"Where Do We Go From Here?"

The lunch was great and the ideas we developed were even better. Now we had to decide what our next step would be. At this point in time, Joel was seriously interested in developing his love of travel and, more importantly, promoting travel, into a business. Having been in Miami television for a while, he had had the opportunity to work and network with people who could really help in his endeavor.

For me, I was still very close with my two former partners, Richard Bray and Tom Mitten. Additionally, though not a partner at that moment, another good friend in Los Angeles, Jesse Escochea, was always carrying around multiple copies of several treatments I had written since the turn of the decade, waiting for the right opportunity to let some director or producer read them.

"Wait," you pause, "How would Jesse know those kind of people?"

"Aha!" I reply. "Jesse has served as a technical advisor for a couple of network shows, such as "24," "The Shield," "Grey's Anatomy," and "Life," as a start."

In the meantime, Joel and I worked up a treatment. A treatment is nothing more that usually a single page that will tell the reader all about the show, with a single glance. Of course, there are good ways and bad ways to write a treatment and I think that ours fell into the "mediocre" category. Nevertheless, we made it neat and clean and sent it out to Jesse.

As we were doing the above, Jesse was busy in L.A. schmoozing with two gentlemen from a production and distribution house, called, Marker Entertainment. Jesse had showed them some of his previous shows and they really liked them. So much so, that they even helped him develop another show.

While talking to the Marker people and they kept telling them how much they like the "police story" type shows that weren't strictly copies of "COPS," Jesse happened to ask them, "Well, how do you feel about a show about the fire/rescue service? And not just another show about New York City or Los Angeles, I'm talking about a show that will deal with fire/rescue services from all over the globe!"

Without a hesitation, they asked Jesse, "Why? What do you have?" And Jesse promptly whipped out the treatment for our new show and handed it over. "I've know these guys for over ten years and they're the real deal. Firefighters telling the real stories about firefighters," Jesse explained.

After perusing the treatment, one of the gentlemen, Jeff, told Jesse that they would like to learn more about us and about our show. They were looking to get into producing a higher caliber of reality show, especially, one that an entire family could watch together.

I believe that all that occurred on a Thursday evening. On Friday, at about 7:45 PM, Eastern Time, Jesse called me to give me the good news. He explained what Jeff and his partner wanted, along the way of fleshing out the story lines and locations a little bit more. I called Joel and I called Richard, my best friend for over 30 years my lovely spouse aside) and one of my original partners, and shared the good news with them.

Now, the real work was about to start. We would have to contact at least a half-dozen or more locations, outside the continental U.S. and see if we could "sell" them on nothing more than the premise of a television show. Even with the Internet and Google Translator, it took a great deal of work.

We'll share more in the next "episode," "If it's Tuesday, We Must Be Somewhere!"

"The Next Time..."

The “Next Time…”


The “next time” began last spring. Our household has always been a loyal NBC local and network home, especially for news. During the few years prior to all this happening, a new reporter came on board at NBC6-WTVJ, Joel Connable. He came to South Florida, via Los Angeles. He was a good reporter and certainly did his research for each story.

For a while, besides general assignments, Joel also reported for the “CIU-Consumer Investigative Unit.” Some months later, upon the retirement of one of the best anchors in local news, Tony Segretto, Joel was named as the replacement anchor. And as tough as it was to see Tony retire, especially after being one of the calmest voices that broadcast all night long during Hurricane Andrew, Joel started filling those “big shoes” quickly and very well. And somewhere along the way, he also earned himself an Emmy Award in journalism

At some point, Joel surprised the viewers and on-camera, announced that he was a diabetic and very active in the fundraising efforts of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. His story was geared toward young adults and he explained his entire experience with the disease and how, with care, he leads a very normal and full life. I was really moved by his story and his life. So what did I do next?

I went on Facebook® to see if he was there and send him a nice email. We started to chat via email and lo and behold, I discovered that he served as a New York City Paramedic for a number of years, as well as a volunteer firefighter in a small town in Long Island. This in itself almost sounds like a script! I told him about my eight-year experience as a volunteer firefighter/medic 1 and a bond started to form.

At the end of April 2009, I was lucky enough to have fractured a bone in my lower leg. I was in a mobile cast for eight weeks and home from work for about 10 days. We continued to correspond and talk about the good old days. Around this time, I had been thinking about creating a new show about the fire/rescue service in the U.S. And Joel, who had developed a strong interest in the travel industry, was leaving network news and thinking about some sort of informational travel business.

I invited him to join me for lunch and we met at a small Israeli restaurant about half-way between where each of us lives. I told him about my idea for the new show and he told me his idea for a new show that would marry the story of the fire/rescue service with his love of travel, and voila, a new partnership and concept was developed over falafel and fries.

Next: “Where Do We Go From Here?”

The Audition

This isn't our first foray into the world of television production, here in the U.S. more than a decade ago, three of us, put everything we had, both monetarily and in "sweat equity," to produce our first show about the fire service, "America's Heroes: The Men & Women of Fire/Rescue."(c) That work occurred in 1999-2000 and the show became available in late 2000 and early 2001. "America's Heroes" Titles & First Story

While we had done all the production work and had a reputable agent, we had to find a way to have the show represented and distributed. That came about with a company who had had a decent track record with DCI (Discovery Channels, Inc.), which was very important to us as we believe that was where we belonged.

The company was willing to represent us and to distribute the show. And so they did, in a manner of speaking. While our pilot episode was a hit in parts of the UK, the Middle East, and the Far East, America barely gave us a glance. And that was because, the company never put any real effort into selling our show domestically; i.e. right here in the ol' U.S. of A.

As you can imagine, being told that we were a hit in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, didn't give rise for us to pop open the champagne bottles. Nevertheless, we struggled through with them, right through the summer of 2001. Then came the fall--both the season and our project.

I was sitting in our offices when word of the World Trade Center attacks came through on our scanner, as local dispatchers and officers announced the little bit of news they had and hungered for more. I quickly rolled one of our TV monitors out of the production office and hooked it up, and there, lay before us, the greatest tragedy in American history.

Oh, perhaps I forgot to mention that the then, three partners of Dalmatian Productions, Inc., were either still or had been members of the fire/rescue community. Three, snot-nosed, smoke-eating, bell-crawlers, trying to tell the stories of the men and women, both career and volunteer, who risk their lives every single day, to protect the lives and property of their own communities.

With that tragedy so fresh in America' broken hearts, there was no way that we could continue to market this show, without appearing to some, perhaps many, that we were looking to make a fast buck as we trampled over the boots of our fallen brothers. And with that, "America's Heroes" faded off into the proverbial sunset, as did our collective dream of telling our story and the stories that we had received and produced, from all over the country, from Texas to Connecticut.

"Next time," we thought, "Next time will be different."