A TV Show—With Strings

On Friday we had a call from a man who said he made television programs for National Geographic TV, Pax Network and other cable outlets. He was Robert, then ‘Bob.’ He said that his food-themed TV show would be interested in coming to interview us, and do a television show about how our website provides travel information about exciting trips. We set up a time and he called again on Monday afternoon.

His company is based in Florida, and they buy time on these channels, he said, and they promote, and write, and film it all on location. They wanted to get more info about us to run it by the General manager.

Wow, I thought. Great things…Then Bob continued. “We do have one thing, though, that we have to discuss. It’s our…licensing fees. For this project it would be $19,700. You see we have to get licensed to put the show on the air, and this is just a fraction of the value of this….the show is aired on more than 200,000 homes every month.”

Hmmm. Well. I asked him if there were any other options than us paying them for content for their TV show. “Of course, we have to present this to the GM before we can say for sure….You’re one of more than 10 people we’re talking to. But no, you would have to pay.”

Sorry Bob. I think you’re gonna have to ask at least 1000 more people before somebody puts up $20K for this ‘episode purchase.’