The Business of Television

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The Intellectual Property Context of Television (Or, When Do You Need to Acquire Underlying Rights?)

With the basic structural landscape of the television industry established, we can begin to turn our attention to the key deals in the life cycle of television development, production, and exhibition. The first category of such agreements goes to underlying rights—the acquisition of preexisting intellectual property for adaptation into a television series. In an increasingly crowded television landscape, buyers look more and more to preexisting intellectual property for a long-term creative plan—and a built-in audience. Major hits such as HBO’s Game of Thrones (adapted from an ongoing series of fantasy novels by George R.R. Martin) and AMC’s ...