching television companies a few years ago to pitch ideas. “But they weren’t convinced by YouTube,” he said. “That has come full circle now. We are now being approached by TV companies, but we are not prepared to give up what we do for TV.”
Instead, the partners are seeking growth opportunities through their Sorted Food iPhone and iPad apps, which they introduced this month. Meant to mimic social networks like Facebook, the app lets users create profiles, upload recipes, repost cooking videos and follow other users.
Since its July 1 debut, the app has been downloaded more than 35,000 times, according to Sorted Food, and was featured as “Best New App” on Apple’s App Store in 16 countries. A redesigned Sorted Food website, offering those same functions, is to be introduced in the coming weeks.
“This is a great opportunity to create a global cooking community,” Mr. Spafford said. “It’s about the personal food journey that you can share with others.”
Twitter: @ASepiol (2,392 followers) https://twitter.com/ASepiol
“Another stereotypical gay, Prius-driving liberal in Hollywood. SVP at USA. Near the 101”
Development Executive, Senior Vice President, Original Scripted Series Programming
USA Network
June 2005 – Present (8 years 11 months)Universal City, CA
– Development and current programming of original series at USA Network. Shows I developed and oversee include Burn Notice, White Collar and Suits.
Michael Sluchan is senior vice president, original scripted series programming, at USA Network. He developed and oversees current production on Royal Pains and Necessary Roughness. In addition to development, Sluchan served as the current executive on the limited event series Political Animals, as well as In Plain Sight, The Starter Wife, The Dead Zone and the award-winning hit show Monk. Sluchan joined USA in October 1999 as a creative executive in long-form programming and moved to the original scripted series department in 2005. Prior to USA, Sluchan worked at Cosgrove-Meurer Productions, ABC Entertainment and ABC News. Outside of his professional endeavors, Sluchan served on the board of directors of Outfest from 2006-2010. Born and raised in New York City, Sluchan received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.
(from Emmy’s Board of Governors bio)
“NYer living in LA doing what I love – television. Characters Welcome. Foodie, volleyballer, gay, pop culture addict w/ a love of family, friends & game nights.”
Class of ’93 | Michael Sluchan C’93’s story about loving stories begins inside his childhood home. Every evening, he’d curl up on the couch to watch Joanie chase Chachi or root for Charlie’s angels to save the day. (“I wasn’t very discriminating,” he says of his preteen tastes.) He eventually graduated to film-studies classes at Penn, and later joined in the Harry Potter craze.
“I’ve always loved the fact that you can just create these worlds,” he says. “I especially love serialized books where you can see character growth, and I think that’s what TV series allow you to do, too: you can really watch the characters evolve.”
Several decades after tuning in religiously to Happy Days and The Love Boat, Sluchan still spends his time thinking about fictional characters in unusual situations—only now he gets paid for his opinions. As vice president of original scripted series programming at USA Network, he helps develop new shows and oversee current ones. He made sure Monk, The Starter Wife, and The Dead Zone all ran smoothly, and more recently he developed (and still oversees) Royal Pains, Necessary Roughness, In Plain Sight, and Political Animals.
“No two days are ever alike because you never know what problems or issues are going to crop up in a show’s production or development,” he says. “Because we’re dealing with so many different creative personalities, we really are serving as project managers on everything that we do.”
The other day, for instance, he was in Las Vegas for a Royal Pains shoot. Filming there was actually part of a broader deal with the city, and Vegas officials set strict parameters for each shooting location. As a result, he found himself as the go-between for the Royal Pains cast and crew, the show’s ad salespeople, and the city, making sure deadlines were met and agreements followed while guarding the show’s creative freedom.
Along with on-set drop-ins, Sluchan does a lot of reading. He reads every outline, script, and revision for each of the four shows he currently oversees, along with samples, pilots, and script submissions for new shows. It adds up to hundreds of pages each week and results in frequent all-day read-a-thons on Saturdays.
“I do more reading [at USA] than I did at Penn, and I was a history major and an English minor,” he says with a chuckle. His undergraduate experiences dissecting literature certainly help, though. “I think that so much of reading and giving notes on a script are things you learn in English class,” he says. “Stuff like, ‘What makes a good story? Are these good characters? Is the structure clear? What would help with the characterization?’ You really need to recognize what works and what doesn’t—and why.”
Asked what makes a script ‘work,’ he points to “a moment to fall in love with—something you’ve never seen before that makes you fall in love and relate to it a certain way. Usually, there will be this moment where you just get it.”
