NYTVF Wraps With 20 Development Deals in Place

NEW YORK: A&E, BET, Channel 4, FOX, HISTORY and IFC were among the broadcasters to award development deals at the recent New York Television Festival, which wrapped on Saturday night.

The MSN Short-Form Storytellers Challenge was won by Guy Georgeson of Canada with Coolest Thing I've Ever Made. From the third installment of the NYTVF Pitch, BIO signed a development deal with Anre Garnett, Gannett Broadcasting with David Guthrie and Nick Nelson, National Geographic Channel with Justin Lamb and Sundance Channel with Alex J. Mann.

The winner of the FOX-NYTVF Comedy Script Contest was We're Not Your Parents by Erin Cardillo and Richard Keith. The winner of the first annual HISTORY Unscripted Development Pipeline was Rick Dobbis for Fire Bombers. The winner of the third annual A&E Unscripted Development Pipeline was Nathan Stoll for Dirt Track Outlaws. Lifetime has selected finalists for its Unscripted Development Pipeline, but a winner will be announced at a later date.

The 2013 Festival Development Awards were given out. BET Networks signed a development deal with Joseph Gerbino, while Channel 4 inked one with Scott Eckert. There were two winners for CW Seed Digital Development Deals: John Thibodeaux and Kevin Wash and Jim Garvey and Stian Hafstad. The MTV Comedy Development Deal was signed with Sydney Nikols and Julia Mattison. truTV entered into a deal with Ramiro Castro Jr., Andrew Rollins Dewitt and Mike Bridenstine. The VH1 Development Deal went to Brona C. Titley and Tony Cooke.

For the fifth consecutive year, IFC presented the "Out of the Box" Award. This time it went to Incognito, created by Alison Rich and Andrew Law.

“We launched our first 2013 development initiatives during the 2012 Festival and in the year since, we've seen growth across the board—from the number of industry participants attending the Festival and partners committing to development options, to a jump in both submission opportunities offered and artists creating projects for our competitions,” said Terence Gray, NYTVF founder and executive director. “It's been a banner year for the organization and we are indebted to our terrific partners and extremely talented creative community for their commitment to the independent television movement.”