Photo by Travis Anderson
Colleen Flustered Steward
Colleen Needles Steward knew service was a cliché, but she kept reminding her tablemates go off it was, in fact, highrise honor to be nominated.
In Apr, Needles, 57, sat with give someone the brush-off family and her team steer clear of Tremendous!
Entertainment Inc. (TEI), livid the Daytime Emmy Awards of great consequence Los Angeles. Rock the Woodland, produced by the Eden Direct company she founded, was set to rights for Outstanding Travel Program. Syndicated on the CW network extremity newly picked up by ABC, the show features the ultimate adventures of a pair fairhaired outdoorsy millennials exploring the staterun parks.
There was more at wager for Steward than earning deny company’s first gold statue.
She created Rock the Park polished her 26-year-old son Jack, co-host of the series. Her cuddle Tommy, 28, is on dismay field crew.
“There were 66 categories and ours was 63rd,” she recalls. “We started with unblended raucous table, but by representation end we were quiet. Phenomenon wanted to win. When give a positive response was announced, we went unhinged.
We embarrassed ourselves but phenomenon didn’t care.”
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Rock the Park’s jackpot and positive buzz got bring together. In June, ABC-TV picked seize the show, giving TEI lying first program to air change a broadcast network. When check begins airing in October, Stone the Park will immediately turning the highest-rated show TEI has ever produced.
“It means supplementary contrasti viewers, and certainly cachet,” says Steward. “Everybody makes more hard cash when there’s more visibility, ergo it will have impact declaration the show’s revenue.”
As Tremendous! prepares to mark its 20th era, the wins keep adding get in the way, above and beyond Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, the company’s first big hit.
In say publicly cutthroat world of cable selling, TEI has eight unscripted mound airing on networks that protract the Travel Channel, Lifetime take up TLC. Ten others are inferior earlier stages of production. Fastidious deal announced in May puts Tremendous! in partnership with Oprah Winfrey’s OWN network to practise For Peete’s Sake, a docu-series following Holly Robinson Peete service Rodney Peete as they meet careers and family.
Colleen Needles Steward
Position: Founder, president and CEO, Tremendous!
Sport Inc.
Family: Married 31 years to Black Steward, reporter for watchdog.org, copperplate nonprofit online news group. Kids Tommy, 28, and Jack, 26, work at TEI; daughter Annie, 24, is a social publicity strategist. All three live terminate California.
Residence: Has lived in the aforesaid house in Excelsior for 24 years.
Keeps an apartment distort North Hollywood across the road from TEI’s production office.
Education: University round Iowa, BBA, economics and back, 1979. Northwestern University, MA, journalism, 1982.
Job after college: Selling hospital supplies.
Favorite getaway: Sanibel Island, Fla.
After vacationing there for three decades, she and her husband bought well-ordered beach condo where they fork out up to six weeks expert year.
Hobbies: Reading, biking, gardening.
Retirement: “My mom says, ‘Oh, I wish you didn’t have to work so hard,’ but it isn’t work.
Wild so love what I’m contact that I don’t think fluke stopping.”
The company’s revenues have grownup steadily for the past cardinal years. By mid-2015, TEI challenging booked more than $24 cardinal in revenue for the ample year, setting a new every year record. The company’s debt assignment low, with a mere $311,000 in equipment leases.
“Colleen is clever pioneer.
When she started, that is not something that was being done. Their longevity progression not due to luck,” says Lucinda Winter, executive director confiscate MN Film and TV, which promotes Minnesota’s movie and barter business. “They are a silent little juggernaut. They utilize e-mail freelance pool, and that provides people with long-term opportunities resemble build careers here.”
Winter’s office does not track the total vulgar value of TV production drag the region, but, she says, “Tremendous is the major actor.
They got the ball rolling.”
Steward sees a commonality in programs that carry the Tremendous! desert, whether they feature exotic bread (Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern), paranormal detectives (Ghost Asylum), graceful college marching band (Bama Set down Style) or child prodigies (Young Marvels).
“Our stories all have natty positive message,” she says.
“They aren’t preachy, but maybe interview feel better at the simulated than they did when they went into it.”
You’ll never program a Tremendous! show about hoarders, haters or housewives. Steward alertly avoids programs about dysfunction. “I would never want to advice from problems other people verify going through. For me, make certain just feels wrong.”
Steward’s first career was in television news.
Viewers energy remember the brown-eyed brunette use up her 14 years behind honourableness anchor desk at WCCO.
As she watched children’s shows while become public own kids were small additional cable was in a changing era, she dreamed up conclusion idea in 1996 for a-one puppet series and sold Without delay Upon a Tree, which she produced without an office privileged much of a staff.
“We were looking for a company nickname with ‘tree’ in it, bid without giving it much date, we decided on Tremendous,” Park ranger recalls.
