The Transformation of Network Television

Opportunity often presents itself in strange, and frequently unexpected, ways. When that happens, it's the risk-takers and visionaries who grab hold of the unlikely chance and say, "Oh boy! Let's see what we can do with this!" What may seem like darkness in the present can, in the long run, suddenly be revealed as a new dawn.

Paul Buccieri is the president of programming for Twentieth Television, the syndication arm of Fox Television. Last year he had begun developing a slate of short dramatic series for Twentieth's Fox-owned stations based on the telenovela concept that had proven so successful in Spanish-speaking markets. The first two pilots, Desire and Fashion House, had already been produced and were ready to go when the death knell rang this past January for the struggling youth-based networks, the WB and UPN. It was also announced that the two competitors would be reborn as one this fall under the newly created CW shingle, and would carry over the most successful shows from each of the former independents. But the merger still left Buccieri with a big black hole of a programming problem to solve.

Fox executives had been quietly engaged in behind the scenes discussions about the creation of a new network before the demise of UPN and the WB, but it was the void created by the UPN's downfall that presented the perfect announcement opportunity. (Fox Television Stations Group owns many UPN affiliates, including the top three: WWOR in New York, KCOP in Los Angeles, and WPWR-TV in Chicago.) Within a month, Fox had trumpeted the launch of the new and innovative My Network TV, announcing a bow date of September 5th.

According to Buccieri, My Network TV is the fastest-growing network in television history. It can also lay claim to several first-time offerings, including an all-drama-all-the-time content, and the fact that all programming will be shown entirely in High-Definition. An even more impressive "first" lies in its year-round schedule of original programming. Beginning with its premiere pair of telenovelas — Desire at 8pm and Fashion House at 9pm — two one-hour shows will air in those time slots every night, Monday through Friday, for 13 weeks. (They will be followed, respectively, by Watch Over Me and Art of Betrayal in December and A Dangerous Love and The Heiress in late February 2007. The remaining two shows have not yet been finalized.) Each episode culminates with a cliffhanger conclusion, and each Saturday will feature a one-hour recap of that week's events from each show. After 13 weeks, two more brand new telenovelas are cycled in for another 13 weeks, and so on and so on. That works out to 12 hours of original programming every week, 52 weeks a year, encompassing eight new shows per year. "No reruns. Never," Buccieri emphatically insists.

The telenovela has long been a mainstay of Spanish and other foreign language television programming, and so it seemed to Buccieri quite a natural move to Americanize the set-up for US audiences. "It's a format that is very fast-paced, and has lots of twists and turns," he explains. "It leaves you with a cliffhanger every night, drawing you into the next night, and the real hook is that this story will end after 13 weeks. It drives viewers to want to see what's going to happen, how these characters are going to turn out.

"Our writers are adapting already produced and, in many cases, very successful stories that have worked in other countries around the world," he continues. "And we have a separate team designed specifically to speak to all the different production companies and look at the different formats and shows. We try to find ones that have intriguing stories, interesting love triangles, and compelling twists and turns. We also look at the ratings from other countries and see how popular the shows were, then we review them and pick the ones we think are the best."

Buccieri is betting that his target demographic — that coveted group of adults 18-49 — will fall hard for My Network TV's two premiere programs, Desire and Fashion House. Desire is set in the restaurant world, and concerns charming, ambitious businessman Louis (Nate Haden) and his younger, unpretentious brother, Alex (Zack Silva) who find themselves on the run from the mafia and battling each other for the love with the same girl. Fashion House is an insider's look at the exciting, exotic and often merciless fashion industry and the brutal corporate takeover of one of the highest profile names in the business.

Casting director Jean Scoccimarro faced several challenges when she was brought on board last fall to simultaneously cast the pilots for each show. The short time frame, the large casts, and the need for a bevy of beautiful people for both was only the beginning. The producers also wanted to go with non-union actors — something rare indeed for network programming. Scoccimarro, however, was undaunted.

"I always love challenges," she recalls, "but my partner and I knew there was a pool of non-union actors out there, especially in the 20-30 age range. We had to do the pilots in two months, which is not a lot of time, and the pilots overlapped within two weeks of the other. Plus we had two directors, so we had dueling projects being seen by the producers.

