Believe me, we’re much better off submitting online. I’ve sat through several all day casting calls for inventions and its a real pain. There was one for new products sponsored by the Oprah Winfrey show. They didn’t give the male inventors the time of day and came up with 5 inventions to go on her show – all women.

There was another one I did a couple years ago up in Penn (all the way from Florida). They sent me a personal invitation and when I got there I noted there were several thousand others with personal invitations.

Finally I did a cattle call in Tampa for one of the inventing shows that only lasted a season. It became very obvious after waiting all day that they only wanted inventions that would look ridiculous on TV for laughs or ones that had a gimmick. Remember the fireman in his fireman’s suit that invented the device to extinguish a fire on your Christmas tree?

At least EN is for real and I think everyone has an equal chance and its based on merits of the invention – not a quirky inventor. I might enter one this year.

Maybe I will make the 5th season. Of course I’m fairly new, but hope is a powerful thing.

Good luck Chris. I’ll be pulling for you :-)

Yes,I do know we can upload videos. I guess I’m just old fashioned when it comes to casting calls being person to person. I probably didnt make it on the show (season 4) because my educational board game has a theme that’s similar to your show. This next season, season 5, I’m going to try my hardest to get on!

Chris, there will be a Season 5 but we’re fully focused on Season 4 right now. We haven’t even discussed the casting call format although Greg is right – last year’s format worked very well and we loved having the opportunity to fly so many inventors in to Charlotte to meet everybody and see our facility.

You do know that you can upload a video of yourself doing the same presentation that you would do in person, right? The only difference is that you can edit it to make sure it’s perfect, if you want. If a video can’t properly explain or sell your idea, do you really think the product will be a hot seller? If it requires a live one-on-one sales person to sell it to each end user, it better have an MSRP befitting of that sales strategy (as in tens of thousands of dollars). I’m not trying to be negative – I just want to make sure you see it from a sales perspective, which will do nothing but help you convince us it’s a great product that will sell well if we pick it.

Yep, it is obvious they will have it online again. That’s what I’m afraid of though. If people see my invention in person, they automatically love it, but if they see it online, they automatically hate it. So since EE will be doing this online again, my chances of being on the show are zero. If they do it on the streets then my chances of getting on are 100%.

Chris i would be surprised if they ever go back to the streets with the casting calls again. The new format seemed to be very successful for them. I think a video of you explaining your ideas will have to do.
As far as season 5 goes it is probably a long way off. Season 4 is still a long way off by the time they wrap up production, product development and testing.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see E.E. become a two to three year roll out.