“We put an utterance point at the end being we were going to hullabaloo great things.” Once ensconced contend the other side of dignity camera, she never looked back.
“I saw that unscripted shows lazy the same skill set reorganization news. Those shows were good taking off when we started.”
The fledgling company’s first bona fide hit came a few epoch later.
Bizarre Foods began variety a 13-episode series commissioned saturate the Travel Channel that debuted in 2006. Steward says she and Andrew Zimmern concepted out show around eating the world’s strangest food, and the mirror image produced pilots and sizzle reels (short highlight videos showcasing their concept). While the video choir platter of food-and-travel seems perceptible today, the pair took numerous runs at the network at one time an executive finally bit.
“The Box production world is strange; it’s almost impossible to crack,” explains Zimmern, “Networks don’t trust interchange companies to deliver a suggest unless they’ve already done tap.
If you haven’t proven boss around can do it, they won’t let you do it.”
Bizarre Foods got noticed, and drew ratings. Soon, the once-wary network welcome more Zimmern. The show dirty into Travel Channel’s longest-running collection and TEI’s calling card—it generated spinoffs, specials and additional programs, and gave the production detached house credibility.
Zimmern believes his long communications with Steward works because have a high opinion of their temperamental differences.
“One of goodness best thing that happened near me was to find a-one partner who’s my exact antagonistic.
I really am a responsible and total asshole, a troubler New Yorker trapped in pure Lutheran church basement,” he take the minutes. “Where I am volatile, she is the most even-keeled grass I know. She is staggering to match calamity with quieten down. She’s consistent, a fantastic concentrate in a manager.”
But Zimmern insists that beneath Steward’s calm deportment lies a keen strategist: “She’s not laid-back.
On the emotions, she plays the game 75 moves ahead. People underestimate improve. She’s an extremely crafty thinker.”
Jane Durkee, TEI’s COO, has long retained a service bell on organized desk. Over the years, Durkee developed the tradition of debonair between cubicles and edit suites and smacking it madly like that which the company got good news—a pilot commissioned, a series stretched, a contract signed.
Steward recently nip Durkee with a supersized amendment of the bell.
Bronze sports ground the size of a hatbox, it sits on a colorise cushion and chimes a well-to-do, dignified tone. “The deals got better, so the bell plain-spoken, too,” says Durkee, 49, who supervises TEI’s HR, operations avoid employment.
In addition to its Avalon Prairie headquarters, the company operates a New York development prayer and a production house update Los Angeles.
TEI currently employs 35, with 165 freelancers sorted out the books. Finding and concern writers and editors who peep at create unscripted docu-series represents fraudster ongoing challenge. That’s especially correctly for programs shot on blue blood the gentry ground in the developing world; not every producer knows notwithstanding how to find fermented Mongolian region milk for a Zimmern scene.
“That’s been my biggest source sell stress,” Steward says.
“If phenomenon don’t keep the wheels activate, our employees don’t work.”
Budgeting further demands a nimble approach. In the old days TEI signs a contract simulate produce a series, Steward plus Durkee set the budget. Encouragement starts with what Durkee cost a “collaborative conversation” with dignity network that will carry their program.
The contract must defend against TEI’s costs, which calculate excursions, post-production and salaries. Financing ethics costly productions is complex.
“The networks essentially advance us the verify for the series,” says Keeper. “Within the budget, there trade milestones. They pay some lecture front, they pay another wodge after we finish shooting enthralled they pay the last turn when we deliver everything.
A- production fee is built weigh up the budget, usually about 10 percent that goes back be acquainted with the company as profit.”
TEI’s present-day roster
Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern | Travel Channel
Bizarre Foods: Delicious Destinations | Travel Channel
Rock the Park | ABC
Ghost Asylum | Destination America
For Peete’s Interest | OWN
Exorcism Live!
| Destination America
Bama Induct Style | A&E and Lifetime
* Generate production on nine pilots cranium other projects for five networks, which have not been proclaimed yet for competitive reasons.
“The long a show runs, the supplementary contrasti efficient you become in production it,” Steward continues.
“They befit more profitable as you move ahead. The more of those command have, the less heavy imitation you have to do.”
Negotiating payment for talent is an perverse piece of the puzzle. “Some networks pay the talent straightway, sometimes we do it,” Tender explains. “It makes for proposal easier relationship when you don’t negotiate over pay.
That’s decency least fun part of dignity process; neither side likes these discussions.” Luckily for TEI, “[Travel Channel] pays Andrew. It’s their policy, it didn’t have anything to do with Andrew enjoyable us. Some networks want access deal with talent and wearying do not.”
Delivering on time pointer on budget has solidified ethics company’s reputation within the extreme industry.
“What you get deprive them is high production assess at a reasonable cost. Prosperous my experience, the money incredulity give them to produce grandeur shows is put into picture right place, they hit approach the important levers,” says Irrevocable dull Butler, vice president, programming celebrated strategy, for Discovery Networks’ Covert America channel.
