Time for a cycling program on TV

Astir

For a few months now I have been thinking about pitching the idea to a few production companies. The format would be based on the Ski Sunday BBC program which has had new life breathed into it. Also a tec/gadget area. The topics would include all the usual disciplines, holiday desitnations, rides in the UK, interviews ect. Set to run for 12 one hour (45mins ex ads) the appeal is real. I have drawn up a rough set of figures and to do the job each episode would come in at around £300,000 avaeraged out. Anyone interested in taking the idea further? Would Bike radar been the natural choice for fronting the show as it has a great depth of knowledge (anything to keep Halfords out). There are more cyclists than skiers in the UK and with MTB descending the slopes in summer, British riders in the spotlight this year and all the top end carbon bikes being sold when would be a better time for bike show than now. Any producers want to have a stab?

boyfriday

I have thought the exact same thing for a while. Not quite as thoroughly as yourself, but the concept being the same.

Great minds, eh?!

Sadly i don't have the skills, cash or experience to get it off the ground, but i would support anyone that does.

It would make a welcome change from the crap that fills tv these days.

biondino

£800,000 per episode? Are you crazy? Divide it by 10 and you might have some interest. You'd barely get that sort of spend on the big-budget period dramas - factual budgets are much much lower.

biondino

I don't mean to say I don't think it's a good idea - I really do - but find out what kind of budgets commissioners pay before you start pitching.

Also, unless you're a professional in the industry yourself, you really need to find someone to pitch it for you - it's a fact of life that members of the public get the shortest shrift in this kind of situations and you could easily find your idea "borrowed".

phil s

800k - is that a typo?

Astir

biondino wrote:

£800,000 per episode? Are you crazy? Divide it by 10 and you might have some interest. You'd barely get that sort of spend on the big-budget period dramas - factual budgets are much much lower.

OK you are correct I missed the 3 key.

This would be a typical spend for 25 minutes of high qualty footage.

Travel for the crew & presenters to say, Italy for four days.
Six people
Presenter's fee £4000x2 =£8000
Crews fee each (approx) £1000 each =£8000
Air fair about £200 each £1200
Hire of equipment & extra crew for 3 days £10,000
Helicopter for 3 days £25,000
Hotel bills £5000
Post production £3000
Editing £2000
Total £62,000

Bronzie

With houses prices going down faster than a Vietnamese hooker, there's bound to be some space in the schedules once Sarah Beeny and Kevin McCloud get their P45's.

With it's "green credentials" I'm sure it's got some mileage in it, but don't expect Jeremy Clarkson to be making way for it until petrol hits £150/litre.

mm1

Its been tried (during the 1980's "bike boom"), just plain dull and died a death fairly quickly.

I've seen (very) low budget programmes on regional TV in Italy (Trentino) that have worked well (local races filmed through the soft top on an old fiat 500 that sort of thing), to work here would need a top class caharismatic presenter (preferably someone already known to the general public) with a genuine knowledge of and interest in cycling (if not cycle sport). Someone like Hammond comes to mind (but would be way too expensive). Actually I've always wanted to see the Top Gear guys turn green in the back of a team car on a mountain stage of the tour; they'd brick it!

Looking back to the 80s it would be great to see a revival of Rushton's original format for city centre racing (Smithfield Crits could have made good telly). Unfortunately given the present public perception of our sport a pure racing programme would be impossible to sell to a channel that anyone actually watches!

phil s

Astir, good luck with the pitch. Feel free to contact me if you really reckon it's a go-er. I work in that general sphere...

vermooten

Get Victoria and Rebecca to present it and I'll glady contribute a few quid.

pottssteve

Oddly, I've been mulling over a similar idea. Mine is more broadly based and could cover any number of sports, but is ideal for cycling. The idea is to compare elite athletes with serious amateurs and Jo Public. For example, it would be interesting to see how an elite rider would tackle a 40km time trial or a hill climb compared with a club rider and then a recreational cyclist. Time could be given over to nutrition, training regimes, physiology, technology, history of the sport etc. It would clearly show the gulf between those who play sport for a living and the lager-swilling lard arses who sit yelling at the TV on a sunday afternoon. Almost any sport could be covered in this way. Maybe the amateurs could be given training tips for improvement and set goals to develop performance as a % of their original level. It would beat watching Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen ponce around someone's dark back passage in Croydon...

Title (only slightly tongue in cheek): Superhuman?

Excited TV producers, please note that this idea is copyrighted

leguape

Astir wrote:

biondino wrote:

£800,000 per episode? Are you crazy? Divide it by 10 and you might have some interest. You'd barely get that sort of spend on the big-budget period dramas - factual budgets are much much lower.

OK you are correct I missed the 3 key.

This would be a typical spend for 25 minutes of high qualty footage.

Travel for the crew & presenters to say, Italy for four days.
Six people
Presenter's fee £4000x2 =£8000
Crews fee each (approx) £1000 each =£8000
Air fair about £200 each £1200
Hire of equipment & extra crew for 3 days £10,000
Helicopter for 3 days £25,000
Hotel bills £5000
Post production £3000
Editing £2000
Total £62,000

This is going to sound a bit brutal and possibly negative. It's not meant to be but it does help to illustrate what you'll find yourself up against. So...

