Broken News is the daily life of the small Southern city of Burndale, AL, told through the eyes of the crew of WTTM 12, an unaffiliated local news station (NEWS TO THE MAX!). With little muck to rake in such a small town, WTTM 12’s coverage is typically centered around the goings on of the town and the people in it. In the pilot episode, we’re introduced to Tucker Williams, a former big-city news anchor who was fired after one of his on-air rants went viral. In an attempt to start over, Tucker joins the team at WTTM 12 (NEWS TO THE MAX!) as a beat reporter and realizes that he has a thing or two to learn about the intricacies of small town Southern life.
We are Adam Schwartz, Matt Mitchell, and Luke Porter: the creators, producers, and stars of the viral sketch comedy series “So True, Y’all” on It’s a Southern Thing, where we have more than 3.3 million followers across Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter. It’s a Southern Thing serves up relatable humor, inspirational people, and fascinating stories that show the South as the culturally rich, diverse, down-home place it really is.
From the colorful personalities, to the off-beat headlines, to the bloopers, we love everything about local news. But the thing we love the most about it is that it’s local. You’ll see pieces on the local news that the big 24-hour channels would never air, but that matter deeply to the people and the tight-knit community that they live in. Southerners pride themselves on being neighborly. Everybody knows everybody, and you can be sure you’ll be stopped in the grocery store at least once to be asked how your mama and ‘em are. Our local news personalities are also our neighbors and friends. Broken News highlights that unique relationship between the local news station and the community it serves. The station, meanwhile, is struggling with relevance in the age of fast-paced 24-hour news. It’s poignant, but also hilarious. But unlike how most TV and movies depict Southerners, we won’t be making fun because… we are Southerners. We’ll be bringing the same relatable “so true” brand of humor to this show that you see in our sketches on Facebook and YouTube.
If you’re familiar with our sketch comedy, you know that we strive to provide the highest quality and production value possible. But those three minute sketches are nothing compared to what it’s going to take to produce a full 22-minute TV pilot. We’ll need a full crew of cinematographers, sound mixers, production designers, and more, working with us from the months of pre-production through the 8-10 days of production. We’ll need to rent state-of-the-art equipment from lenses to lighting and more. We’ll need to build a local news studio set from the ground up. We’ll need to hire actors and extras to play alongside the “So True, Y’all” faces you’ve come to know and love (yes, we’ll be in the show!). We’ll also need to feed the cast and crew. We’ll need to hire motion graphics designers, sound designers, and colorists for post-production. We’ll also need funding to market and shop the show to various platforms and festivals. We want to ensure that we’re elevating our production value to the highest level. It takes a village to make a successful TV pilot, and y’all, our fans, are the most essential members of that village. You’ve seen what we’re capable of producing with just three people, a camera, two LED lights and a microphone. Just imagine what we could do with even more resources, equipment, and full-scale budget!
Y’all want to see us on TV and we want to make that happen. We’d like to use this pilot as a proof-of-concept to pitch to networks or streaming platforms like Netflix or Hulu. If successful, the support we receive from this Kickstarter campaign would be ammunition to show executives that fans want to see It’s a Southern Thing on the big screen. It’s time for the South to take over Hollywood, and we can’t do that without the support of our fans.
The only potential risk is you not laughing at the show.