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I have always been fascinated with television. I consume hours and hours of it each week and have since I was a kid. I was an 80s baby raised by a single mom who worked full time so the TV was my babysitter a lot of the time. And since I was little I have dreamed of being on TV, making people laugh and being a part of their family week after week. And while television has changed a lot since the 80s, my dream hasn’t. The feeling I get when I watch a great show hasn’t changed either.

When I first moved to LA I immersed myself in improv and comedy at the Groundlings. I thought the best way to get my own show was to just be funny and work with great people and eventually I would get cast. Hindsight is always 20/20 but I wish I could tell myself to become a producer and develop my own show. That’s where I want to be! Now that I know more about the TV development process I understand just how little control and power actors have, unless you are also a producer.

Brenda Milinkovic is the Director of Development and Programming at NBC Universal.

I’m so thrilled to have Brenda Brkusic Milinkovic on the show this week to help demystify television development and shed some light on how a show gets made. Brenda is the Director of Programming and Development at NBC Universal. She works on “The Kelly Clarkson Show” and “Access Hollywood” to name a few and has several projects in development that she can’t reveal just yet. She previously spent 13 years at PBS SoCal where she was responsible for directing the development, production, national distribution and marketing of programs on PBS. You might be familiar with her PBS shows like “Variety Studios: Actors on Actors” where actors interview each other.

Brenda Brkusic Milinkovic is photographed during Governors Portraits on Thursday, Feb. 15, 2018, in North Hollywood, Calif. (Photo by Phil McCarten/Invision for the Television Academy/AP Images)

Brenda has won 10 Emmy Awards, and has had 15 Emmy nominations. She currently serves on the Daytime Emmy Awards Committee and previously served as LA Area Governor on the Board of Governors for the Television Academy as well as Co-Chair of the Governors Ball for the Primetime Emmys and Co-Chair of the LA Area Emmys. To say she is a proactive member of the television community would be an understatement. She is entrenched in the development and creation of ideas for TV. So of course, I had to ask her what she thinks about the rise in popularity of streaming content over the last decade. We talked about how traditional broadcast is learning to pivot to keep viewers tuned in while streaming platforms surge.

I’ve always been curious about how producers get in rooms with development executives and if the traditional method of going through an agent, pitching and signing a deal is still the norm. I love what Brenda has to say about this in terms of finding new talent and ideas. She recently discovered someone on YouTube and liked them so much, she started developing a show with them. How amazing! This is why I tell people to never stop creating because you never know who is watching.

Brenda Milinkovic is the Director of Development and Programming at NBC Universal.

We also talk about the demands of working for a major network like NBC and juggling family life. She is a mom of two and, like most of the country, has been working from home since the stay home orders were put in place. She says despite the industry shut down, they are still constantly working on developing new ideas and content for programs. This was such an inspiring conversation and really gives us a glimpse into how television gets made, and what someone looking to get into development or develop their own show can do to get a leg up. The next time you’re watching a great show on NBC, you’l have a better sense of the people behind the scenes who took a nugget of an idea and followed it through until it landed in your living room.

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