New York TV festival seeks to boost industry

NEW YORK -- You don't have to look far to find a reason for the New York Television Festival.\nLook no further than, say, NBC's dead-on-arrival drama "Inconceivable." ABC's long-running but torturously humdrum sitcom "According to Jim." Or enough other examples to fill the rest of this column.\nThe TV game clearly needs some new players. That's who the New York Television Festival was recruiting.\nHeld for the first time earlier this month, the five-day festival was an opportunity for unknowns to showcase their pilot episodes for network executives and other industry insiders. Befitting any indie competition, a pilot could not have been financed by any network or studio, or previously broadcast.\nIt was eight long years ago that Terence Gray, the festival's founder and executive director, began trying to establish a TV counterpart to Sundance and other independent film festivals.\n"That kind of grass-roots competition gave artists a very influential voice in the direction that the film industry would go," he notes. "I thought that's something television could really use."\nWhy now, after eight years, did the idea take hold? "Technology has caught up with inspiration," he suggests.\nThat is, with video equipment now cheap and palm-sized, and editing a snap on your personal laptop, a polished pilot is within the capability of almost anyone, anywhere.\nNow the New York TV Festival is giving auteurs the Hollywood connection they lacked until now.\n"A home run," says Gray, "would be that a network comes in and buys the idea, and works with the artists toward greenlighting the pilot into a series."\nWhile in the wake of the festival such conversations are indeed going on, thus far no firm deals have been announced.\nBut Gray, himself a 35-year-old writer-producer, sees the festival's more likely payoff in "the formation of a new creative community. There's an opportunity here to find new directors, producers and writers who, even if their projects weren't greenlit into a series, could find work on existing shows or go into development at the networks."\nEntries for 2006 will be accepted in mid-January, he says.\nThis year's 230 entries were winnowed to 25 pilots in five categories: comedy, reality, documentary, animation, drama. Judges included Whoopi Goldberg, TV personality Tom Bergeron, Mike Scully ("The Simpsons") and Rene Balcer (executive producer, "Law & Order: Criminal Intent").\nScreenings were held in the tony environs of Chelsea gallery space transformed into living room-like viewing pods.\nOne entry, the oddly endearing "Weathermen Boys," pairs two brothers -- nerdy but knowledgeable Bob Weathermen and his vain, actor-wannabe brother, Matt -- as the forecasting team at an Omaha TV station when their dad retires after decades as the station's chief meteorologist.\nProduced, written and starring actor/comic Matt Oberg and his partner Bob Wiltfong (who really was a local correspondent for 10 years before turning to comedy), "Weathermen Boys" was shot in three days at a TV station where Wiltfong used to work. It was edited on a Mac. Total budget for this remarkably slick and well-performed affair: $3,000.\nOberg and Wiltfong produced the pilot specifically for submission to the festival, hoping to drum up notice for their writing and performing skills. Thanks to the festival's spotlight, they are scheduled in the next month to meet with several cable networks.\n"Just imagine what we could do with $6,000," says Oberg with a smile.\n"And six days," adds Wiltfong.\nAs viewers know too well, it's high time the networks started imagining.