If you build it, will they come?

One idea that seems to show up a lot is that if people build a metaphorical cathedral to anything, people will flock to it, because of the time, meticulousness, and effort into crafting something wondrous.

So, if you build a stock exchange, write an excellent movie, or design a wonderful product, your expertise will shine, and people will follow your messianic teachings, at least according to this perspective.

While this perspective makes for great television, oftentimes validation and success come from small steps rather than large leaps. For every Hugh Hefner, creating a new type of media, there’s five Gates, slowly iterating upon already successful ideas. Despite the Gates’s of the world often more successful and numerous, this type of entrepreneurship is rarely represented in media depictions of successful businesspeople. Moreover, great television seems to be produced by the Hefner-esque model of taking leaps. This creates an interesting dynamic where those who produce media or documentary live in a different paradigm of achieving success. Television, movies, and books are already widespread media forms, producing this type of media generally has large upfront costs, and rely heavily on novelty as an appeal.

Media production, whether books, movies, or television shows oftentimes require a large budget to even begin testing whether an idea is a winner. Typically, you’ll need large samples or a reputation as an already successful producer to green light funding. One thing that’s often searched for when creating these shows are unique value propositions, or what a show can offer that its competitors cannot. Since there are lots of networks jockeying for the best shows, and lots of people who want to make their next big break, tools are put in place to decide what’s getting made. One such tool is a semi-enforceable contract. A film studio makes a weak contract with a producer, offering to buy the show for a certain amount but having murky enforcement mechanisms. This provides the producer with the tools (funding) to create a show, but gives the possibility of a film studio to exit if the costs of production are prohibitively high.

To really validate success , you need to have enough of a show to fully release, to see how ratings go throughout a season. This long lag time may lead people to think that since “overnight” successes are few and far between, building an obelisk in the form of a television show is the model which drives results. Coupling this with an incredibly winner-take-all market for actors, and it’s easy to see how media has this type of perspective.