The Duck Commander Family (25 page)

As we began to grow and develop more relationships in the hunting industry, many people started telling us we should get our own TV show, but we really couldn’t figure out how it was going to make money. I did not know anything about the business side of hunting shows. I knew I had to learn everything I could about this venture before I jumped into it. I felt I had a good grasp on entertainment but needed to know the financial side, because one thing we didn’t have at that time was a lot of money. Duck Commander was still operating on a very tight budget.

Most hunting shows are paid programming, so you have to buy the airtime from a network and sell the advertisements on your own. And most hunting shows don’t make money, but companies write it off as advertising. I didn’t feel like I had the money to invest in something like that at the time. But we knew we would have a really good product if we could ever do
it, because Duck Commander had so many unique personalities.

About this same time reality shows were really taking off. Korie liked watching reality TV, and we became convinced our family had what it took to venture into it. After seeing
American Chopper,
we were even more convinced our family could have its own show. People weren’t watching
American Chopper
because they loved motorcycles. The success of that show was due to the big personalities and the relationships between the dad and his sons. We knew we had that and then some!

We caught a break when Steve Kramer, an in-house producer with Benelli Shotguns, went on a hunting trip to Arkansas with Phil, Jase, Jep, and me. Kramer watched how we interacted and listened to our stories about our antics in the duck blind. He had a background in reality TV and was producing commercials for Benelli. When we went to SHOT Show a couple of months later, Kramer called us into a meeting. He told us Benelli thought we could do a TV show and went over what he thought the show could be. It was exactly what Korie and I had been talking about! We just kept looking across the table at one another with smiles on our faces. We were very much on the same page with what Kramer was laying out creatively. But then we told him we couldn’t afford to produce a show. He said he thought Benelli would be willing to back it financially, although they would need me to help get other sponsors on board as well. Benelli would be willing to put its name on the show for advertising, even if it could not recoup the money it was going to invest. It didn’t happen
right away, however. When we left the meeting, I said, “Let me try to talk Phil into doing it.” Kramer said, “We’ve got to work out the details with Steve McKelvain [Benelli’s vice president of marketing].” Almost a full year went by before cameras rolled.

Kramer was our executive producer, and the show swept the Golden Moose Awards the first year, which are kind of like the Oscars for outdoor TV. Kramer brought a lot to the table, and the quality was different from anything else on outdoor TV. He was passionate about making the show the best it could be creatively and stylistically. Benelli produced the first two seasons of
Duck Commander
but then decided it couldn’t pay for the production costs anymore. It was a really expensive show to produce by hunting-show standards. By that time, though, we were able to take it on ourselves. We hired Warm Springs Productions, which had worked with us in season one, to produce season three.

Phil was really never convinced that the show on Outdoor Channel would work. “Who’s gonna watch this?” he proclaimed. But I told Phil he had to trust me on the idea and that the move would help our business. He reluctantly agreed to do it, and from day one I worked very hard to make sure it would not be miserable for him. His reluctance gave me the motivation to make sure it was successful. Duck Commander’s sales grew, and the show gave the entire company a new spirit—a spirit
of confidence. It was cool seeing the fans’ reactions to the episodes at hunting shows, signing autographs, and selling more products. But more than anything else, it was preparing us for something so much bigger.

Now, the Lord works in mysterious ways for sure. In September 2010, we found an e-mail in one of the generic boxes at
DuckCommander.com
. It was from Scott Gurney, who owned Gurney Productions, a TV production company in Los Angeles. Gurney wrote that he knew of
Duck Commander,
watched our show on Outdoor Channel, and really thought we had what it takes to go to the next level. One of our employees called me and asked if he should call Gurney back. He forwarded me the e-mail and I took it from there. I called Scott and we talked for a few hours. He was a big thinker and got me really excited about what he thought we could do. At one point, Scott said, “Man, you get a show on a major network, you will sell T-shirts in Walmart.”

“We already sell T-shirts in Walmart,” I told him.

“Oh, yeah, I keep forgetting you guys have a big following,” Gurney told me.

As we’re about to start our second season of
Duck Dynasty
on A&E, I get asked this question all the time: “How did you end up getting a show on a major network? How did they find you?” Everyone wants to know how you end up doing a reality TV show. Well, that’s how we did it. Most folks don’t do a show on a small network and then get discovered. But looking back, the experience we had on Outdoor Channel was invaluable. That’s where we learned our craft of making great TV. It was
where we got a taste for fame, became prepared, and learned to focus. We witnessed the ins and outs of making television shows, and learned how to work on TV schedules, and, perhaps most important, saw what worked and what didn’t. Oh, did we learn!

We didn’t know A&E would be where we would end up. We made a highlights video, or “sizzle reel,” as it’s called in Hollywood, and Gurney pitched it to the networks. It was well received by many of them, but Gurney called and said A&E was most interested. Our only experience with A&E up to this point had been an appearance on an episode of
Billy the Exterminator
the year before, when Billy and Ricky came to West Monroe to exterminate our duck blinds. As far as I know, that was the only time Billy and Ricky had to literally abort the mission! Our blind was full of snakes and, even worse for Ricky, wasps. Unfortunately, Ricky is allergic to wasps and got stung right on his nose. The producers called “Cut!” and rushed Ricky to the hospital! That was the end of our filming with A&E up to this point.

Gurney told us that A&E wanted to do two episodes and if they liked them, they would pick up a full season. It wasn’t a guarantee. Initially, we had bigger offers from some other networks, but let’s face it, this was A&E we were talking about! And Gurney said that it was where we needed to be. We were still cautious, though. If A&E didn’t like the episodes, nothing would happen, so we didn’t tell too many people about the opportunity at first. We just kind of quietly made the episodes and waited to see what happened.

Thankfully, A&E’s executives liked what they saw. The show turned out funnier than even we expected. When we watched it for the first time as a family, we laughed the entire way through. Phil even said, “Willie, you might be right. I think this could work.”

I basically bet the farm that having a TV show would do wonders for our company, and it did. When the
Duck Commander
show came out on Outdoor Channel, our sales numbers began to increase. Then when
Duck Dynasty
began airing on A&E, the growth was absolutely phenomenal. I really cannot even explain what the growth has been like. The crew at our warehouse is working their tails off to keep up. I’m so proud of the growth that we made while still staying true to our roots. I am proud to say that I proved Phil wrong on the whole TV venture. A&E is absolutely a first-class network. They have been so cool to work with. Phil had big reservations about doing the show, but I persuaded him on the idea. A&E wanted to do a dinner scene with a prayer at the end of every episode. I told Phil that it would be a chance for us to show America a family that loves each other and was, dare I say, positive in so many ways. This wasn’t only a sales pitch to Phil because I really believed God had called us for something truly special.

And I guess the rest is history, ’cause we’re still sharing our message on TV.
Duck Dynasty
is kind of like Phil’s burgers. He took something very simple and made it into something that
people have talked about for years. Phil made VHS tapes of his duck hunts, and I tried to make them better. I still remember when I told Phil we should switch from VHS tapes to DVDs and he thought I was crazy. Phil laid the groundwork with the Duckmen videos, and I just added to them. I make the same type of burger Phil does, but just added a little to them and make them for a future generation. The idea behind the burger is the same as Dad’s, just with some glitz and glamour. And by the way, when I’m at Phil’s house and he’s making burgers, I’m the first in line to eat about three of them. They are fabulous.