The Pitch Brief

Format intelligence
for people who pitch.

Broadcaster breakdowns, commissioning editor perspectives, and the craft of the exposé. Written from the commissioning side of the desk.

• 2026-05-05

  The verification floor every commissioning editor expects you to know

  Editors don't fact-check pitches. They assume the producer has. The verification floor is a baseline expectation — and the read changes the moment it's breached.

• 2026-05-05

  Three questions a commissioning editor asks before reading paragraph one

  Every exposé gets pre-screened in eight seconds against three implicit questions — slot, sender, scale. Most pitches lose there, before the writing matters.

• 2026-05-05

  Slot-length DNA — why a 52 isn't a trimmed 90

  A 52-minute documentary is not a shorter 90. The slot-length determines structural beats, character-count, archive-density, and the editor's rejection thresholds. Producers who write a 90 and trim lose to producers who wrote for 52 from the brief.

• 2026-05-05

  The Sendegefäß you didn't pitch into (and the one you should have)

  Wrong-slot pitching is the most common failure-mode after under-proven access. Most films don't fit the flagship — and most pitches haven't worked out which slot they actually belong in.

• 2026-05-05

  Stop describing — start scripting the first scene

  A pitch's opening paragraph should script-direct what the editor sees in the first 90 seconds, not summarize what the film is about. Description-mode pitches die in the read; scripting-mode pitches land.

• 2026-05-05

  The protagonist test — why your character has to be wrong about something

  Documentaries that read as commissionable have protagonists whose worldview is partial. The exposé has to name the seam, or the second act has nowhere to go.

• 2026-05-05

  Why first-person openings die on page two — and the fix

  I have always been fascinated by…" is the most-rejected opening line in documentary commissioning. The producer's autobiography hasn't earned the editor's attention yet. Lead with the world; earn the I.

• 2026-05-05

  What a brief asks vs. what it actually wants

  Commissioning briefs are committee-approved documents written for oversight, not producers. The pitch that wins reads three layers down.

• 2026-05-05

  Proof types — what counts as access, and how each desk weights it

  Not all access proof reads the same. History desks weight archive permissions; investigative desks weight legal-vetted source consent; character desks weight the protagonist letter. Knowing the hierarchy is the difference between a believed pitch and a returned one.

• 2026-05-05

  Access proof — the sentence that changes the read

  An exposé either proves its access in one sentence or it doesn't. Commissioners default to "doesn't" unless they see the proof.

• 2026-05-05

  The 90-second commissioning meeting and what survives it

  Pitch meetings run at speed because the editor is rehearsing the slot meeting upstairs. The pitches that survive are the pitches that pre-write the editor's summary.

• 2026-05-04

  The 30 seconds before your film idea ends in the trash

  Commissioning editors decide whether to reach page two in the first thirty seconds. Most pitches are written as if that decision happens at the end.