Mediabistro.com Presents Small Screen, Big Picture: A Writer's Guide to the TV Business
*Starred Review* This could just be the most informative book ever written about the television industry. While such works as Bill Carter’s Late Shift (1994) and Desperate Networks (2006) focus on the personalities behind TV’s hits and failures, Gervich, who has worked in television production for about a decade, concentrates on the mechanics of the industry. He takes a budding scriptwriter through the lengthy, often emotionally draining process of getting a script onto the air, pausing along the way to talk about such fundamental things as pilot season, the way a broadcast day is broken into key segments (called “dayparts”), how the TV ratings work, the different requirements of specific genres, how to schedule a new series, the syndication process (generally speaking, a show doesn’t turn a profit until it’s sold into syndication), even the mechanics of filming a television show. The book is also full of surprises—the fact that cable TV was accidentally invented 60-odd years ago by a Pennsylvania appliance salesman who just wanted to sell more television sets—and it’s written for the general reader, someone who hasn’t already spent years in the business. It would be difficult to imagine a more engaging, user-friendly, and educational book on the subject. --David Pitt