First of all, Happy Holidays to all of you. At this writing, the TV series
BAIL CHIX (
http://www.bailchix.com) is in production, and a development deal has been tendered by Court TV for broadcast in 2006.
As many of your are aware, all of the shows we produce about your industry have been done so with your support. We have found that by working with you we net a more professional and accurate program. Once again we ask for your input.
We had planned to resurrect our 1996 show,
American Bounty Hunter . It is our belief that Dog Chapman has given the term Bounty Hunter a bad connotation. With his high profile and cult following, there has been an influx of both media attention and Dog Wantabees, and their shenanigans have been the fodder of numerous negative newspaper stories about bounty hunters. Many of you are tired of being compared to Dog when people ask you about your work, and for that reason and others many of you fein away from being called a Bounty Hunter. For these same reasons we have decided NOT to use the term Bounty Hunter in the title of the show.
It has also been brought to our attention by Bob Donnellan, Lance Wilkinson and others that many on this forum are licensed PI's (some because state laws require it, and others because they so choose), who not only recover skips, but also recover runaways, and missing or abducted children. Some even tell us that they help locate dead beat parents.
So our re-tooled show will be more versatile, and for the most part we will feature the recovery of
Bail Skips, but we also plan to occasionally feature the hunt and recovery of
Child Runaways and
Missing or Abducted Children. In some scenarios children may have been abducted by a non-custodial parent, non-family member or possibly they were abducted by, or joined a cult. Young teenagers populate the downtown streets of large cities. Many have turned to selling sex to survive, and too many have become drug- addicted. Some of these children ranaway to escape a hostile envirnoment or abusive relationship, so we must count on your due diligence and good investigative skills to determine that these children are not being returned to an abusive parent or step parent. We feel that these recoveries will offer TV audiences a very positive and heart-warming 'Oprah' moment.
We contacted the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and they gave us a new awareness on this sad nationwide problem. According to their estimates, and those provided by the U.S., Department of Justice, there are an estimated 1-million children missing, and many of those fit the above scenarios.
We are tentatively titling this show, '
GOTCHA,' and seeking experienced recovery agents and PI's to participate. It is our current plan to be in production by March or April of 2006. Just like the participants in Bail Chix, we have established a fair compensation plan for those who allow us to film their work in this show. For more information, interested parties should contact us.
Please give us your thoughts. Like everything else we do that is associated with your industry, we prefer to proceed with your input and support. Thanks in advance to each of you, and Happy 2006.
