Friday, November 9, 2012

The Coffee Industry & Entertainment Industry Are Very Different



Dangerous Grounds, featuring Todd Carmichael, debuted on the Travel Channel this week. There was some chatter leading up to the show and it has seemed to pick up recently. Since I have been working on a TV concept for the past 2 years, I thought I might share some of my recent experiences, but first a brief history.

Like a number of other people who travel extensively for the coffee job, I had an idea to create a No Reservations style travel loge, documenting the life of a coffee buyer. Let’s face it, we travel to places that most people will never see, we interact with lots of different people, are immersed in the culture, eat the food, but is that really all that exciting? I regularly watched Anthony Bourdain’s, No Reservations and enjoyed the shows, but personally I am a huge fan of, and relate more with Mike Rowe’s Dirty Jobs. So the concept shifted away from that poetic travel loge to more of a fun, fast paced theme, yadda, yadda. I finally landed on my message and defined my concept. Meet the people, places & products that make coffee a multibillion dollar industry. The show is not about Mike McKim and definitely not about Cuvee Coffee. My pitch all along has been that the coffee industry is riddled with colorful characters, innovative products and transcends every culture on the planet. The show is Dirty Jobs meets How It’s Made. Teach the viewers as much as possible about every aspect of the coffee industry, but do it in an entertaining way. But is that really what the networks are looking for? I am fortunate enough to be working with Each Productions, which is a husband and wife team. Armie Hammer and Elizabeth Chambers are two amazing people who have been very successful in the entertainment industry and simply because they believe in my project, Wild Coffee (working title), they have been working to help me find the right partner. Working with them and WME, we exposed the concept to a number of really great production companies who have been successful creating content for different networks. I have learned that this is how the chain of command normally flows. I spent the better part of this year bouncing back and forth between Austin and Los Angeles, meeting with all sorts of people and pitching my concept. We had interest and were making some progress. Then Dangerous Grounds was announced and everyone went into a holding pattern.

History lesson over. Here is what I experienced and learned. Most everyone I met was interested in the concept and felt my passion for the project. I mean it is a pretty simple recipe and makes a lot of sense. But there were 4 questions that I got consistently. What is the conflict? Where is the drama? Can you be loud and obnoxious? What about your company, can we film you yelling at your employees? It seems that these are the things that every network is looking for. I have heard it referred to as the Honey Boo Boo syndrome. I have kept my message constant that the drama presents itself. Whenever you travel, something challenging always happens. I think every coffee buyer can attest to that. Sometimes the challenges are minimal, sometimes that are huge, but either way they are there and don’t need to be fabricated or scripted. Why do I have to be loud and obnoxious? Mike Rowe isn’t either one of those things and his show is great. Why can’t I just be a fun host? My company is irrelevant and there is no need for it to be included. The real people in the coffee industry are the characters and we all know that there is every type of character imaginable. I think that one of the reasons that Brew Masters did not continue on. It was a great show, but it was all about Dogfish Head beer. It wasn’t about the beer industry.

Now I don’t know Todd Carmichael personally. I have heard people say nice things and heard people say not so nice things. I have never spoken to him personally so this next part is all speculation, but here it goes. I bet Todd’s concept is different now than when it started. He is obviously an adventurer and I am sure that was a key element, but in order for the Travel Chanel to put it on the air, he probably needed to add those elements that the network wanted. Conflict, drama, over the top personality. Yeah, the show is not 100% accurate. Some of the stuff he says and does make you shake your head in disbelief. When you are a material expert, it is only natural to want to correct things that are incorrect. My father is a pilot so anytime we watched a movie that had a scene in the cockpit, he would passionately explain to me all of the things that were not realistic. So now we (coffee professionals) are faced with a choice. We can call him a sellout, make fun of him and pick apart every inaccuracy over the next 7 weeks. Or we can acknowledge that he did what he had to do in order to get a show, about coffee, on TV. We can hope that enough people find it entertaining so other networks will want to pick up a coffee show. Personally, I opt for the latter because I hoping that I am next in line!

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