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The Horrors of Distribution
By Lerone D. Wilson | November 20, 2006
I’ve closely monitored the popularity of each post on this blog, since I started it almost a year ago. It appears my rantings and ‘pearls of wisdom’ regarding film production and ‘the industry’ are by far the most popular posts. Thus I’m struck with the choice that I’m sure many TV outlets are struck with - whether or not to ‘play to the crowd’ by giving people what they want, or to try to fix whats not working, to make it more appealing. Often times networks, and stations sacrifice, in my opinion, the integrity of their programming in favor of the ‘give them what they want, not what they need’ mentality… and on this occasion I too will take the low road.
I kid, I kid… I was going to speak about production anyway - I just needed a crafty introduction that would make it seem like I had thought this through a bit more than I in fact have. Nevertheless I have already raised an important question about television programming. How does someone in charge of programming choose which programs to air… and when?
One of the great things about public television, is that rather than derive their entire schedule from the PBS feed, they have a great deal of flexibility in their schedule. What that means is that the 349 individual PBS stations out there air 349 variations of PBS programs, local programming, and independent programs. For the independent filmmaker this is a dream.
All too often the filmmaker is faced with the frustration of depending on a single executive, to give a simple ‘no’, thus barring the program from that mode of exhibition/distribution. In the case of PBS however, a single network ‘no’ can be parlayed into 349 different ‘no’s’… or if you’re a ‘glass half full’ type, 349 possibilities to get the ‘yes’ that will make the difference.
In early 2004 I was faced with the nasty reality that PBS wouldn’t pick up my first full length film ‘No Child Left Behind’. Considering all of the sacrifices I had made for that film, this was especially devastating. It was as if my beloved friend had died, and I went through all of the steps accordingly:
Denial - ‘There must be a mistake… they admit it’s a good program, nevertheless they claim it doesnt fit their ‘content priorities (another rant for another day)’
Anger - ‘How could they do this? I’ve spent the last year living like a homeless man and they have the nerve to say no?’
Bargaining - ‘Look, I can change the program to fix whatever it is thats being objected to (I actually wrote a letter to this effect… didn’t work)’
Depression - ‘I’ve just wasted an important chunk of my life on this failure of a project… looks like all the naysayers were right after all. Why didn’t I just get a ‘normal job’ after college?’
and finally…
Acceptance - ‘You know what… this can’t be the end of this crazy adventure. I’ve spent too much time, effort, and money on this thing to let it die here.’
After all of that, I was finally able to move on and use the public television system to my advantage. As you may know, much of the ‘No Child Left Behind’ film takes place in Detroit (where I grew up), and New York City. The first thing I did after my initial rejection was to bug the heck out of the poor head of programming at WTVS, and finally after a few calls, emails, and letters he agreed to air the program. Lots of time, film festivals, college presentations, coupled with some luck, and friendships finally paved the way for WLIW, New York to not only air the program, but to distribute it nationally to other public television stations. This interestingly enough was after an initial ‘no’ shortly after the airing in Detroit, nevertheless miracles do apparently happen.
All is not wonderful in public television. Although at this point any station has the ability to say ‘yes’ to the program, and grab it off the satellite free of charge, this unfortunately doesn’t bode well for the filmmaker. All of the publicity we were able to do in Detroit and NYC in order for the film to find the film’s audience is infinitely more difficult when theres no concrete way to tell which stations are airing the program and when.
In fact, the best way in which I can find out when my own program is airing - is to do an internet search for it. Using this method I was able to find that the program will air in Utah, Texas, Michigan, New York, and Maryland in the next few weeks.
Naturally, people often contact me under the assumption that I am the first to know when and where the program will be available next… unfortunately I am in fact the last. Just a few days ago I was informed that the program recently aired in Philadelphia… thats news to me. In any regard it’s merely one of the many frustrations of television distribution. For that matter I don’t have any greater luck with the random programming of another film of mine ‘Aardvark’d’ on The Documentary Channel.
…perhaps I should just buy the DVD.
Topics: Film/Video |