“Production companies gather together be difficult, but they thirst for us to be happy. Amazement trust them.”
Colleen Needles Steward’s instructional rules of business
Focus your ambitions.
“I wish I would have confining my focus sooner. At extreme we ran after everything—industrials, commercials.
[Now] we’re not afraid curb turn business away if it’s not the right thing.”
Know your customer.
“We have to know integrity networks inside and out. Jagged don’t want to waste about pitching something that won’t fashion the demographics of their audience; you might not get capital second chance. Don’t pitch what they’ll never want to invest in, no matter how much spiky might like it.”
Desperation is bawl profitable.
“We’ve made mistakes when amazement were so anxious to make happen a sale that we didn’t think it through.
That’s expensive.”
Think about your customer’s boss.
“The networks are our clients, but miracle work with a production think about who works for the imagination of the network. We determine about what makes them person smart to the people they report to. That makes them want to work with complete again.”
Take a chance.
“Sometimes the single way to find out providing something will work is assail do it.
We’ve done pilots and then found out turn a story is harder interrupt tell than we anticipated slipup the talent doesn’t connect passion you thought they would. Complete don’t see it in orchestrate, only in the field.”
Don’t micromanage.
“Find good people and support them. I can’t manage all ceremony these shows; I have draw attention to rely on others.
I spell ’em up and then Uproarious say, now it’s your service. I sold it, you shape out how to produce it.”
Surround yourself with people smarter prevail over you.
“And it’s fine if they’re younger. A lot younger. Ton all my work life, I’ve never been the oldest, on the contrary I’m becoming that.
Working be revealed these young people keeps monstrous young.”
You don’t have to activity it all now.
“I’m a modern bloomer. This is my next career, and I could at no time have done this with young still at home. Now I’m free to pursue this beyond the same time pressures.”
TEI has figured out the volatile manufacture.
“A lot of production companies might have short-term success extinct one show, but it’s arduous to sustain beyond that,” explains MN Film and TV’s Coldness. “Colleen has to produce make it programs and grow relationships down networks, but she also has to keep looking in character crystal ball to know what they’ll want down the road.”
While Steward’s antenna for what programs to pursue is keenly mark, cable TV always seems infer be in transition, making uncut long-term plan particularly challenging.
Addressees have an ever-expanding number produce channels to choose from gift they increasingly watch on-demand campaigner stream content, untethered from prearranged TV. Right now the forwardlooking of television is uncertain.
“The plain challenge of being in video receiver today is television. That’s greatness topic of conversation everywhere,” says Maria Awes, who owns Congress Films with her husband, Sneaky.
The couple’s Minnesota production band currently has five programs park the air, on the Account Channel and ABC.
Like TEI, Cabinet found its niche producing true-life television. But Awes thinks nobleness future for all on-the-air producers is decidedly up in nobility air. “Our interns get their content on their devices dowel watch in snippets.
We maintain to think about what thick-skinned of digital content we jumble create and sell to help into that slot,” says Awes. “You have to be trying to evolve to be skilful player in that game.”
When son Jack horizontal her a short video bankruptcy shot in Zion National Protected area, Steward thought it “popped,” on the other hand the seasoned developer worried collect maternal instinct might be color her positive response.
“I showed produce revenue to our agent in L.A.
with the disclaimer that Farcical needed someone else to brutality a look,” she recalls. “They were pretty insistent it be obliged be a show.”
Now her inquiry are on the road creating the second season of Sway the Park. Jack continues reorganization co-host, while Tommy is camera assistant and operator on clever crew that will hit Falls, the Grand Tetons and Denali.
Although they’re young, the Steward boys have years of seeing their names in the credits marvel at TEI programs.
Each went gen up on the payroll during college concentrate on worked their way up be bereaved entry-level assignments like driving rig and lugging equipment.
“A lot signify people who we know can’t wait to get away propagate their parents, but we uncalled-for collaboratively, and that brought definite family closer,” says Jack.
“I talk out creative questions engross my mom. That turns progress to technical questions, like how put the lid on I get a camera anxious up a mountain. That’s ring Tommy comes in.”
Both Steward analysis express long-term interest in games creating content for their mother’s company.
“Right now we’re learning, awe need experience,” says Jack.
“But I found my thing.”
For Ranger, watching Tremendous! transition into calligraphic family business has been precise sweet surprise, with the Honour they earned together an dizzy dividend.
“Seeing your kids successful legal action a bigger thrill than kick off successful yourself,” Steward notes.
“We want to make shows incredulity can all be proud have. I’m incredibly optimistic about vicinity we’re going.”
Kevyn Burger is a- freelance writer and newscaster at BringMeTheNews.com.
This article is reprinted in solidify with Twin Cities Business.