Success Stories
In 2013 in my role as Vice President of Acquisitions and Strategy for Game Show Network I reached out to the owner and creator of a show called SHOP TIL YOU DROP. The series had a successful run during the 1990s and early 2000s on Lifetime, the Family Channel and the PAX network, most frequently as a companion series to the more iconic SUPERMARKET SWEEP. Due to its unique status as a property unaffiliated with a larger corporate entity the show had not had any exposure since its PAX cancellation. We mutually agreed that the show at least deserved a chance to audition for a new generation. We were able to provide a test run for the show in a dedicated time slot, with careful research and promotional direction provided to maximize the upside. This test resulted in the time slot’s best performance in more than a decade and the sale of additional episodes to the network.
Leverage was a rarity among the many original scripted dramas that aired on TNT for the first two decades of this century. It was among the few that was not produced or distributed by Warner Brothers, its sister company. Produced by Dean Devlin’s Electric Entertainment, the series was critically acclaimed , well-rated and whose original incarnation ran an impressive five seasons and 77 episodes. It also meant its rerun future was not pre-ordained, with the onus of finding a profitable home lying on the producers, who were not affiliated with a corporate distribution arm.
My consulting skills were retained to crafa a compelling narrative that highlighted the show’s relative success in actual ratings, ability to improve upon its time slot benchmarks versus its lead-in and previous year’s programming, and its stronger concentration of young upscale females as well as its breadth of overall appeal The result was that LEVERAGE’s reruns were sold to TNT. And WGN America. And ION. And broadcast syndication. And, later, AMGTV. So successfully did these reruns perform that a new version, Leverage: Redemption, recently completed production and will be one of the first original series to air on the IMdB.tv AVOD platform of Amazon Prime Video.
Helping content find marketplace LEVERAGE is how Leblanguage has been used by top crreatives to realize financial success.