How to Pitch a TV Series: The Business Side

A buyer does not read your pitch only as a viewer. A broadcaster, a streaming service or a co-producer is choosing a show for an audience it serves or wants to reach, at a cost it has to justify. A series raises the stakes: the buyer pays for a season, not an evening, and the show keeps its place only if people keep watching.

Some buyers say so in their own briefs. Channel 4's comedy brief asks for "character-driven, returnable sitcom ideas," says it is prioritizing comedy for streaming, wants shows with "long lives in our archive" and suggests partnering with other producers and looking for international co-financing, tax credits and other funds (Channel 4 (opens in a new tab)).

Pitching events ask for the business side as well. The Co-Pro Pitching Sessions, held during the Séries Mania Forum in Lille, France, take applications from companies, not individuals, and the presentation document must include an overall financing plan alongside the logline, the synopsis and the characters (Séries Mania (opens in a new tab)).

The story makes a buyer want the show. The business answers let them say yes.

The business side of a series pitch comes down to five questions.

• Who Will Watch It?

  The people who would choose this show over others like it, and what they watch now. Set against the buyer's own audience, this answer shows whether the show belongs there. Finding it works much as it does for a film, as the guide on defining the target audience for your film explains.

• Why Will They Come Back?

  A film has to bring people in once. A series has to bring them back every episode, and every season if it returns. The answer is the show's engine: the situation that makes a new story in every episode, and the characters people want to spend time with.

• Where Will It Live?

  The broadcaster, streaming service or platform the show is made for, and the slot or part of the catalog it would fill. The format follows from there. Channel 4's comedy brief mainly looks for fully scripted returning series of six half-hour episodes, while staying open to other lengths and episode counts (Channel 4 (opens in a new tab)).

• How Will It Pay?

  Who puts money in and in what form (a commission or license fee, a co-production, public funds or tax credits, sales abroad), and what each of them gets back. The money does not have to be in place yet, but the pitch needs a plan for how it could come together.

• Who Is Already In?

  The production company, the producer and whoever has committed: a broadcaster, a distributor, a co-producer, known talent. Partners show a buyer who else shares the risk. At Séries Mania, support from a channel in the project's home country or an international distributor, backed by a letter of interest or a similar document, counts in a project's favor without being required (Séries Mania (opens in a new tab)).

Each answer then has a place in the pitch, with more room at each step:

• The Logline and the Meeting

  The logline carries the premise, and through it the audience and the engine. In the meeting, have a sentence ready for each question, so one about money or partners gets an answer, not a promise to follow up. Spoken pitches are short: at Séries Mania, a pitch on stage lasts seven minutes at most, with five minutes of speaking and a teaser of a minute and a half recommended (Séries Mania (opens in a new tab)).

• The Pitch Deck

  A slide or two per answer, after the story. The deck may have to make the case without you: Channel 4's comedy team takes decks and scripts through its 4ideas portal, and invites producers in after reading a submission, when the idea could be a good fit (Channel 4 (opens in a new tab)).

• The Bible

  The bible develops the world, the characters and the seasons. Its business job is to prove the engine: stories well beyond the pilot, where a second season would go, why the format can keep running.

These questions are not a checklist added to a creative pitch. They come from the business model of the series, and each one has a block in the Content Model Canvas (the Canvas), which fits the business plan of a film, series or game on one page:

• Value Propositions holds the promise behind all five: what the show gives its viewers, and what it gives the buyer that carries it. The first line you say in the room comes from here.

• Audience / Client keeps two answers side by side: the viewers the show is for, and the broadcaster, platform or co-producer that pays to reach them.

• Customer Relationships holds why viewers come back, between episodes and between seasons.

• Channels covers where the show lives and how viewers find it: the broadcaster or platform first, then the clips, posts and events that lead to it.

• Key Partners and Revenue Streams hold the last two answers: who is already in, and how the show pays.

Working the answers out on one page keeps the whole pitch consistent. The Canvas is not a pitch deck, which is built to persuade, and not a series bible, which develops the world and the seasons. It is the plan both draw on: the audience slide comes from Audience / Client, the bible's pages on how the show returns from Customer Relationships, the financing slide from Revenue Streams and Key Partners. Change an answer on the page, and you know which slides and pages change with it.

Hints Cost Extra is a half-hour comedy about a family that runs an escape room in a seaside town: grandparents, parents and teenagers who can barely share a room, locking strangers in one while the business slides toward closing. The writer has a pilot script and a producer at a small production company.

Their first deck is all story: the pilot, the characters, the jokes. Asked who it is for, they say "anyone who likes a family comedy." Asked how it pays, they say a broadcaster will commission it. Neither answer gives a buyer anything to weigh.

So they go back to the business model. The engine is already in the premise: each episode locks in a new group of customers, while the family's debts run across the season. The audience is too: families who watch together, since the show has a character for every generation, and friends who play escape rooms. They add a puzzle for viewers to solve at home, answered at the start of the next episode: a reason to watch together, and to come back.

Since each story ends with its episode, viewers can start anywhere, which suits a broadcaster's streaming service as well as its comedy slot. And since an escape room works in any town, the format could be remade abroad, which gives a distributor more to sell, so the producer brings one in before the pitch.

The pilot stays the same. The pitch changes around it. The logline now shows the engine: "A family that can barely share a room fights to keep its escape room open, one group of locked-in strangers at a time." The deck gains slides on the audience, the puzzle, the streaming service and the money. And the bible sketches a second season of rooms and customers, so a buyer can see the show return.

A pitch carries the business plan of a series as well as its story. The Canvas puts the whole business plan on one page, with a block for each answer and blocks for the activities, resources and costs behind them. Fill it in before you write the deck, and each slide rests on an answer you have already worked out. A one-page TV series business plan, filled in for a fictional drama series, shows what goes in each block. To start on paper, the free one-page film business plan template has the same blocks on a page you can print. It is written for films, so answer each block for the whole show, not for one episode.