"Outdoor TV Guide"
Dear Leading Outdoor Television Programmer,
I write as an avid end-user of your product to make some humble – if wholly unsolicited – suggestions for future offerings. I believe you will find after some research (y’all call that “focus groups” and “test markets,” right?) that your average viewer will appreciate my ideas very much.
To clarify, this is not a criticism of your current line-up or format. Truth be told, I cannot get enough of your hunting shows. In fact, if I lived alone I would arrange to have my satellite provider remove all but your channel and that behemoth entertainment sports programming network, to save money on my bill every month. But I digress.
Noticeably underrepresented by your current programming are the recreational sportsman and his travails. Thus, I have taken it upon myself to come up with some ideas to better showcase the humble sportsman. You know, the guy who trips and falls down in the woods as often as he misses easy, low-flying quail; the fellow who stares blankly at the tractor engine when his buddy says, “Here. Check the grease and refill it if she needs it.”
Indisputably, the vast majority of your offerings consist of slick, well-produced and expertly edited hunts cram-packed into thirty minutes; eighteen, if you back out commercial time. If an episode features three hunts, that’s roughly six minutes each to set up the hunt, show a few tight shots of the game animal, capture the harvest, and recreate the hunter’s glee over his conquest, even though he helped to track the animal and clean up the blood for the cameras. And you do it expertly, don’t get me wrong. But I think you’re missing a whole segment of the outdoor television enthusiasts’ market with this polished format that focuses almost solely on one successful hunt after another.
I posit that the average sportsman who flips on the TV after pouring his Saturday morning cup of coffee will immediately identify with my new show concept titled Desperate Shooting House Wives. A gripping, behind-the-scenes look at the dynamic between the hunter and his wife during an excruciating whitetail season, it will no doubt add at least two points to your ratings in its first season. Americans can’t get enough of reality TV’s manufactured drama, verbal spats and physical altercations. What more natural an environment to capture all of these critical elements of reality TV than in a hunter’s living room when he informs his wife that he’ll be out-of-state for the next six days sitting in a treestand trying to kill a deer! Keep your finger on the censor button when editing the pilot for this one.
For the crime drama and law show crowd: a half-hour offering based on iron-fisted hunting camp justice we can call Special Shirttails Unit. Since “Court” is one of the most time-honored hunting camp traditions, why not capitalize on this blend of legal thriller and the outdoors? Some camps’ courts are laid back and humorous; others’ are deadly serious. I know of one camp whose “judge” wears a black robe and a powdered wig for added effect. Viewers will eat it up. Instead of the trademark chimes used by that long-running crime drama, our show can use the sound of a rifle’s action being cocked to signal scene transition. Woe to those who miss a deer with the cameras running.
I promise you that viewers will much more closely identify with a pot-bellied hunter gasping for air and pouring with perspiration after ascending a tree in his climber than the young, fit characters we see today who look like they’re fresh out of the shower after settling in.
I, for one, would never miss any show based on a bunch of city guys who work in offices for a living trying to construct shooting houses, skinning sheds and the like. I imagine the episode in which they try to crank the tractor and operate it competently ought to be a two-parter, with added emphasis on the tangled web of passes they make across the fields. Speed up the video and cue the Benny Hill theme music!
Outdoor television is replete with experts who possess a level of hunting acumen few of us will ever achieve. What we need is more coverage of everyday folks like us who get pulled over on the way to camp, who forget to pack things like camo and underwear, who take an hour to clean one deer, and who spend the majority of our off-camera time in the doghouse for being gone so often.
Show us thirty minutes every week filled with guys setting bacon grease on fire on the camphouse stove, or returning to camp four times in one morning because they forgot something marginal like a rifle or bullets. I’ll tell you who needs his own show: the guy (and every camp has one) who has a tendency to set himself on fire because he stands too close to the fire pit. He should be showcased, especially during Fall Sweeps.
Please feel free to contact me at the address listed above. Kindly note there’s only one L in Guilian when cutting the royalty checks.
