CBS' Nina Tassler at TCA: "Creative Drives Our Business. Business Doesn't Drive the Creative." - Ed Martin

Also below CW President Mark Pedowitz weighs in on the merits of the traditional pilot seasonPasadena CA amp8211 CBS Entertainment President Nina Tassler isn39t interested in abandoning the traditional development season schedule she told members of the Television Critics Association the other day during her network39s portion of the group39s Winter 2014 tourNot surprisingly critics and reporters gathered here were curious to learn if other networks were going to follow the lead of Fox Entertainment Chairman Kevin Reilly who earlier in the week revealed that his network was done with the development cycle as the business knows itquotI can appreciate where he39s coming from and obviously he39s got to make decisions relative to his own company and his own needsquot Tassler said when asked about it quotI thought a lot about this Pilot season isn39t perfect and it certainly is a very difficult time It39s frustrating but it39s also excitingquotReilly had talked about the need for more time and flexibility to make carefully considered changes in shows under development But according to Tassler the time crunch often associated with negatively impacting projects can sometimes actually make them betterCBS shot the pilot for its comedy hit quotThe Big Bang Theoryquot with current series leads Jim Parsons and Johnny Galecki but without their popular costar Kelly Cuoco Tassler recalled Executive producer Chuck Lorre looked at the pilot she said and determined that they could do better So a second pilot was produced this time with Cuoco in the cast and the rest is historyTassler also recalled that there were time constraints surrounding the pilot of her network39s longrunning hit quotCSI Crime Scene Investigationquot quotThe fact that it was delivered under that kind of pressure sort of forced a very smart creative team to make the best creative decisions from Jerry Bruckheimer to Carol Mendelsohn to Anthony Zuiker to Billy Petersenquot she said quotEverybody was under that pressure but because they are really great creatively they made the best decisions and the right decisionsquotTassler39s focus these days seems to be on summer programming and the development of shortorder series and miniseries Much of her enthusiasm stems from the success of quotUnder the Domequot a limitedorder series that was a big hit for CBS last summer and will return for a second season on June 30quotThis summer our goal is to expand from one scripted programming event to twoquot Tassler said That second summer event will be quotExtantquot a sciencefiction series about a couple with two highly unusual children starring Halle Berry and produced by Steven Spielberg quotExtantquot will premiere July 2Some reporters were skeptical about the financial reality of miniseries and event series production recalling that the broadcasters many years ago abandoned those formats because they weren39t particularly lucrative especially in the longtermquotIt39s really about creating new economic modelsquot Tassler explained quotCertainly 39Under the Dome39 opened the door for us as far as strong international business It was very strong domestically as well We39re able to take a project like 39Dovekeepers39 an upcoming fourhour historical miniseries from Mark Burnett and Roma Downey and monetize it in a different way We control the distribution on the show So it is all about building an economic model around a title something that has value and creating a financial structure that allows you to produce that kind of programmingquotUltimately it39s good for all of us to have more original programming on the airquot Tassler continued quotCreative drives our business Business doesn39t drive the creative So in identifying a project like 39Dovekeepers39 looking at something like 39Extant39 looking at 39Under the Dome39 it was about falling in love with a piece of material getting excited by the creative direction talking to the executive producers and hearing their vision amp8230 getting excited about the potential for those projects and building the business model around them By the way they39re not all modeled the same way Each one is different We39ve shown with 39Under the Dome39 there are innovative ways to finance event type programsquotLater in the day at his press session The CW President Mark Pedowitz weighed in on the merits of the traditional pilot season and broadcast networks moving to a yearround programming schedulequotPilot season is tried and truequot he said quotIt39s inefficient in some ways and it39s very efficient in others We do not do that many pilots at The CW Last year we ended up doing seven pilots Five made it to series The year before we did eight pilots Five made it to series So for us it39s a very efficient system I39m perfectly happy with the traditional in this casequotCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBloggerThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaBizBloggerscom management or associated bloggers MediaBizBloggers is an open thought leadership platform and readers may share their comments and opinions in response to all commentaries

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CBS' Nina Tassler at TCA: "Creative Drives Our Business. Business Doesn't Drive the Creative." - Ed Martin

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CBS' Nina Tassler at TCA: "Creative Drives Our Business. Business Doesn't Drive the Creative." - Ed Martin

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