Hi Everyone:
It's been a while since we have posted anything on the ET Blog, but believe it or not things are still shaking. :-)
As some of you know this past week I attended the RealScreen Summit in Washington, D.C. to find homes for all the programs in the Beacon Productions line up. While I was there I also presented Engineering Tragedy: The Ashtabula Train Disaster to the History Channel, Discovery Channel, Science Channel, National Geographic and the Smithsonian Channel. All of them liked the program and talks will be continuing over the next few months about getting a green light and funding for them. I'll keep you posted how these talks are going.
So why did I do this if our program is a PBS show? As you all know, the fundraising for PBS is taking forever and we are ready to start filming. So, to move this project along I thought I would open Engineering Tragedy up to the other major networks to see what would happen. Besides presenting the program as a 90-minute docudrama, we also presented it as a three-part mini-series with an all star cast with influences from the History Channels - Hatfield's & McCoys. Wow, wouldn't that be great if they decide to go with that idea!
Yes, we still have a chance to win our grant with the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). We are suppose to know by the end of March or early April if we won the grant or not. If this happens, we are in production right away! However, if it doesn't happen, I want the option to resubmit the grant or have another network take the show. I'm basically trying to hedge my bet and cover all my bases.
For those of you who are curious about what other programs we are doing and pitched to the networks at RealScreen, they are as follows:
Icebreakers: The Frozen Inland Seas and Airships: A New Journey Begins. All the networks we met with really liked these programs as well. You can watch the trailers at the below links.
https://vimeo.com/85022190
https://vimeo.com/84274268
Take care!
Len Brown
