A letter to Sandra and Joseph

Here's a copy of an e-mail I sent out today.
Hope you're all in favour...


Hi Sandra and/or Joseph:

I thought I would send along some of our questions and hope it would be possible for you or someone in your organization to take a look at them and provide us with your thoughts.

We really appreciate all that you've done with regard to promoting Shea's Rockin' World Tour. It's just that we are new to this (and have people to answer to). It would be so helpful if we could put things into a context that will help us move forward.


1. How does Sandra Carter Global feel about representing us? Do you feel that there is potential? Our current contract ends today. Do you want to continue to represent us? What about Milt?

2. Do you have an example of another show that has been bought in different territories at the low rates we're seeing bantered around? Can you provide details as to how the show progressed from a small market show to a big market show and what the financial ramifications were i.e. what does success look like?

3. Can you give us a suggestion of where we stand now from a purchase interest perspective i.e. if there are 13 shows Korea and xyz would likely buy - can we get an example of potential fees? We have not been given any sort of idea of what is possible.

4. How does the show stack up against others you have represented? Is this good initial interest or mediocre or disappointing? We are blind - we've never done this before - can you help us put this into perspective?

5. Is there a follow up plan? Do you sell shows at NATPE for example. Do you follow up with previous contacts or do you wait for the prospects to call back? We need to be educated as to how this is done.

6. Is there absolutely no interest from any US market? Does that usually come later?

7. Can you give us any information to help us choose to produce the other 8 episodes - right now we don't feel we have enough information. Nothing to take to a bank. We would consider doing so with some additional information.

Again, we really don't want to be a pain. We just need more information to make good decisions.

Can you advise when you might be able to get back to us with some information?

Sincere regards,

Laura Hawkins

Joseph sent a note to Ken

Ken-
As we spoke here is a partial list of territories interested in Shea’s Rockin World Tour.
Please do not hesitate to contact me should you need any additional information.
Looks like we have something going here! I’ll have more info for you in the coming weeks/months. We are off to AFMA the first week in November and then the Moscow TV Festival the 3rd week in November. Should prove to be a great thing. We will keep at it and keep you posted along the way. I look forward to receiving your list of North American stations that have shown interest in the show for our follow-up.

These countries have requested screeners of the full show:
Romania
Bulgaria
Korea
Taiwan
France
Spain
Poland
Mexico
More to come….

Sales
We have a tentative deal in Middle East for $500.00USD per hour for the first 5 episodes and they will take all the episodes as soon as they are available.

Call should you have any additional questions or concerns.

Best Regards-

Joseph

You say you want the tidbits?

Israel has asked for a screener. Became interested at Mipcom.

Razer has passed for now. They said they have not passed forever - they might want to look at it next year. Right now they are trying to establish what Razer is - they are not sure if SRWT is "edgy" enough for what they think they are doing. She was very nice on the phone. Congratulated me on a great show.

Joseph has spoken to Kaleidoscope about a possible co-producing deal. I haven't looked them up yet - will do that shortly.

Sandra Carter sales team arrived back today. Joseph is going to try to put a brief report together tomorrow. I'm not certain he'll succeed but we should hear something soon.

That's if for your Thursday update.

A flurry of activity

Robin is unable to break away from his regularly paying gig in November so the possibility of shooting a quick episode then is gone by the wayside.

Denise has moved into the Picante office to have more accessible time digitizing - the free machine at RRC was never available so we've rented one and she'll be flying now. UD will be able to get rolling in earnest on Hawaii next week.

I wrote a charming (I hope) response letter to Derek at ITA Software so we'll see if he contacts me Thursday or Friday as promised.

A big hello to anonymous fans who are too shy to comment on the blog but who follow along for their daily dose of the perils of SRWT.

Verrrry interesting

While searching for travel deals and ideas over the weekend I came across a website for a company called ITA Software. This is a young and growing company out of Boston that is kicking #$s in the world travel market. "The world's most advanced system for airfare shopping and airfare pricing." (itasoftware.com)

I thought, "What the heck", and wrote the president and marketing director.

Today I received an email response.

Laura,

Thank you for one of the more interesting emails to reach me in recent memory. I’m not sure what you have in mind when you mention working together for mutual benefit, but I’m more than happy to spend a few minutes finding out.


Not sure what might happen....but I'm sure going to find out!



ps Hi to loyal fan Teresa - glad for your support!

Whoops

Possible miscalculation on the tax credits thing. $42,770 is a more modest estimate. Could be somewhere in between. I'll discuss it with Lisa tomorrow.

Tax Credits

One of my plans for today (along with hosting a bd party for Allan's dad with close to 20 guests) is to try to get a handle on the tax credit situation. I am working with a woman in Regina who specializes in writing tax credit apps. I figure we can collect on each person for each week of shooting that were paid by Picante. Also, Unky Duck since May 1st has been paid for by Picante but has been working on SRWT. Provincial and Federal tax credits are issued to offset cost of people - only. I am not 100% sure if we need a Canadian broadcaster or not - but I think Milt is getting close with one anyway. If we only need to demonstrate sales, we actually have that now.

The tax credits would return 65% of those costs.

Milt and I were talking yesterday about TV Ontario. It is an Ontario-only station of course but is quite large. They had planned to buy a show called "Are we there yet" which features a sister and brother travelling around. Those kids are 8 and 6 years old - targetted to a much younger audience. TVO lost out to Treehouse who did buy the show. Milt dropped off the screener yesterday and she's going to look at it tomorrow. If she likes it - she'll take it. I don't think it will be a ton of money but I guess it will be more than Razor.

I'm looking at possibly doing Costa Rica in late November. One of my biggest issues is not money but time. It is very time consuming to do the pre-planning but also the shoot within my painfully hectic Picante schedule...not to mention Shea and school. There are a few reasons why I'd like to knock off Costa Rica early. It works in ok with my Picante workload. (once my fabulously important St. Vital Centre Christmas is safely completed). If we decide to go ahead with the other shows I could do one at Christmas break (or two). Then 2 at Spring Break. One at the end of June and then Shea would only really have 2 or 3 weeks that she'd have to miss sprinkled through the spring. We can see that as doable. But getting one done before Christmas would ease the load a bit. I'm not committing to this. I'm just talking out loud a bit. I've spoken to Robin and he thinks it's doable although he probably wouldn't be able to stay for the full week - a la Hawaii. I've put a plan together using credits and travel points that keeps the cost 1/2 of what Hawaii was. With additional info next week from Milt and Sandra and further discussion about tax credits etc we can make the decision. Even if we stop at 6 - that was the commitment to Deborah for the other European satellite route - so I think it's worth considering.



Will keep you posted on news from Milt.

New Phase

Wanted to change things up a bit with the new phase we're in since Mipcom.

(there's another reason - blogger convinced me to move to a new program they had created and it really messed things up - once you go over you can't go back - Unky Duck was smarter and didn't go in the first place - anyhow - it made things much more difficult so it seemed like a good time to start anew)

Welcome all bloggers and commenters.

As you heard here last Saturday morning, I have been thinking a lot about this. This week and with the interest shown at Mipcom I have decided I have a new sign in name. So instead of boring SRWT Producer you'll now see me identified with my new one - I'm a Believer.

'Cause I am.