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 A Member Profile by Chris Davison, chris@lthmedia.com
Mark Itkin is Co-Head, Worldwide Television, at William Morris Endeavor Entertainment. Mark began his career at the UCLA radio station and has since worked in many areas of the business, from music to law to television. I recently had a chance to interview Mark to discuss Jerry Katzman, Merv Griffin, and beaches.
Q: Can you tell us about your background and what made you want to work in entertainment? how did you get involved with the HRTS?
-as a little kid, my grandparents lived in and managed an apartment building on Franklin Avenue, and they used to walk me down Hollywood Boulevard to see the stars’ names in the sidewalk. My other grandma used to take me to see television shows being taped, and I was always fascinated by everything. When I was a kid I would make TV schedules and then eagerly wait for the fall TV Guide magazine to come out.
I was in drama in high school and then at UCLA I ran the radio station. I knew that my parents were trying to dissuade me from going into the entertainment industry since it is so unpredictable and so at their urging I went to law school and earned a JD. I went into the music business as an attorney and practiced for a few years but I didn’t love it. I took off a year to decide what I wanted to do next and one of my fraternity brothers was Marc Graboff. At that time Marc was in the first mailroom at CAA and then he became an agent so he convinced me to try and become an agent. I interviewed at CAA but they couldn’t believe that a guy who had been a practicing attorney would want to start out in the mailroom. Through another friend I interviewed at William Morris with Jerry Katzman, who was at that time at the head of the TV department. Jerry had been a lawyer so he understood where I was coming from and he hired me into the mailroom.
As for the HRTS, Jerry was president for a while and so was Sam Haskell at another time. Gary Loder left and went to Gersh and so Sam appointed me to be on the HRTS Board as a representative for William Morris.
Q: In 1988, what prompted you to travel to London to scout unscripted shows?
-we repped a client named Michael Hill and he had a company with Bob Eubanks. Mike was one of the first Americans to sell formats overseas, he sold game shows to England and Germany, and so I got the idea to go over there and possibly bring something back. I found “Bob’s Full House” and “Sweethearts”, the latter I packaged with a client of mine and we sold it to Multimedia, a syndicator who put together “Donahue” and “Sally Jessy Raphael”. We then sold another show to Telepictures and they brought in Donald Trump and called it “Trump Card”, a game show originally sold with a home play-along where you would pick up bingo cards in a supermarket and play along at home. Telepictures got nervous about the home part and so they elected not to do it.
Q: How has reality television changed since your first pioneering steps?
-there are many more genres under the title of unscripted television. The “Real World” was first in the early 1990s and then the big boom in primetime came in the late 90s with “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire”, “Survivor” and “Big Brother”. Since that time there have been many other types of unscripted shows and they have become more expensive to do. At first they came from the UK or Holland but now they come from all over the world, from Israel, Japan, Latin America, and there are so many more production companies doing unscripted today.
It is now part of every network and viewer’s television menu, and the networks have permanent schedule slots for unscripted television. The most successful of the formats are probably scripted but there just aren’t as many of them anymore, and there are more of the successful non-scripted shows than before.
Q: The pilot process has taken a lot of flack, is there a more efficient, effective way to demonstrate a new show’s commercial potential?
-you can do less expensive pilots like presentations, you can do interesting animated versions of shows and particularly in the unscripted area. We sold Merv Griffin’s “Crosswords” using a low-tech animated run-through with characters rather than real people.
Q: Talent deals are often less lucrative today than in past years, is that due to the recession or more to structural changes in the industry? both, perhaps?
-it’s both, and I think that the recession brought it all to a head. People realized that there is tremendous waste in the way that we’ve been doing things for so many years and something had to change. Tougher economic times and more competition in visual media mean that we have to find more efficient and creative ways to finance our productions.
The process is becoming a bit more efficient but it’s a double-edged sword - it’s people taking fewer risks on new ideas and instead taking safer routes, which viewers reject because it doesn’t feel fresh. When networks go out of the box it can become a phenomenon, such as with “American Idol”; they’re formats we have known from the past but done in a new, clever way.
Q: What do you look for when considering a potential new client?
-normally, you want to sign someone who has a body of work, someone who has had some degree of success so that you can continue to build their brand from that point. Other times you want to invest the time in a younger talent that your gut tells you has great potential.
Q: As a WME board member, what is your vision? where would you like to be five years from now?
-the traditional agency business will always be around but to be proactive and be ahead of the game, an agency has to be a full service entertainment company. Five years from now, if I’m not on a beach in southern Florida I will continue to work with my colleagues here to lead the best agency in the business.
Q: Anything you would like to add?
-I think it’s very important in unscripted and in scripted for the buyers to be open-minded and take chances because the only way we are going to survive in the new world will be to do things that viewers see as fresh. We need to continue to evolve, and we as the agents need to encourage our clients to continue to evolve creatively while learning how to produce efficiently.
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