You're Not Going to be on TV

I am an old hand at not being on TV. There are more of us than you'd imagine. Let's survey the whole field from top down, from the perspective of someone who was actually a prospect.

At any given moment a handful of hit TV shows make lots of money. So much money that they shower down nourishment for the entire TV ecosystem.

There are also a few dozen (I'm making up numbers, but the gist is correct) TV shows simply holding on, chugging along, and making good money. And in TV world, "good" money can make a bunch of people wealthy. You can become a mogul producing decent TV shows that merely chug along for a while.

Then there are failures that disappear without a trace. Hundreds of them, and even here there is money to be made. If you're on the air, you're being paid TV money. A C-list actor (or producer, editor, cinematographer, etc.) who does a succession of dismally unpopular projects is "working" all that time, and getting paid TV money for that work.

The largest part of the iceberg is below the water line. It's called "Development." Your hypothetical show is not on TV, and almost surely will never be on TV, but someone views it as a prospect and can afford to keep it on the back burner. Scripts are written, casting is done, and dealmaking remains in some mode between "frantic" and "moribund", but even the latter feels dynamic. Everyone and everything in development has the patina of dynamism and excitement if you're a newbie...and the pallor of death if you're experienced.

You feel like you're moving forward toward bright lights, but are really caught in warm storage with slim odds of escape. In fact, it's damned near impossible to tell whether you're imminent or you're stuck. Here's the really weird fact: an entire population of people work their entire lives in development, never once making something friends and family could tune in on their teevees. And these people live in pretty nice houses and drive pretty nice cars.

At the bottom of the barrel, there's the trawl. A vast gamut of agents, producers, and handlers gather sardines and decide whether to pack them into development queues from which a lucky few might eventually move on to make actual shows which almost surely will fail. And, oh, look! There's circa-2000 me in that net! Wave, everyone! Hiya, Jim!

The trawl is unmappable, but I can assure you that if you do anything prominent and have any heat behind you, someone sometime will wave the prospect of TV magic at you, and you, newbie, will feel on the verge of mainstream grandeur. But no. You're not going to be on TV.

People mistake “I’ve entered the pipeline” for “I’m on my way." They don't realize that the pipelines have loading chutes the size of continents.

If you're not even being trawled, there's a 0% chance you'll be on TV. If someone reaches out, there's a .1% chance. If you're in development, there's a 5% chance. And if your stars really line up, you might have the privilege of failing with a crappy show no one watches that swiftly disappears. Meanwhile, in the heady stratum above you, you periodically glimpse the shadow of titans hanging on to decent success.

So, you lucky incipient superstar you, it's not what you think. You're best off remaining more of a blasé Bill Murray than a delirious yapping poodle. Because you're not going to be on TV. And if you are, it won't be like you imagined.

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I have unaccountable pleural effusions (like the ones that killed my mom and grandfather); a cardiac stent; arrhythmia and AFib; profound campylobacter vulnerability; diverticulosis; shoulder calcification periarthritis; wrecked unstable ankles; weak/scarred plantar plates; osteoarthritis; tendinitis; vertebra rotation and pelvic torsion; vitreous detachment; sleep apnea; 50% hearing loss; tinnitus; positional vertigo; kidney stones; and middle-term memory issues. I can boast of being in the top percentile of medical torment, though I lack any star turn, i.e. some horrendous cancer or stroke, knock custom-machined aluminum alloy.

Each of those diagnoses made me feel like my life was forever changed. But after so ludicrously many, I've had plenty of experience with that impression. I'm no newbie. And perhaps you see where I'm going.

The moment someone says, “We’d love to develop this for television,” your life suddenly feels like Act Two of a movie. Likewise, the moment a cardiologist says, “We found something,” your life feels like you’re in a medical drama.

First of all, my bundle of issues is, of course, Unthinkable. But you know what I think about Unthinkability. We draw red lines out of the entitled conviction that the universe must respect our wishes. "I'm no fifteenth century farmhand or street sweeper! We're not Dickensian waifs! We are modern people of substance and worth, so when we say 'This shall not pass,' the Powers That Be had best pay attention!" Or at least that's the conceit. Our hilarious, baseless conceit. When we're all old hands with experiencing the Unthinkable, not that we frame it that way.

And almost none of these afflictions is "happening" in any palpable sense at any given moment. They're propositionally imminent — just like getting a TV show produced! As with TV, there's just enough vague evidence (sometimes I need to reset an ankle, eschew certain foods, endure some fleeting bit of pain, or have a physical therapist address my tendinitis) to stoke a sense of progress toward the inevitable. But they're not foreshadowings of massive transformation, though, on paper, sure, one could draw that connecting line. Development is, by any logic, a solid step closer to being on TV!

Having opted out of melodrama, things feel normal. We adapt like champs, and it's fun. Adaptation is the same old you blithely navigating fresh terrain, and terrains can be approached agnostically. We don't live on food, air and sunlight so much as on yadda-yadda. Realizing this level-headedly is how you avoid getting funnel-punked. Bill Murray, not yappy poodle.

If you return to your senses and simply let processes play, things seem far less hyperbolic. "Letting processes play" is what life is, anyway. Ask any streetsweeper or farmhand!

Yeah, I'm stuck in medical development. But the funnel's a head-fake. We're almost certainly not going to be on TV. And even if your TV show reaches air, you'd just parse it as "just more terrain". You're always you.

No newbie, I can't be punked. I'm not on the verge of becoming some other person. I am not inexorably fast-tracked to doom any more than I was fast-tracked to television glory. To be sure, I'm diligent and vigilant with health issues, and cleverly resourceful about self-healing. That's my daily terrain, rather than plowing or sweeping. Which is to say that my divergent trajectory already happened, and I hardly even noticed until I wrote this paragraph!