Reality TV Show Proposal: Americans Have Power
1. Author Name: Frederick Janson
2. Title of Show: Americans Have Power
3. Format of Show: Reality TV Show
4. Logline:
Michael Moore meets America’s Got Talent; A show where Americans get to vote on political, economic, social, technological, and miscellaneous domestic and international issues and/or events, with each issue competing for a hundred thousand dollars per season to further their cause.
5. Creators Vault Registration Number: CV5118
6. Treatment/Synopsis:
Americans feel like they are increasingly powerless against the national and international issues and interests that are changing their way of life, and this show lets them vote for the issues, interests, and events that concern them the most, by allowing them to text votes, phone in votes, or going online to vote, at a dollar per vote. From a psychological perspective, many Americans feel like their lives are out of control, and this show will allow them to feel like they can regain some of that control.
Americans love reality TV, shows where people vote, docu-dramas, conspiracy theories, shows where “the truth is revealed”, shows where “the little guy wins”, and shows that showcase political, social, economic, and/or technological issues and/or events. The time is right to fuse all of these things into one “unique” show.
Prior to every TV season, Americans Have Power will search nation-wide to solicit 5 minute presentations concerned with political, economic, social, technological, and miscellaneous domestic and/or international issues and/or events. These submissions will be accepted in person during national search campaigns, they will be presented via website and social networking submissions, email submissions, other online submission formats, phone submissions, text submissions, and/or they will be mailed.
Rotating celebrity judges and hosts will facilitate the show. Preferably, they will be independent filmmakers of documentaries, celebrities with causes, former politicians, activists, whistleblowers, dissenters, and/or controversial figures. Netflix alone hosts over 250 independent documentary filmmakers with a cause. It would be great to have someone like Michael Moore, as the first host, and antagonist judges, for example, but not limited to, Erin Brockovich, Spike Lee, Oliver Stone, Keith Obberman, Naomi Klein, Rachel Maddow, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, Jon Stewart, Bill O’Reilly, Glen Beck, and/or Ron Paul, as the judges for the first show, for heated discussions!
Americans Have Power and will narrow all of the submitted presentations into five political, economic, social, technological, and miscellaneous activism categories, based on the issues’ ability to impact the greatest number of people, to solicit the greatest number of paid votes. The 20 issues selected for each category deemed to impact the most number of people, will be selected for competition on the show, for a total of 100 competing issues presented each season, based on a 25 show season.
Every week for 20 weeks, an hour show will allow five competing presentations, each four minutes long, one from each of the five categories, to showcase their political, economic, social, technological issues, or miscellaneous issues. The judges will allow each presenter to finish their presentation, afterwhich they will weigh in on the issues’ ability to impact the most people in a debating manner, which identifies the pros and cons of the idea, allocating four minutes of pros and cons feedback on the idea to each of the five presenters.
Collectively taken, 20 minutes of the hour will be allocated to the presenters, 20 minutes will be allocated to the pros and cons feedback of the idea and its ability to impact the most people, and 20 minutes will be allocated to commercial breaks. Each presentation and feedback session will be separated by a commercial break. During commercial breaks, Americans will vote (by way of text voting or phone voting) on the issues they think should go further in the competition, and the winner of each weekly competition will be announced by the end of the show by the judges.
As an alternative to having people vote in between presentations, judges will vote and select the weekly winner by the end of the show, but, Americans will be provided a week to cast votes to veto the judges selection of the weekly winner (by way of paid text, phone, or internet voting), to possibly select a different weekly winner. The new weekly winner for the previous week will be presented at the beginning of the show, overthrowing or not overthrowing the winner selected by the judges in the previous show.
With 20 weekly winners, weeks 21 to 24, will be committed to a competition of the Top 20 winning domestic and/or international causes, again pitting five causes against one another for each of these four showdown weeks, resulting in the top four causes for the final show of the season, the 25th show.
The top four winning causes will have their presenters present 10 minute presentations on the final show, and otherwise the competition will proceed as detailed above. The winning cause will be awarded one hundred thousand dollars to further activism for that issue. The strategy of the presenters to win a season will be to capture the hearts and minds of audiences with their issue through 3 different presentations, the initial 4 minute presentation, the Top 20 4 minute presentation, and the finale 10 minute presentation, respectively.
Each weekly show will be released online through the Americans Have Power website, the day after the show (which will be released on-demand and on a cable network that specializes in reality) for one week, but only the most recent show will be made available online for free, for one week, but a pay-per-view option will allow viewers to watch previous episodes. Each season will be released to Netflix, Hulu, and Vudu. Sub-title options will allow previously run shows to be watched in all of the major world languages.
Americans Have Power, or the "Have Power" brand is a template idea, such that this show can be produced in as many other countries as possible, in their respective languages, and based on the respective domestic and international political, economic, social, and/or technological issues that their citizens would like to see addressed and/or changed, government permitting
All Rights Reserved, Frederick Janson, 2011-2015
