CHICAGO – An executive with a cable television network known forpushing the edge on television drama described for credit unionexecutives how her network has clung to core values at the sametime it engaged in revolutionary innovation.

Nicole Clemens, senior vice president of series development atFX, spoke Tuesday to executives attending CO-OP Financial Services'THINK 13 conference, held at the Chicago Swissotel from April 29 –Ma

Clemens and her development team oversaw the creation of leadingFX series such as “Sons of Anarchy”, “Archer”, “The Americans” and“The Shield.”

She recounted how FX's production process differs from typicalnetwork television, which she said focuses on taking in lots ofideas and scripts and then winnowing them down to produce just afew that are often a product of consensus.

FX, by contrast, develops ideas and is content to work with anidea over time with a goal to developing a dramatic series,television which tells a dramatic, character driven story over anumber of years but which has a definite story arc with abeginning, middle and end.

This means that most script ideas for which FX develops a pilotprogram then go on to become series, Clemens said.

Clemens said FX's commitment to innovation comes in itsresolution not to rule out any story idea without at least hearingit and to take familiar story lines in television, the policestory, the medical story and the legal story and turn them on theirside so that they are unlike any others in their genre have everbeen.

“The Shield” told a police story unlike any other ever ontelevision, likewise “Nip Tuck” did the same for medical stories,she said.

“We take established genres and subvert them,” Clemens told theaudience.

But at the same time, FX demanded that the stories keep theirauthenticity, grit and originality, even when that has meant thatthey depart radically from their original ideas, such as by makinga character which had only been planned as a guest or one timecharacter into a co-lead after the pilot showed them how importantthe character was to the storyline.

In a question-and-answer period, Clemens suggested that creditunions could carefully target their innovation to maintain theircore business but try to expand and grow in new areas.

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• Mayor Booker Keynotes on Change
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• THINK 13 on Tuesday: Slide Show
• Self-Assessment First Step inInnovation
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• CO-OP Rebrands ATM, BranchingNetworks
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