Sluchan entered the TV world on the ground floor. A few months shy of graduating from Penn, he’d had one of those Oh-crap-I have-no-idea-what-I’m-doing-with-the-rest-of-my-life moments so familiar to liberal-arts majors. A friend’s older sister worked for ABC News. Sluchan loved television and was well-versed in history and current events. Why not give it a try? he thought.
He landed a phone interview, then didn’t hear back for nearly three months. The call eventually came in August of 1993. Would he like to come work as a production secretary?
“If ABC News is offering a job, you don’t turn them down,” he says now. In his “very entry-level” position, he booked travel and crews and began to learn about budgets. “I liked it,” he says, “but that wasn’t where my passion was.”
He discovered his true calling while on vacation in Los Angeles, walking through the West Coast branch of ABC, surrounded by posters of Mork nanu-nanu-ing and Richie Cunningham slurping a malt. For the first time, he thought about the behind-the-scenes people who coined Fonzie’s signature Ayyy and created tangled situations for Laverne and Shirley to unravel.
“I realized there was this whole other side of television that I’d never even thought of,” he says. “Suddenly I was very determined to get a job at ABC—but in entertainment.”
Sluchan eventually landed in ABC’s business-affairs department on the West Coast, then became assistant to the network’s head of movies and miniseries. TV movies were big business at the time, and ABC produced about 35 each year, he says. That output ranged from the wacky-titled (She Woke Up Pregnant) to the big-starred (First Do No Harm with Meryl Streep and Allison Janney) to the eerie (a Shining miniseries based on Stephen King’s book). He left for Cosgrove-Meurer Productions in 1998 and arrived at USA Network the following year. He’s been there in a variety of roles ever since, and in 2010 was named an Amazing Gay Man in Showbiz by the Professional Organization of Women in Entertainment Reaching Up (POWER UP) for his work in television and on the Outfest board of directors.
Now in the midst of a two-year term on the board of governors for the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences—the group that gives out Emmy awards—Sluchan says he gets to “vote for fun categories” and, of course, attend both the Emmys and the Creative Arts Emmys. A pretty cool switch for the kid who grew up watching it all at home.
USA Network’s Michael Sluchan Upped To SVP Original Scripted Programming
1/7/2013 | Deadline.com
http://www.deadline.com/2013/01/usa-networks-michael-sluchan-upped-to-svp-original-scripted-programming/
USA Network has elevated Michael Sluchan to SVP Original Scripted Programming. Sluchan, a 13-year USA veteran, oversees current series and develops and shepherds production on new shows alongside SVP Alex Sepiol. Both report to Bill McGoldrick, EVP Original Scripted Programming. “Michael is a truly talented executive with vast relationships in the creative community and an incredible ability to nurture the types of writers and producers we love to work with,” McGoldrick said. Sluchan oversees production of USA dramas Necessary Roughness and Royal Pains and also oversaw recent limited series Political Animals.
Sluchan joined USA as creative executive, longform programming in October 1999. He developed and oversaw production of such movies and miniseries as Dominick Dunne Presents: Murder In Greenwich, Rudy: The Rudy Giuliani Story, Call Me: The Rise And Fall Of Heidi Fleiss, and Spartacus. In 2005, he moved over to the original series area as director, original scripted programming, where he began working on the fourth season of Monk. A year later, he was promoted to VP Original Scripted Programming.
USA UPS MICHAEL SLUCHAN TO SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, ORIGINAL SCRIPTED PROGRAMMING
1/7/2013 | Press Release from USA
http://www.thefutoncritic.com/news/2013/01/07/usa-ups-michael-sluchan-to-senior-vice-president-original-scripted-programming-16215/20130107usa02/
NEW YORK – January 7, 2013 – USA Network has elevated Michael Sluchan to senior vice president, original scripted programming, it was announced today by Bill McGoldrick, executive vice president, original scripted programming, and to whom Sluchan reports.
……
Before arriving at USA, Sluchan worked in movies and miniseries development at Cosgrove/Meurer Productions and ABC Pictures. He began his career in New York at ABC News as production secretary for Lifetime Magazine with Lisa McRee. He then moved to Los Angeles as an assistant in the Cap Cities/ABC Network legal and business affairs department. From there, he went to work for Barbara Lieberman, senior vice president, motion pictures for television and miniseries, ABC Entertainment.