Most Cordially,
Roger Guilian
(c) Roger Guilian 2009
I write as an avid end-user of your product to make some humble – if wholly unsolicited – suggestions for future offerings. I believe you will find after some research (y’all call that “focus groups” and “test markets,” right?) that your average viewer will appreciate my ideas very much.
To clarify, this is not a criticism of your current line-up or format. Truth be told, I cannot get enough of your hunting shows. In fact, if I lived alone I would arrange to have my satellite provider remove all but your channel and that behemoth entertainment sports programming network, to save money on my bill every month. But I digress.
Noticeably underrepresented by your current programming are the recreational sportsman and his travails. Thus, I have taken it upon myself to come up with some ideas to better showcase the humble sportsman. You know, the guy who trips and falls down in the woods as often as he misses easy, low-flying quail; the fellow who stares blankly at the tractor engine when his buddy says, “Here. Check the grease and refill it if she needs it.”
Indisputably, the vast majority of your offerings consist of slick, well-produced and expertly edited hunts cram-packed into thirty minutes; eighteen, if you back out commercial time. If an episode features three hunts, that’s roughly six minutes each to set up the hunt, show a few tight shots of the game animal, capture the harvest, and recreate the hunter’s glee over his conquest, even though he helped to track the animal and clean up the blood for the cameras. And you do it expertly, don’t get me wrong. But I think you’re missing a whole segment of the outdoor television enthusiasts’ market with this polished format that focuses almost solely on one successful hunt after another.
I posit that the average sportsman who flips on the TV after pouring his Saturday morning cup of coffee will immediately identify with my new show concept titled Desperate Shooting House Wives. A gripping, behind-the-scenes look at the dynamic between the hunter and his wife during an excruciating whitetail season, it will no doubt add at least two points to your ratings in its first season. Americans can’t get enough of reality TV’s manufactured drama, verbal spats and physical altercations. What more natural an environment to capture all of these critical elements of reality TV than in a hunter’s living room when he informs his wife that he’ll be out-of-state for the next six days sitting in a treestand trying to kill a deer! Keep your finger on the censor button when editing the pilot for this one.
For the crime drama and law show crowd: a half-hour offering based on iron-fisted hunting camp justice we can call Special Shirttails Unit. Since “Court” is one of the most time-honored hunting camp traditions, why not capitalize on this blend of legal thriller and the outdoors? Some camps’ courts are laid back and humorous; others’ are deadly serious. I know of one camp whose “judge” wears a black robe and a powdered wig for added effect. Viewers will eat it up. Instead of the trademark chimes used by that long-running crime drama, our show can use the sound of a rifle’s action being cocked to signal scene transition. Woe to those who miss a deer with the cameras running.
I promise you that viewers will much more closely identify with a pot-bellied hunter gasping for air and pouring with perspiration after ascending a tree in his climber than the young, fit characters we see today who look like they’re fresh out of the shower after settling in.
I, for one, would never miss any show based on a bunch of city guys who work in offices for a living trying to construct shooting houses, skinning sheds and the like. I imagine the episode in which they try to crank the tractor and operate it competently ought to be a two-parter, with added emphasis on the tangled web of passes they make across the fields. Speed up the video and cue the Benny Hill theme music!
Outdoor television is replete with experts who possess a level of hunting acumen few of us will ever achieve. What we need is more coverage of everyday folks like us who get pulled over on the way to camp, who forget to pack things like camo and underwear, who take an hour to clean one deer, and who spend the majority of our off-camera time in the doghouse for being gone so often.
Show us thirty minutes every week filled with guys setting bacon grease on fire on the camphouse stove, or returning to camp four times in one morning because they forgot something marginal like a rifle or bullets. I’ll tell you who needs his own show: the guy (and every camp has one) who has a tendency to set himself on fire because he stands too close to the fire pit. He should be showcased, especially during Fall Sweeps.
Please feel free to contact me at the address listed above. Kindly note there’s only one L in Guilian when cutting the royalty checks.
Most Cordially,
Roger Guilian
(c) Roger Guilian 2009
posted by Days Afield Host | 12:41 PM
