Persistence Pays Off for TV Show

Barry Kibrick worked as a television news anchor, managed apartment buildings and produced TV shows before creating an author-interview show for public television. “Between the Lines” has commitments to be aired by 30 PBS stations across the country and is scheduled to debut in Los Angeles this week. Kibrick said that without monumental persistence, his business would have been canceled before it got started. He was interviewed by freelance writer Karen E. Klein.

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When I got the idea for “Between the Lines,” I funded it with a second mortgage on my home and $40,000 on my credit cards, then I went to friends and family who could afford to give me money that I might lose. Because of my reputation in the production community, I was able to get 90-day payment schedules.

To get this business going, I found that I had to have persistence beyond persistence. I could never give in to the “no,” but I had to avoid being obnoxious. If I got turned down by one person, I’d go back by a different route, try a different person or a new approach.

I really had to grow into this attitude. When I first started, if you said no to me once, I never bothered asking any more. I left the television anchor business because I couldn’t stand getting rejections--and it’s especially tough when it’s your face people are rejecting.

But now, I divorce myself from the harshest criticism--it has become second nature and I can do it because I have a support system of people in my life that is very powerful.

Originally, I thought this was such a great idea that people would jump all over it. But I found that, no matter how great your idea is, you still have to convince people to give it a try.

Then I thought after we got on the air in Chicago, we’d have a ticket to ride all over the country. But we didn’t. It takes seven to 15 correspondences before a station agrees to air the show. Every agreement we make takes a full-force effort and follow-up. A lot of very persistent people stop trying before they get to the fifth or the sixth call. My business would have been through if I had stopped before I got to the 17th call.

A lot of times, we find that we get form-letter rejections from lower-level employees and the people who make programming decisions have never even looked at our tape.

So I started a weekly fax campaign to the general managers of all the PBS stations. In Nebraska, we’d gotten form letters rejecting the show for weeks. Finally, the general manager saw my fax, checked with his staff and found that no one had even heard of the show. He faxed me back saying he’d like to see it. About 48 hours later, we were on the air in Nebraska. The same thing happened in Wichita, San Francisco and New York.

Here we’ve been producing the show in Los Angeles for two years and we were sending it all over the country, but we’d had no opportunity to get on any of the local PBS stations. Then I read about the low ratio of books to students in Los Angeles Unified School District. I wrote to KLCS, the PBS station of the LAUSD, and told them that if they aired our show, we would donate a portion of our proceeds to the L.A. Unified library fund. I got a call within 24 hours, and within another 24 hours they agreed to air our show.

I think the key is the ability to seek out different angles while you’re following up. If you’re just persisting with the same thing, over and over again, you become annoying and people can’t wait to get rid of you. If you learn from their responses and go back to try something new, you just may find it works.

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If your business can provide a lesson to other entrepreneurs, contact Karen E. Klein at the Los Angeles Times, 1333 S. Mayflower Ave., Suite 100, Monrovia, CA 91016, or send e-mail to kklein6349@aol.com. Include your name, address and telephone number.

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At A Glance

* Company: Barry Kibrick Productions

* Owners: Barry Kibrick

* Nature of Business: Produces “Between the Lines” television program

* Location: Van Nuys

* Year founded: 1996

* Employees: 2

* Annual sales: $200,000