Sluchan currently serves as a Governor at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for the Television Executive Peer Group. Outside of his professional endeavors, Sluchan is a former board member of Outfest, the leading organization showcasing, nurturing and preserving lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender film images and artistry.
Sluchan was born and raised in New York City and received his Bachelor of Arts, majoring in History, from the University of Pennsylvania.
‘Walking Dead’ Producer Brings World War II Alien Drama To USA
12/8/2012 | carveonline.com
http://www.craveonline.com/tv/articles/201283-walking-dead-producer-brings-world-war-ii-alien-drama-to-usa
……
“Horizon” reportedly centers on a female secretary at the FBI who learns that her husband may have died while fighting an alien ship in the South Pacific. As she presses her own investigation into the events that claimed her husband, she becomes the only person in a position to oppose the invaders’ agenda.
The project was created by “Burn Notice” screenwriter, Bridget Tyler, with “The Walking Dead” executive producer, Gale Anne Hurd attached as an executive producer.
…
According to USA Executive Vice President, Bill McGoldrick the network “had been actively thinking about how to do genre and period dramas and what an USA genre and period show is.” The report notes that Tyler’s “Horizon” script came as a writing sample for a staffing position on another series before it was discovered by USA Senior Vice President Alex Sepiol.
Christensen Brothers Win Appeal Against USA Network
8/9/2012 | American Bar Association
http://apps.americanbar.org/litigation/committees/intellectual/news.html
The suit alleges that in 2005, Forest Park developed an idea for a show called Housecall, “in which a doctor, after being expelled from the medical community for treating patients who couldn’t pay, moves to Malibu and attends to the rich and famous.” Forest Park created a series treatment for the concept that included storylines and character bios, and the Christensen brothers met with Alex Sepiol, a programming executive at USA Network, to pitch the idea. The brothers allege that, although Sepiol was receptive to the idea, nothing ever materialized after the meeting. Subsequently, in 2009, USA began airing Royal Pains, a show that the brothers claim is a rip-off of their concept for Housecall that focuses on the life of a “concierge doctor” providing medical services to the wealthy residents of the Hamptons.
Judge Colleen McMahon had originally dismissed the suit on the grounds that the claims brought against USA Network were preempted by the Federal Copyright Act. She ruled that, because the allegations entailed the theft of uncopyrightable ideas, the suit had no merit. The Second Circuit, however, disagreed, based largely on the fact that the plaintiffs chose to allege breach of implied contract rather than copyright infringement. The Second Circuit ruled that a claim under state law for breach of implied contract, including a promise to pay, is quantitatively different from a suit to vindicate a right included in the Copyright Act and is therefore not subject to federal preemption.
Judge John M. Walker Jr., writing for the Second Circuit, explains that, even though uncopyrightable material may fall within the subject matter of the Copyright Act, the equivalency requirement for preemption is not met in this case because “extra elements” exist that create qualitative differences between a contract claim and a copyright-violation claim. Among other things, the Copyright Act, unlike contract law, “does not provide an express right for the copyright owner to receive payment for the use of a work.” The court, accepting the plaintiffs’ version of the facts as true for the purpose of the motion, concluded that an implied contract, including a promise to pay, was formed on the Christensen brothers pitching their show concept to Sepiol and that USA Network’s failure to compensate Forest Park Productions for Royal Pains gave rise to a cause of action not subject to preemption. The court also ruled on two other issues, holding that, based on the choice of law rules for a federal court in New York sitting in diversity jurisdiction, California law should be applied in this case and that, in addition to the court’s finding of no preemption, the plaintiffs’ complaint is adequate under the Supreme Court standards in Twombly and Iqbal.
USA Network Promotes Alex Sepiol
10/11/2011 | The Hollywood Reporter
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/usa-network-promotes-alex-sepiol-246790
He has been upped to senior vice president of original scripted series programming.
USA Network has promoted Alex Sepiol to senior vice president of original scripted series programming. He will continue to report to Bill McGoldrick, senior vice president of original scripted programming.
Sepiol will continue to oversee production on USA’s Burn Notice, White Collar, Fairly Legal and Suits, all of which he brought to the cable network and developed. He will also be responsible for overseeing production on the untitled Douglas McGrath project, one of two half-hour comedy pilots that have been greenlit, as well as an untitled hourlong drama from White Collar creator Jeff Eastin. Sepiol also oversaw day-to-day production on the second season of In Plain Sight.
