Quote: Griff @ March 7 2011, 10:23 AM GMTVoting does not engage the audience. Good comedy engages the audience.
I know it's become a bit of an over-familiar feature of TV since I invented the Sitcom Trials in 1999, but way back then the idea of an audience voting and having some influence over a show seemed quite novel and the sort of notion that might catch on.
6 months later Big Brother started, and within 18 months telly was full of voting shows. A decade on, with telly stiff with Strictly, I'm A Celebrity, X Factor et al, I can understand people being sick of them, well Griff is at the very least. But I don't seem to have been the only person who thought voting might engage an audience. I'm just the only one who didn't manage to make a fortune from the idea.
Kev F
Quote: Griff @ March 7 2011, 3:05 PM GMTThe Sitcom Mission have an incentive to find the best possible scripts to present to Hat Trick, because if it goes on to get produced/commissioned, they get a percentage from the commission fees
Aha, good point. So, Dec & Si, you finally got that contract sorted out, (which viewers might know dogged previous Trials). When last I tried to hammer out a contractual agreement, obliging every writer who entered a script to remain linked to us if they were commissioned at the end, it caused more problems and objections than we could square. I'm guessing Hat Trick are the sort of people who can sort out that sort of thing.
Back in the day I drafted a contract which all contributing writers signed. It was as legally binding as cheese string, as the hefty percentage I take from every episode of Miranda testifies. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-jXbfVBULQ
Kev F
