The New Television Marketplace

The last decade has been a golden age for television writers. There was no concept so wild, no set of characters so diverse, no potential audience so small that some buyer wouldn’t gamble on it. For the first time in history, when they said they wanted new voices and new visions, they really meant it. And then the strikes hit. And Wall Street hit. And now everybody’s afraid to buy anything from anyone.

But of course, they still need new shows. They’re going to have to buy something. It’s just that what they want to buy may not match up with what you want to write. And the days when buyers care about what you want to write are gone, maybe forever.

William Rabkin has been a TV writer for close to forty years, and he's never seen a market for new projects as bad as it is now. If you want to have any chance at all to set up a project anywhere, you need to understand what the studios, streamers and networks are willing to buy in this suddenly panic-driven marketplace. This OnDemand webinar is going to explore the kinds of shows that have a chance to be bought, the genres that are going to be thriving in the next couple of years, and how to take your own stories, characters and themes and adapt them into concepts that can fly in the current market.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:

• The kinds of shows platforms are willing to take a chance on
• How series structure will be changing everywhere
• How the new dependence on advertising changes what streamers need
• The story elements that everybody is looking for
• The kinds of stories that are now dead in Hollywood
• Why one 13-year-old show is now the most important series in TV history
• What “90s television” means and why everyone wants it
• How to use TV history to learn about TV’s tomorrow
• Why this is happening

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

• Writers who want to sell a pilot
• Writers who are trying to understand the new marketplace
• Writers who have story ideas but don’t know how to make them marketable
• Writers who aren’t content to “survive until 2025”
• Writers who need to learn the new storytelling styles
• Writers who don’t understand why their pitches aren’t selling
• Writers who want to adapt to the new marketplace

The Writers Store does not offer any refunds for the OnDemand webinar. All sales are final.

Instructor

William Rabkin, co-creator and writer of HBOAsia’s science fiction series Dream Raider (streaming on MAX), has written and/or produced hundreds of hours of dramatic television. He served as show runner on the long-running Dick Van Dyke mystery series “Diagnosis Murder” and on the action-adventure spectacle “Martial Law” and is currently creating series in Asia and Europe. He has also written a dozen network TV pilots. His work has twice been nominated for the Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America. He has written four books on writing for television, “Writing the Pilot” (2011), “Writing the Pilot: Creating the Series” (2017), “Writing the Pilot: The Streaming Series” and, with Lee Goldberg, “Successful Television Writing” (2003) and seven novels. He is the co-creator and co-editor of “The Dead Man,” a 28-book series of supernatural action thrillers published by Amazon’s 47 North imprint. Rabkin is part of the core faculty of University of California Riverside-Palm Desert’s M.F.A. in Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts.