Pubdate: Fri, 13 Feb 2015
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Copyright: 2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.wsj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487
Author: John Jurgensen

TELEVISION IS ADDING MORE POT-DRIVEN SHOWS

On a recent episode of ABC's popular comedy "Modern Family," the new 
couple next door to the Dunphy family has an unusual line of work: They 
own a marijuana dispensary. But nobody on the show seems to care, and 
when the Dunphys get into a feud with the neighbors, it's about 
something entirely different-the eyesore powerboat parked in their driveway.

It was not always thus in TV-land, where pot has been a long-standing 
taboo. Even a comedy with lots of jokes about the stuff, "That '70s 
Show," never showed anyone actually lighting up. While movies and music 
embraced stoners, they were rare on TV, where advertisers are still 
cautious and broadcasters adhere to government regulations about social 
responsibility.

These changing norms are affecting how pot is portrayed on television. 
On "Bones," which teams an FBI agent with a forensic investigator, 
producers got the Fox network's green light for a character who uses 
cannabis to treat the side-effects of cancer. Writer Keith Foglesong 
says, "We felt that there's some good that medical marijuana can do and 
we wanted to say that." Though the characters visit a dispensary (fully 
stocked with prop pot) in Washington, D.C., where medical marijuana is 
legal, the producers opted not to show anyone smoking it.

In the current season of "Justified," a critically acclaimed crime 
series on FX, a gangster played by Sam Elliott grabs up land in Kentucky 
(using cash from the legal pot trade in Colorado) with a plan to grow 
marijuana if the state legalizes it.

  "There's a time-honored tradition in crime fiction of the guy who's 
trying to go legit," says executive producer Graham Yost. "The 
uncertainty [surrounding the business] makes it fun for us. You get the 
sense that legal or not, he's going to be working in the weed world."

An array of bongs, joints and marijuana vaporizers have co-starred on 
"Broad City," a buddy comedy led by Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, now 
in its second season on Comedy Central.

On the "unscripted" side of the TV industry, reality TV producers are 
scouring the fast-changing landscape of the legal pot industry, looking 
for entrepreneurs and other colorful characters to build shows around. 
Networks hope cannabis culture is ripe to produce a "Duck Dynasty"-style 
hit. A priority: trying to capture the get-rich-quick vibe surrounding 
the nascent industry.

This spring, CNN will air an eight-part series called "High Profits," 
focused on one Colorado couple's efforts to corner the pot business in 
resort towns. Both Discovery and MSNBC have aired shows on the emerging 
legal marijuana business, with MSNBC considering a second season of its 
"Pot Barons of Colorado." Last month, CNBC aired its fourth documentary 
on the subject, "Marijuana Country: The Cannabis Boom."

Ten years ago, the pay channel Showtime broke ground with "Weeds," about 
a mom who builds a clandestine pot business. Now more shows are 
incorporating plots about the pot trade as it evolves in the real-world. 
A more low-key corner of the business comes across in the well-regarded 
web series "High Maintenance," which follows a fictional weed delivery 
man on his travels around New York and into the everyday lives of his 
clients. Actor Ben Sinclair, who co-created "High Maintenance" with his 
wife Katja Blichfeld, says, "There's more of a real-people movement 
towards weed."

Still, some TV networks seem hesitant about spotlighting the pot-smoking 
in their shows. Comedy Central declined to comment for this story, or to 
make the creators of "Broad City" or "Workaholics, " another show which 
features heavy pot smoking, available for interviews.

Medical marijuana is now legal in 23 states and recreational use for 
adults is legal in two states, soon to be four, when Alaska and Oregon 
join Colorado and Washington this year. In Washington, D.C., voters 
recently approved an initiative to allow recreational use. The drug 
remains illegal on the federal level, but the reform of state marijuana 
laws is slowly chipping away at the drug's outlaw status. According to a 
Gallup poll in November, 51% of Americans favor legalization.

  Legalization further complicates the age-old debate about whether drug 
use on screen drives drug use among audiences. Seeing lots of characters 
smoking pot as a matter of routine can have a cumulative impact on 
viewers, especially young ones, argues Steve Pasierb, president and 
chief executive of the non-profit Partnership for Drug-Free Kids.

"Right now, marijuana's hot. One of the biggest dangers of this is the 
normalizing force, that message that causes kids to overestimate how 
many people are [smoking pot] and to think they're the only ones who 
aren't. This is not a nanny state thing-`the more we show this stuff the 
more kids are going to turn into reefer heads'-we're just talking about 
the natural progression of how young people process the media," Mr. 
Pasierb says.

TV has long been a lens for society's shifting attitudes on drugs. In a 
1967 episode of "Dragnet," a pot-using character (a computer programmer 
wearing a suit and tie) debates cops Joe Friday and Bill Gannon, 
predicting, "Marijuana's going to be like liquor-packaged and taxed and 
sold right off the shelf." Later, a pot party ends in the accidental 
death of his child.

Sales of retail and medical marijuana in the U.S. reached $2.7 billion 
in 2014, up 74% from the year before, according to a new report 
published by the ArcView Group, a market research firm. The vast 
majority of sales occurred in California (49%) and Colorado (30%). Total 
legal cannabis sales could hit $10.8 billion by 2019, the report says.

The marijuana lobby is concerned about the sudden interest from 
television. "We're working against multiple decades of `Reefer 
Madness'-style propaganda that we have to try and dispel," says Taylor 
West, deputy director of the National Cannabis Industry Association, a 
trade group founded in 2011. She says the organization often plays 
matchmaker, steering TV producers toward pot retailers and other members 
most likely to represent "role model" businesses.

  Gary Cohen, a Stamford, Conn.-based producer whose company Triple 
Threat TV has made shows for MTV and ESPN's "30 for 30" series, says he 
is focusing most of his company's resources on the pot boom. "We're in 
the marijuana-television business now," he says. "I expect to be doing 
this for years to come."

Last year Mr. Cohen deployed an eight-person crew for three months in 
Denver, where they networked with the movers and shakers of the nascent 
industry, and embedded with a half-dozen businesses to create a six-part 
news documentary for MSNBC called "Pot Barons of Colorado," which aired 
last fall. His team continues to shoot in Colorado while MSNBC decides 
whether to pick up the show for a second season. Meanwhile, Mr. Cohen 
says he's developing several shows that use pot in various TV formats.

"Getting High with Jake Browne " would star a pot critic for the 
Cannabist, a web publication of the Denver Post, as he indulges with, 
then interviews, a range of simpatico celebrities. In the talk show's 
so-called sizzle reel, a five-minute sample that Mr. Cohen has been 
showing to networks in hopes of securing a deal, Mr. Browne shares a 
joint with former Denver Broncos tight end Nate Jackson, who talks about 
paraphernalia preferences and being a pot-smoker in the high-pressure 
world of pro football.

Mr. Cohen, explaining the pitch for the interview show, says, "When you 
start a conversation with `Do you want to get high?', you move past a 
lot of the perfunctory stuff and get down to the stuff that matters." 
The producer says the concept has gotten "meaningful interest" from a 
couple networks, but no takers yet.

There are big challenges to turning the pot business into reality-TV 
gold. Marijuana growers and dispensaries, navigating a landscape of 
legal gray areas, are being careful not to do anything wild on camera. 
Plus, most of these entrepreneurs are struggling to build a business, 
and don't have the time to accommodate production crews.

In 2011, Discovery was the first channel to launch a docu-series about 
the marijuana business, with "Weed Wars," about a mega marijuana 
dispensary in California. But scenes of employees expounding on the 
therapeutic benefits of marijuana and addressing a pot conference failed 
to make sparks fly. After a first run of four episodes, the show was 
canceled. Discovery tried again with "Weed Country" (about growers) and 
"Pot Cops" (about police hunting illicit crops), but those shows didn't 
last long either.

Though the spread of legalized pot has more networks exploring shows, 
Mr. Cohen the producer says that many networks still worry about scaring 
off advertisers, because of lingering taboos and federal laws against 
marijuana.

TruTV commissioned a pilot episode of a reality series about a 
family-run chain of pot shops (also featured in "Pot Barons") called 
Medicine Man. "They want to become the Starbucks of weed. That's 
something that everybody understands," says Chris Linn, the channel's 
president and head of programming. However, the pilot didn't have enough 
compelling pieces, and he passed on the show.

The channel is currently developing another show set in the cannabis 
industry. Mr. Linn declined to offer details, but says it won't devote 
inordinate screen time to pot smoking itself.

"It's perhaps more fun to participate in than to watch on TV, so I've 
heard," Mr. Linn says. "I'm not interested in mining the sillier side of 
stoner culture. The business side is more interesting to me."

When it comes to dramatizing the marijuana lifestyle, "High Maintenance" 
strives for realism. The series revolves around a fictional dealer known 
only as "the Guy," who responds to his customers` phone requests via 
bicycle. His job serves as a window into the funny, poignant lives of 
his clients, such as a cross-dressing dad and a harried personal 
assistant. Because it's still illegal to buy or sell pot in New York, 
the Guy has an instant intimacy with his customers. "They're complicit 
in an act that is secret for both of them," says Mr. Sinclair, the 
co-creator.

"High Maintenance" launched independently in 2012 as a series of short 
webisodes, flirted briefly with a pickup from a cable-TV network, and 
now premieres new episodes for a fee on the streaming service Vimeo.

Of course, before there was much TV about people getting stoned, there 
was a long tradition of people getting stoned to watch TV. And now (at 
least in some states) there are marijuana pairings recommended by 
budtenders, the dispensary equivalent of bartenders.

At Starbuds, a Denver-based chain with four locations, founder Brian 
Ruden often suggests Purple Voodoo to customers asking for a pairing for 
binge-watching their favorite show or just vegging out in front of the 
tube. A proprietary variety grown by Starbuds, Purple Voodoo is a hybrid 
of sativa, a strain known for its stimulating cerebral effects, and 
indica, which is more likely to lay you out. "We tell our customers 
`indica' [equals] `in-da-couch.' That's how they remember."

Mr. Ruden's own favorite show is ABC's "Shark Tank," in which 
entrepreneurs seek investment from a panel of business moguls. 
Ironically, the demands of his business often prevent him from indulging 
in it in any fashion. "Nowadays I rarely have time to watch TV," he 
says, "or even smoke pot."
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MAP posted-by: Matt