5Takes 2.0?

An Hour Well Spent…

Sometime around 2004 we went to see Pat Younge.

Today, he’s the Chief Creative Officer at The BBC, but then he had just been made the President of the Travel Channel.

“Congratulations and condolences”, we said.

Congratulations because it’s great to be made the head of entire cable channel.

Condolences because Travel Channel had always been the underdog of the Discovery family.

It’s strange, because you would think that travel would be a natural for cable. It’ s not. It turns out that watching other people cavort on the beach is no one’s idea of a good time.

We had an idea, however.

We suggested a show where five people would travel around the world on a fixed budget ($50 a day), and, using the Internet, viewers would be able to tell them what to do.  It was a pretty radical idea then – it still is.

5Takes would run for four seasons, which is not bad. But looking at it now, I am astonished at how quickly the technology has changed.  In those early days, our travelers had to go to Internet cafes to download the emails from viewers.  Amazing.  This was before blackberrys, iPhones and Wifi, not to mention Twitter.

We were able to make the emails have an impact because we turned the shows so fast.  A normal ‘reality show’ takes about 19 weeks to produce, from initial shoot to air. We turned 5Takes in 6 days.  Just in time for the next episode.  It was a death march, but it worked.

Today, Travel Channel is in deep trouble. Nothing they have tried works.  That’s TV.

Looking back on 5Takes, I could see that it was ahead of its time. It was really a show that was made for Twitter.  Viewers could tweet in real time their suggestions on ‘best restaurant in Rio’. We could also today webcast live from the shoots – via Skype.

I think it is such a good idea that Kelly is cutting a promo pitch reel this week.

I’ll post it when it’s done.

Lemme know your thoughts. I am open to all suggestions.