Half hour factual? You'd be lucky to get 80K per episode for it if it was a reasonable priority for a channel. It won't be, even if you get Lance Armstrong to front it. Actually for pitching anything most commissioners don't really give a toss what the format is (unless you've successfully re-invented the TV wheel) but what talent you've got attached to it and what makes it a compelling watch.

From what I've been told budgets don't go far north of 125K for an hour of drama like Doctors and for factual they are lower still. Realistically you are looking at a budget of 50-80K per episode in a fixed run of 12 or so programmes for a season. The Tom Simpson documentary Death on The Mountain for BBC Four was made for a figure around that.

Ski Sunday is done on the cheap (relatively) so all the celeb challenge stuff was shot in the same week in Cormayeur (I know because I was there the same week and saw them filming) and the trips would generally not be crewed with 6 people. At most you'd have presenter, (also shooting DV) producer/director also shooting DV as second camera, sound man and camera (although increasingly these days you only get one person for both). That produced 10 minutes or more of the programme every week, sometimes nearly 20 minutes.

To be honest the best thing you can do is to go off and shoot your own 5 minute pilot of what you think would be the strongest section of the programme or highlights of those sections to take round production companies. They'll be more willing to take a look if they can see it rather than try and figure out what it will look like off the page. Also it's harder to thieve a programme idea when it's on tape rather than paper as it's a bit more obvious.

Tom Butcher

mm1 wrote:

to work here would need a top class caharismatic presenter ........with a genuine knowledge of and interest in cycling (if not cycle sport). !

Surely a job for Duffers !

Tom Butcher

Actually what about this for an idea - David Duffield's France - I reckon it could be a cult hit (or a total flop) - he's a bit of an eccentric, very likeable, knows a lot about everything and wants to tell everyone all of it - be a lot better than 2 fat chefs on a motorbike and there's been two of those series.

hammerite

Tom Butcher wrote:

Actually what about this for an idea - David Duffield's France - I reckon it could be a cult hit (or a total flop) - he's a bit of an eccentric, very likeable, knows a lot about everything and wants to tell everyone all of it - be a lot better than 2 fat chefs on a motorbike and there's been two of those series.

I think if this was a goer it should be renamed:

"We shall see"...... France with David Duffield.

Episode one will be about the Alps, and called, "The Lumpy Bit"

pottssteve

Ah, but think of the cost... in English money...

DavidBelcher

pottssteve wrote:

Oddly, I've been mulling over a similar idea. Mine is more broadly based and could cover any number of sports, but is ideal for cycling. The idea is to compare elite athletes with serious amateurs and Jo Public. For example, it would be interesting to see how an elite rider would tackle a 40km time trial or a hill climb compared with a club rider and then a recreational cyclist. Time could be given over to nutrition, training regimes, physiology, technology, history of the sport etc. It would clearly show the gulf between those who play sport for a living and the lager-swilling lard arses who sit yelling at the TV on a sunday afternoon. Almost any sport could be covered in this way. Maybe the amateurs could be given training tips for improvement and set goals to develop performance as a % of their original level. It would beat watching Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen ponce around someone's dark back passage in Croydon...

Title (only slightly tongue in cheek): Superhuman?

Excited TV producers, please note that this idea is copyrighted

Hmm....sounds promising. A bit like "Superstars" except the average man and woman in the street get to have a go? As for Llewellyn-Bowen poncing around someone's back passage - ooer, Missus!

David

LangerDan

It would be nice if it happened but TBH I'd suspect the vast majority of the public don't give a rats ass about competitive cycling and certainly not the non-racing elements. I'd even guess that a programme about the non-match elements of soccer would struggle in comparison with match audiences. People watch Ski Sunday because they want to see skiers hurtling down the slopes with a high risk of getting maimed - not for a greater knowledge of ski lubricating technology.

Given that cycling.tv's own cycling programme which had a captive audience who could be directly targetted by Zipp and Cervelo appeared to crash and burn -what hope on the big networks?

emadden

pottssteve wrote:

Excited TV producers, please note that this idea is copyrighted

sorry dude you cant "copyright" an idea .... you can only copyright original expression of an idea.... Most TV show formats are not the subject of strong intellectual property protection

hammerite

LangerDan wrote:

It would be nice if it happened but TBH I'd suspect the vast majority of the public don't give a rats ass about competitive cycling and certainly not the non-racing elements. I'd even guess that a programme about the non-match elements of soccer would struggle in comparison with match audiences. People watch Ski Sunday because they want to see skiers hurtling down the slopes with a high risk of getting maimed - not for a greater knowledge of ski lubricating technology.

Given that cycling.tv's own cycling programme which had a captive audience who could be directly targetted by Zipp and Cervelo appeared to crash and burn -what hope on the big networks?

My OH is into her skiing big style and hates Ski Sunday in it's new format!

She doesn't want to know about Graeme Bells trip across the alps on foot, she wants to see highlights of all the pro action from that weekend. Our TV is never off Eurosport in the winter, wish I could say the same about cycling in the summer.