Reading 2. How a tv Show is Made

Write the Show

The first step in making a television show is to write the script. If it is a brand new show, this script is called a pilot. Scripts can be written by individual writers or a whole team.

Pitch It

Once the script is written, the story idea is pitched to a team of executives, who will decide whether or not to make the show. If it is a script for a show already in production, the pitch becomes about story approval.

Shoot It

Once the script is finalized, the show is shot. Sitcoms, with a live audience, will rehearse during the week and then perform the episode one night for an audience. Scenes are often shot multiple times to get variety. Shows that have no audience are often shot over the span of a few days.

Edit It

The footage from the filming is edited, and any special effects are added in. Sound is touched up, and the credits are added in. Now you have a completed episode.

Test It and Show It

If it is a new show, the pilot will be shown to a small test audience. If the audience likes what they see, the network is more likely to put the show on the air. If it is a show already in production, the final episode will be screened, approved and aired at its scheduled time.

About “This American Life”

For two seasons on Showtime, we tried to make a television show that would feel exactly like the radio show. We didn't go out looking to make TV. But then Showtime called. It took five more years before we ended up on television.

We agreed to try to make a pilot for a few reasons. First and foremost – we thought it would be fun. It seemed like a challenge to try to tell stories with pictures as well as words. We had been doing the radio show for more than a decade; who knew if this chance would ever come around again?

Also, television is the medium of our age (well, frankly speaking, the Internet is the medium of our age, but we've always been one technological revolution behind). And Showtime turned out to be surprisingly easy to work with. Showtime never asked us to do anything we thought was a bad idea. We made the show we wanted to make.

Some things about the radio show were easy to duplicate on TV. Each week there are a bunch of stories organized around a theme. The stories are the same sorts we do on the radio, true stories about real people.

The hard part was everything else. First of all, there are lots of shows on television that tell true stories about real people: newsmagazines like 20/20, reality shows like Intervention and The Bachelorette, hard news documentaries like Frontline, and just about every single program on MTV. How could we make our show stand out from this crowd?

Also, and more importantly, how could we make the TV show feel the same as the radio show?

The answer ended up dictating a lot of the look of the television show.

It's shot in widescreen, carefully composed. The cameras are almost always on tripods so that it doesn't have that shaky documentary or reality show feeling. The goal is to make the show look, as much as possible, like a movie, and to have instances where the images themselves carry the story forward.

Finally, director Chris Wilcha declared that we should stop running away from TV host clichés and start running towards them. And what's the granddaddy of all TV host clichés? "The desk!" he proclaimed. "We're gonna get one of those desks, the kind of desk you never see except on TV. But the thing is, we're gonna put the desk out in the world!" One week the desk is on the salt flats in Utah, one week in a garage, one week by nuclear cooling towers. It embraces TV conventions, while kind of winking at them.

After two seasons we asked the network to take us off the air.  It was too much work doing both the radio and television shows.  We hope to return to TV someday, maybe with specials, maybe in some other form.  

Exercise 1. Match the words in Column A with their definitions in Column B. Make up your own sentences with these words.

A	B
To pitch	To record on film using camera
To shoot	A tree-legged stand for supporting a camera
Episode	A film or videotape scene or scenes
Scheduled	Purpose, target
Sitcom	To broadcast, show on television
To screen	Planned, fixed in a timetable or program
To stand out	A trivial or overused expression or idea
Tripod	To promote or sell, often in a high-pressure manner
Goal	A separate part of a serialized work
Footage	A humorous drama based on day-to-day situations
Cliché	A telecast or theatrical film that is not part of ordinary TV schedule
A special	To be unusual or different

Exercise 2. Mark the statements as T (True) or F (False)

1. The first presentation of a script for a brand new show that needs the green light from broadcasting executives is called pilot.

2. Sitcoms with a live audience can be shot without rehearsing.

3. The decision about the future of a new show is made only on the base of executives’ judgement.

4. Special effects are added at the stage of editing the footage.

5. “This American Life” had been a successful radio show before it appeared on TV.

6. The team of Showtime was not very easy to work with – they made too much stress.

7. The creative idea was not to avoid old TV host clichés, but to play with them.

8. The new format of the show wasn’t very successful, so the network decided to put it off air with no hope of return.

Exercise 3. Find words and expressions whose meaning is opposite to the following:

To put on air

A very old show

Innovative idea or expression

Serialized tragedy

To be or look like everybody else

A rerun

Out of production

A single person or company without any connections

Random, occasional

One snapshot

Disapprove