HRTS Partners

 

The Lippin Group

A Member Profile by Chris Davison, davison@intellcap.com 

Craig Piligian is Owner and Executive Producer at Pilgrim Films & Television, Inc.  Craig began his career on the news side and has since worked in many areas of the business, from editing to programming to production. I recently had a chance to interview Craig to discuss ghosts, weddings and The Ultimate Fighter.

Q: Can you tell us about your background and what made you want to work in entertainment?
A:  I actually started out in the news business.  I worked as an assignment editor at the ABC affiliate in Las Vegas, KTNV, and I also worked at CNN.  I made the leap into production in 1990, and produced Emergency Call and Real Stories of the Highway Patrol, which was the first successful reality strip – we made more than 625 episodes of that show.  Eventually, in 1997 I formed Pilgrim Films and Television.  Initially the company produced programming primarily for Discovery Channel.  Now, a dozen years later, Discovery is still a great partner of ours with shows like Dirty Jobs, Destroyed in Seconds and Moments of Terror, and Out of the Wild: The Alaska Experiment, which premieres in April.  Of course, now we also produce shows for network and cable channels across the board; we’ve been fortunate enough also to become great partners with channels like SCI-FI, with our Ghost Hunters franchise, and Spike TV with our Ultimate Fighter franchise. 

What I love about working in entertainment and producing these shows are the stories I get to tell.  It’s amazing what people are capable of imagining and accomplishing for themselves; to what lengths they’re willing to go to achieve their goals – or at least to try to achieve them – and the odds they’re often up against.  This is the part of producing reality and non-fiction that never ceases to captivate me.  That’s what keeps me excited about this business.  And, I think that for producers and executives alike, HRTS is a great forum for sharing our stories and experiences.

Q: How would you define the Pilgrim brand?
A:  The Pilgrim brand is defined by people – ordinary people who become extraordinary because of what they do.  Whether it’s Mike Rowe uncovering the dirtiest jobs on the planet, but that need to be done and which get done by amazing people who commit themselves wholeheartedly to their work; the “Sandhogs” of New York City, generations of men who work underneath the ground to build and secure the city’s water and sewage tunnels, subways and bridge footings; the athletes who give up everything and train to become the Ultimate Fighter; even David Tutera, the sought-after event planner who’s featured in My Fair Wedding, our show that airs on WEtv, who steps in to take weddings that have gotten off track and turn them into upscale, magical events – all these stories have one thing in common: they focus on people who put themselves on the line to get the job done and get it done right, with an enormous amount of pride and commitment.  It’s actually quite uplifting that we continue to find people with such compelling stories to tell.

Q: What are some of the factors in the success of Ghost Hunters?
A:  What makes Ghost Hunters so unique is that we approach it – and Jason and Grant approach it – as skeptics.  They go into every situation, every house, assuming it’s not haunted.  Through their methodology, they really try to debunk the claims of the owners of each property.  It’s when the skeptics can’t explain what’s going on any other way that you have the kind of show viewers simply cannot turn off or walk away from.  This is what makes Ghost Hunters truly authentic, and it’s what continues to grow the audience season after season.  We turn the cameras on, turn the lights off, and let the story tell itself.

Q: How do you find new “Dirty Jobs”, what criteria do they have to meet?
A:  At this stage, because the series is so successful, many of the jobs actually find us, as people submit tons of ideas through the show website.  Having said that, we also have an entire research department dedicated to discovering the jobs that fit the show.  We primarily look for jobs that are unusual or unique, but that also have great characters – meaning fascinating people – who are doing them, so it’s not enough for the job just to be “dirty” or to be a job many of us might consider “disgusting”.  Like all Pilgrim shows, the dirty jobs also have to have a great story attached.

Q: Where do you want your company to be five years from now?
A:  When you look at Pilgrim Films and Television, which is the premier provider of cable programming in the US, the company has doubled in size in just the last few years.  We’ve done that by producing compelling non-fiction shows that people simply want to watch.  But we’ve also done that by expanding our storytelling beyond the Dirty Jobs, Ultimate Fighter and Ghost Hunter franchises, with shows like My Fair Wedding on WEtv, a female-oriented series, already renewed for Season Two, which is one of the highest rated shows on the channel.  So I’d say that five years from now, we still want to be producing the best non-fiction and reality programming on television, in all genres and for all audiences that are moved by the kinds of stories we want to tell.  And…if I can do that from a 200-foot yacht off the coast of the French Riviera, even better!