The New York Television Festival spread out a bit for its fifth outing last week, holding events not just at its longtime host venue New World Stages but hosting larger premieres and panels at the Paley Center and the Times Center.
"The move to the Times Center initially came about as a partnership with Advertising Week, which happens at the same time," said the festival's executive director and founder Terence Gray, who worked with Advertising Week to promote networking between television producers and ad executives in town for the respective events. "We wanted a venue that would give our prime-time events a grander scale."
Settling on the Times Center, Gray used the venue for premieres of new fall series The Cleveland Show, Cougar Town, and The Cleveland Show, as well as panels such as one with the writing staff of The Late Show With David Letterman—nearly all of which approached capacity crowds.
Over at New World, the six-day series continued to host screenings of independent pilots as in years past, and, on Saturday, hosted the festival's first ever Development Day.
"The level of production that goes into these television pilots has gotten so high, we wanted to make a real focus on projects in the initial stage this year," Gray said. "It's also a day that completely sold out, so we're really happy about how it turned out."
Development Day featured panel discussions from 30 Rock writers, conversations with media scholars and network executives, and even hosted the festival's first creative keynote, with Battlestar Galactica writer and show-runner Ronald D. Moore.