"Once we got started I hired a team to work with me. The criteria for the actors was that they had to be gorgeous, so we searched the model agencies and talent agencies we knew. A lot of them were helpful with their up-and-coming actors who weren't SAG or AFTRA yet. (It was a slow process, though, trying to get the agents to wrap their minds around the new concept.) Then the challenge became finding people who fit the criteria who could act. We went through so many actors! It was kind of a mob scene all the time. We literally had three or four casting people pre-reading actors all day long. We did that for about two weeks, then we continued the pre-reads but we'd have our producer sessions in the afternoons. We found some really new and fresh and talented actors to participate, and we were lucky to find actors who were able to do non-union.

"Once the pilots were done and Twentieth picked them up, they called me back and we found out it was part of launching this new network, called My Network TV. It was all very exciting! Then we did go union, so we are now AFTRA. But everybody worked hard, we were all very happy, and my executives were very happy."

After the shows were picked up and the My Network TV announcement was made, it was decided to add some name cachet to the programs to further entice viewers to the burgeoning network. One character in Desire was re-cast with Sofia Milos (The Sopranos, CSI:Miami), and one of the leads in Fashion House was re-cast with Bo Derek (10, 7th Heaven). New roles were also written into Fashion House that were filled by long-time acting vets Tippi Hedren (The Birds, Providence) and Morgan Fairchild (Falcon Crest, General Hospital).



"They want sexy, classy, beautiful, gorgeous, hunky, exciting, winning actors — all of those kind of charismatic qualities in a lot of the roles," explains Scoccimarro, who is casting the subsequent telenovelas as well. "And because there's 65 episodes over 13 weeks, they need a lot of characters. I'm really proud of all the actors in Desire and Fashion House. Some of them are a little green, but what's amazing is that they step up to the plate. They're surrounded by other actors who bring them up to their level, and they're all doing very well. The shows shoot down in San Diego and have a really beautiful look, and now some of the agents are starting to understand the concept better, too. They're much more interested than they were in the beginning. And the actors call me up to say thank you. They say they had such an amazing experience, that everyone bonded, they felt like a family, they were treated so well, they were never bored, and it was all very exciting. That's a reflection on the entire production, on the work, on the show itself, and on all the people behind the scenes."

Nate Haden, who plays eldest brother Louis in Desire, was one of those actors who got lucky with the show. The self-described "kid from Nebraska" had moved to Los Angeles three years ago to pursue a professional acting career. "There's only so much you can do in the world of theatre and film in Nebraska," he laughs, "so I obviously had to make a move. Mostly I was trying to get experience, and get my face out there, with some modeling and commercial work. So when I came out here I took a commercial agent. But it wasn't working out, so I went with a new agent who had opened up opportunities theatrically for me, and here I am. It worked out pretty nice, too. Desire was my first theatrical audition for this agent. At the time all I knew was that it was a pilot and it was for a short drama, possibly some kind of mini-series. I went through three different readings for two different shows, and my last audition was for Desire for the character of Louis. It was my first time reading, and my first time in front of producers, so it was all very new to me. And at the time I thought, 'If nothing comes of this, well, it's still the furthest I've ever gone with a project.' I was just excited to be at that place."

Haden calls his involvement in the whole project a "life-changing event." He had managed to land small roles on his own on such shows as Over There, Summerland and CSI:Miami, and he credits those experiences with giving him a basic grasp of life on the set. "When I showed up for work I knew what a mark was," he says, "and I knew what some of the lighting requirements were, etc. So it basically exposed me to all the different people involved in the making of a theatrical project."

Nevertheless, it was still a huge leap to go from "'Pretty Boy' Surfer," as he was credited on Summerland, to a lead role in a milestone television production.

"To be honest, it was baptism by fire!" he admits. "This was better than any class I could have ever paid for. All of the other actors who have taken classes agreed. This isn't something I could get from auditioning or anything like that. We're literally working 17 hours, shooting 15, 16, 17 scenes a day — and I love it! You get to do your craft for 17 hours a day. This series was the best class I've ever taken."

Haden finished shooting Desire in mid-July, but that doesn't mean his work is done. He's currently involved in a promotional tour for the show that will continue until the September 5th network launch. After that, he says, his commitment to Twentieth, to Fox, and to My Network TV is to possibly do another series, though he admits much of his future is riding on how viewers react to the show. "It's all about timing, it's all about audience response, and it's all about if they take to a kid from Nebraska!"

As for the future of My Network TV, well, Buccieri is quite optimistic. "We've been extremely fortunate with people being receptive to working with us," he says. "When else does an actor get an opportunity to be exposed five or six nights a week on primetime television for 13 straight weeks."