Make your idea defensible.

One lesson that I learned very early on was that you need to find something unique about your idea so that you can prevent someone from stealing it. Simply filing you treatment with the WGA isn’t necessarily going to protect you, especially if you don’t have the resources to mount an expensive legal battle. You need something that will force Fox to buy your idea or allow you to produce the show with them. You need a good defense!

If your reality program centers around a celebrity, make sure you ‘lock-up’ the celebrity in the form of a contract (remember to offer your lawyer production credit in exchange for free or discounted legal services). Of course, I hadn’t really thought about how we could defend our idea until I started to get calls from people interested in learning more about our show.

Evidently, as Robert began interviewing potential film crews to join the project word began to spread that we were producing a racing reality series. Dallas is a big city that feels like a small town and like any small town, news travels fast. I knew we were in trouble when a national advertising agency pitched our idea to a major automobile company to see if they would be interested in becoming a sponsor. We hadn’t talked to the advertising agency, nor had we even considered looking for sponsors. I didn’t learn about it until after the automobile company expressed an interest in the idea and the agency called me! They starting asking questions I couldn’t answer and asking for footage that we didn’t have. Then it dawned on us, we hadn’t secured the location.

Anyone could have driven over to MotorSport Ranch, pitched our idea and signed contract locking the location up for THEIR show, effectively locking us out of our own idea. I called Jack Farr, the owner of MotorSport Ranch and scheduled an appointment to get together the next day. Over cheese sticks at Chili’s we struck a deal with Jack and by the end of the week we had a written contract. Basically, Jack agreed to give us exclusive right to film a reality show on his location and in return we agreed to give him a percentage of any merchandise that may ultimately be sold. Of course we didn’t have to offer him anything as the upside a television series about his business might offer would more than offset the hassle we would create.

The moral of the story, when crafting your idea carve out something unique and defensible and lock it/her/him up as soon as possible. If you don’t have anything defensible, keep working on your idea until you find something.