A Season of Giving, and Not Giving

Last month I witnessed one of the most terrifying and harrowing spectacles ever:

STAFFING SEASON!!!

Let me explain what this means:

Staffing Season is the time of year when each Studio and Network decides what pilot scripts they want to put into production. Then after several gut-wrenching weeks of production and philandering - they decide which shows they would like to put on the air.

So here's where we come in. The agency looks over all the scripts of the upcoming shows and decides what material of our clients we would like to submit to the Studio Executives, the Network Executives and the Showrunners (basically the director of the show) for their consideration in hiring our clients to work on the show.

This means a lot of reading.

And then there's the fun part - the selling. For weeks all the agents can think about is how to sell our clients for each show. This can be a bit aggravating - especially when there is no forthcoming information from the powers that be.

What results is about a month and a half of non-stop stress and aggravation. And you know what they say - "The $#!% rolls downhill." Yup, that means us assistants.

From what I experienced, the worst part of all was the very fragile tensions that could easily be set off by a whisper. For good reason, when something was mistyped or done wrong or not followed-up on - the thunder was brought down upon me and life became a bit heavy.

That is to say though, it wasn't all that bad. For one thing, the constant keeping busy helped the day move much quicker than normal. There wasn't a moment wasted and every time I looked at the clock - it was almost time to go!

Another great thing about the whole experience was that I was able to learn the names of the big players at the studios and networks. When you have to make calls to the same person a dozen times a day - you get really familiar with who they are. I also got to read and learn about what shows were in contention for the upcoming season. It was fun to read them and say "that script simply didn't work" or "this should be picked up right away, it's amazing!" (Okay, that last one never happened).

And now, the fruit of all that stress - we have screeners!! We have DVDs of most of the new shows that are going to be on next Fall (even the ones that didn't get picked up). I considered reviewing some of the new shows, but wasn't sure if that would be cool (although, only three people read my blog and none of them would tell on me). Still, I think it best for me not to analyze these shows before they are on the air. If you are interested to know about any of the upcoming shows, let me know and I'll give you the dope. Maybe I'll review the ones that didn't get picked up and analyze why they didn't make it...

So I survived it all. And now things have settled down quite a bit. I have been there and I lived to tell the tale.

I survived at least until...

DEVELOPMENT SEASON!!!