“Alex has consistently demonstrated an eye for shows that not only connect with our audience but push the USA brand to new and exciting places,” said McGoldrick. “In his short time as an executive, he has identified and cultivated relationships with some of the most talented writers working in television today. This is a well deserved promotion for an executive who has played a major role in the success of our network.”
Sepiol first joined USA in 2001 as an assistant to Jeff Wachtel, USA co-pesident. He returned to the network in 2004 as a production executive. USA’S ALEX SEPIOL UPPED TO SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, ORIGINAL SCRIPTED SERIES PROGRAMMING
10/11/2011 press release from USA
……
Sepiol joined USA in the summer of 2001, as the assistant to Jeff Wachtel, one of USA’s co-presidents, and co-head, original content, Universal Cable Productions. After a brief hiatus, he rejoined the network in 2004 and has been busy developing and serving as a production executive, as well as looking for new series projects for USA to develop. In 2008, he was named alongside an elite group of young executives in The Hollywood Reporter’s “Next Generation.”
Prior to joining USA, Sepiol worked as Paul Nagle’s assistant at the William Morris Agency. Outside of his work in television, Sepiol wrote two one-act plays that were produced at the Plymouth Theater in Los Angeles in the fall of 2004.
Sepiol was born and raised in Northern California and received his undergraduate degree from Stanford University.
10 Amazing Gay Men in Showbiz 2010
Power Up Films
http://www.powerupfilms.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=23&Itemid=83
Michael Sluchan is Vice President, Original Scripted Series Programming at USA Network. He developed and oversees production on ROYAL PAINS. He is the current executive on IN PLAIN SIGHT and oversaw MONK, THE STARTER WIFE and THE DEAD ZONE. Joining USA in October 1999, Sluchan oversaw many longform projects, including “Murder In Greenwich,” “The Rudy Giuliani Story,” “The Rise and Fall of Heidi Fleiss” and the miniseries “Spartacus.” Sluchan got his start at ABC News.
He served on the Board of Directors of Outfest from 2006-2010. A native New Yorker, Sluchan received his BA from the University of Pennsylvania.
Michael Sluchan 2010 POWER UP Honoree Speech:
“POWER UP continues to be of vital importance to ALL LGBTQ people; to be recognized for my contributions to our community by an organization whose mission is so near and dear to my heart is an amazing honor.”
USA promotes Alex Sepiol to VP
6/2/2009 | Variety
http://variety.com/2009/scene/news/usa-promotes-alex-sepiol-to-vp-1118004412/
USA Network has upped Alex Sepiol to VP of original scripted series programming.
Sepiol has overseen production of “Burn Notice,” which returns for its third season on Thursday, and “In Plain Sight,” currently in the midst of season two. He will continue to report to Jackie de Crinis, exec VP of original scripted programming.
“We have a great niche in that we continue to explore smart escapism programming,” Sepiol told Daily Variety.
Next up at USA is “Royal Pains,” which also premieres Thursday, and “White Collar” — starring Tim DeKay, Matthew Bomer and Tiffani Thiessen — currently in production for a possible first quarter 2010 premiere.
“Burn Notice” is cable’s top-rated scripted series in the 18-49 demo.
Lincoln grad is a rising star
12/2/2008 | Recordnet.com
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081202/A_LIFE12/812020305/-1/rss06
He isn’t besieged by autograph seekers when he walks down the street, but Stockton raised Alex Sepiol is a rising Hollywood star.
The 31-year-old graduate of Lincoln High School – Class of 1995 – was named in a recent “Hollywood Reporter” profile of the hottest people in the entertainment industry younger than 35.
A director of original scripted series programming for USA Network, Sepiol is refreshingly grateful for the success he’s found in the industry.
“I was really fortunate,” he said of the “Hollywood Reporter” mention. “I’ve been working at USA Network and have had a good run of it the last few years.”
A good run of it is a bit of an understatement.
Sepiol, whose role at the No. 1-rated cable network is to plow through the onslaught of ideas and unearth the hidden gems, has proven to have great instincts.
The first program he developed, “Burn Notice,” debuted in 2007 as the No. 1 new show and will begin its third season in January.
“If I had to name a single thing (I’m most proud of), it would be ‘Burn Notice,’ ” Sepiol said in a conversation while he was home visiting his parents – Jim, a family physician, and Janet – for Thanksgiving.
“It was initially a pitch, just an idea. It was the first time I had the opportunity to see a project through. It’s been a remarkable thing to watch it grow, change, evolve and to, hopefully, have had a positive influence over how that happened.”
He influenced the show from the start.
