Fresh Blood

Ready to make content….

This afternoon we will graduate another 40 Travel Channel Journalists and send them out to start creating content for The Travel Channel.

We run 24 of these Travel Channel Academies each year.

There are now more than 1,000 graduates of the Academy around the world, all creating and providing content ot the Channel.

It’s an online video affinity group.

Most TV networks work with a small group of production companies, generally based on NY or LA.

And they are first and foremost production companies. Their job is to create, sell and produce TV shows. They don’t really care who their clients are – the more clients in fact, the better. One week they might pitch to Animal Planet, the next week they’re in front of The Food Network, the day after that, it’s HGTV.

NY and LA based production companies are very adept at making the product. But for them its a manufacturing process, lacking in passion. They are as happy to make Real Housewives of Atlanta as they are to make Medical Mysteries.  And they do.

For them its a business.

But for the grads of the Travel Channel Academy, its a personal passion.

And they have ideas.

Lots of ideas.

Some of them are no doubt terrible, but a few might be pretty good.

And now they can try.

For the networks, its an injection of new blood into what, up until now, has been the same old, tired old production companies pitching more of the same old repetitive crap.

See a successful dating show, and right away, there are a hundred other proposals for dating shows.

It’s all imitative, not creative.

And in the end, its boring.

Oatmeal.

Now, in a world increasingly community-drive, the What Would Google Do approach can also be applied to pitching new ideas for new TV shows.

You still need qualified producers and writers, but man, let’s open the door to new ideas and new approaches.

You can marry one with the other.

The Academy makes a special relationship between the New Blood and the network.

Now, let’s see what comes out of it.

The nice part here is that it doesn’t cost anything to try… and try again.. and again…