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Christina Wayne, CEO of Assembly Entertainment, has soft-launched TelevisionSchool.com, which is designed to help aspiring writers and producers land hits in Hollywood. Wayne’s lessons are drawn from her 25 years in the business; prior to founding Assembly, she was president at Cineflix Studios and senior VP of scripted series at AMC. She’s the host of the seven 30-minute videos in her Television “101” lineup of lessons, and will draw on professional colleagues — directors, agents, attorneys, executives — for TelevisionSchool.com’s 102 and 103 levels. Each level of classes costs $100.
Selling 14 shows, including I’m Dying Up Here to Showtime, since Assembly launched four years ago, Wayne said she has found a working formula for turning scripts into series, and that’s what she aims to pass along. “We’re putting a structure down, and getting people to speak the same language,” she said. “There’s so much of the business that even people who work in television do not know.”
Wayne said film school students get well versed in film, but not so much in television, which is where so many of them end up toiling. That was another factor in her launching TelevisionSchool.com. “They’re not being taught the fundamentals of working in the television business,” she said.