Writer Matt Nix’s original story of a spy who’s burned – that is, dismissed by the U.S. government – and needs to pick up odd investigative jobs to support himself as he works to discover who burned him, was set in Newark, N.J.
Sepiol suggested Miami.
“In Newark, you have a guy who’s unhappy about his life in a miserable place. In Miami, he’s the only guy not happy to be in Miami,” Sepiol said.
The dark tone of the original story had to be altered to fit the USA model of character-driven stories that are funny and dramatic, but Nix’s use of the spy’s voiceover describing how to accomplish his tricks of the trade, remained.
“I thought that was the coolest thing,” Sepiol said.
Sepiol’s passion for the show helped get it produced, and he remains heavily involved.
Among other roles, he oversees the hiring of writers, selection of directors and cast members and coordinates with the marketing, scheduling and publicity departments of USA.
He has a similar role with “In Plain Sight,” the Albuquerque, N.M.-based show about the witness protection program that came to him as a script.
Sepiol just returned from New York where a pilot was shot for another project he’s overseeing, called “White Collar,” about a con man who teams with an FBI agent to fight crime.
Jetting around the country to the sets of television programs he’s ushered through isn’t the life Sepiol expected when he graduated from Stanford in 1999 with a humanities degree in modern thought and literature.
He just knew he didn’t want in on the dot.com boom with many of his friends. He moved to Los Angeles expecting to write, as he’d done since working on The Lincolnian as a high school student.
His first job was in the marketing department of a video-game company that no longer exists. He was copying his resume at a Kinko’s when he ran into a friend from Stanford who was working at the William Morris Talent Agency. The friend took one of Sepiol’s résumés, and Sepiol eventually was hired at William Morris as an agent assistant.
“For people looking after college to get into the entertainment industry, I highly recommend agent assistants jobs,” Sepiol said. “They pay very poorly and it’s brutal in terms of hours, but you learn so much so quickly. I’m fortunate I had that training.”
Sepiol’s also worked as a writer’s assistant on USA’s “Touching Evil” and as a researcher for VH1’s “Fortune Files.”
Sepiol doesn’t look too far into future positions, perhaps because he’s still stunned by just how far he’s already come.
“When I moved down (to Los Angeles) it wasn’t to be a network executive,” Sepiol said. “I didn’t even know this job existed. I’ve been incredibly fortunate to do the things I’ve done. I’m incredibly lucky with all the people I’ve got 10 to work with, and the projects I’ve gotten to work on. USA is an incredible place to be.”
Sepiol, likewise, considers Stockton a great place to have been.
“I feel very proud of being from Stockton,” Sepiol said.
He notes Tokay students Scott Kannberg and Stephen Malkmus formed the band “Pavement,” that the college scenes of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” were shot at University of the Pacific and, “of course, Chris Isaak is from Stockton.”
Alex Sepiol is from Stockton, too, and while he isn’t on the cover of any record and won’t tour the country for adoring fans, his work is definitely playing to rave reviews.
USA ups programmers
8/1/2006 | Variety
http://variety.com/2006/scene/news/usa-ups-programmers-1200342699/
USA Network has upped Lindsay Sloane and Michael Sluchan to VPs of original scripted series programming.
Pair will report to senior VP Jackie de Crinis. Both will be charged with developing projects; Sluchan will continue to oversee production of “Monk,” while Sloane will continue to shepherd “The Dead Zone,” “The 4400″ and “Psych.”
USA exec VP of original programming Jeff Wachtel described Sloane and Sluchan as “truly the heart and soul of our scripted series team.”
Sluchan most recently worked on the USA dramedy pilot “Underfunded.” He joined USA in October 1999 as a longform exec working on movies. Before that, Sluchan worked at Cosgrove/Meurer Prods. and ABC Entertainment.
Sloane is working on the Sarah Goodman/Lorne Michaels pilot “To Love and Die in L.A.” Prior to USA, Sloane was VP of development at Gran Via Prods.
Hayden leads USA longform
3/14/2002 | Variety
http://variety.com/2002/scene/news/hayden-leads-usa-longform-1117863986/
……
At the same time at USA, several promotions have been granted: Christof Bove has been promoted to VP of development for longform; Michael Sluchan to director of development of longform; Gary Shapiro to director of development for reality programming and specials; and Bill McGoldrick to director of development for original series.
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Sluchan is responsible for development and production of longform projects, reporting to Hayden. He joined USA as a creative exec in longform in October 1999.
