> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.formatforward.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Premortem. Find the failure before the failure finds you. - URL: https://www.formatforward.com/the-premortem-find-the-failure-before-the-failure-finds-you/ - Published: 2026-08-10T00:24:15.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-10T00:24:15.000Z - Author: Jonathan Glazier ### A structured failure analysis of your format, before you spend a penny developing it. Every format that failed looked fine on the day it was greenlit. That is the problem. Nobody commissions something they expect to fail. The reasons were there, in the document, in the first meeting, but they were invisible because everyone in the room was busy looking for reasons it would work. The Premortem turns that around. ## What it is We travel forward in time. Your format has launched, it has run, and it has failed. Now we work backwards and write the account of why. That single shift, from "will this work" to "this did not work, explain it", changes what people can see. It is a documented effect. Research on prospective hindsight found that when people are asked to explain an outcome that has already happened, they generate significantly more concrete reasons than when asked to predict the same outcome. Gary Klein wrote it up for business decision making. It has been standard practice in engineering, medicine and defence for years. It has not been standard practice in format development. It should be. ## What sits behind it The analysis is not a checklist. It runs against four data sets I have built and maintained personally. **The Format Library.** Hundreds of formats going back to 1950, tagged by engine, gameplay mechanic and trend. Not titles and dates. What the gameplay actually did, what drove the episodes, what the audience came back for, and where it broke. **The Broadcaster and Platform Intelligence Hub.** Every significant broadcaster, streamer and platform, worldwide. This is the part nobody else has, because it is not scrapeable. Tone. Appetite. What they actually pay. What they said no to and why. Forty years of rooms, notes and conversations. **Know Your Audience.** Twenty six audience avatars built on two axes, age cohort against values orientation, mapped across the classic socio-economic demographics. Behaviour and psychology, current, not census data from a decade ago. Each one carries its own hooks and its own exit triggers. **The Format Trend Heat Map.** What is hot, what is cooling, and the part that actually matters, where on the timing curve your idea lands by the time it is made. Trends move through emerging, peak, saturated and cooling, and the heat on the day you pitch is not the heat on the day you transmit. Arriving late is the most common avoidable failure in this business, and it is entirely predictable. ## It is not only television Digital first and digital only formats go through exactly the same analysis. The platform hub covers channels and platforms alongside broadcasters, and the audience avatars were built on how people watch now, which for a lot of them is not on a television set. If your format is going straight to YouTube, or to a platform, or to a social first rollout with a broadcast ambition later, the process does not change. Your format is scored across eight weighted dimensions, and there is one gate it cannot pass without. If the premise does not rest on an experience your audience has actually lived, nothing else on the scorecard saves it. ## What it is not It is not an AI report. There is no button that produces this. The data sets are interrogated locally and privately for your project alone. Nothing you send is retained. Nothing you send is used to train anything. Your format does not become part of my library, and it never will. What you get back is a written analysis, adjudicated by me. I have been creating, producing and selling formats for forty years. The value is not the data. It is the pattern recognition sitting on top of it. ## What you get A written report. The predicted failure, the eight dimension scorecard with reasons, the comparison set from the library, the broadcaster read, the audience read, and a clear decision. Pitch, develop, fix or kill. Most people get "fix". That is the point. It is cheaper to find the crack now. ## Have a look There is a worked example here using The Neighbourhood, and a short video where I talk through how the analysis was built and what it found. [Format Forward — Premortem Demo Report The NeigbourhoodUsing my own one pager and without any implied knowledge of the actual TX.Format Forward Forensics — Premortem Demo Report.pdf844 KBdownload-circle](https://www.formatforward.com/content/files/2026/08/Format-Forward-Forensics-----Premortem-Demo-Report.pdf "Download") Want to know why your latest format failed? Work with me, and I will do my best to make sure it doesn't. [**\[Watch the walkthrough\]**](https://www.loom.com/share/09e74698e34a46839baad2fa7b00c7bf?ref=formatforward.com) | [**Work with me**](https://www.formatforward.com/work-with-me/) --- *I am dyslexic. AI helps me make my writing readable. The thoughts, the analysis and the opinions are my own. Nothing here is auto-generated, and I read and research with rigour*