“Screen Culture”: First Episode Features White Label Productions CEO, Chris Wagner, in Conversation with Lisa Crawford

July 13, 2021

ITVT is pleased to present Televisionation: Screen Culture, a new video series exploring the symbiotic relationship between culture and filmed content—television, streaming, and cinema. Each episode features an interview with a leader in content creation (showrunners, directors, and more) discussing a unique aspect of their work and how it has reflected or even altered the culture around us. Screen Culture is hosted by Lisa Crawford (see more below).

In this episode, Lisa is joined by Chris Wagner. Chris is the founder and CEO of White Label Productions, and an executive producer and EIC with 20 years of experience in television across genres and platforms. His recent credits include The Masked Singer, Unicorn Hunters, Savage X Fenty Show (Vol. 1 & 2), and Can’t Cancel Pride.

Chris and Lisa discuss Chris’s early career when, instead of becoming a fireman, he happened into working on classic unscripted hits such as American Idol, and his observations from watching the Idol phenomenon take off.

Chris shares his view that unscripted TV is at its best “aspirational,” giving participants and viewers the opportunity and inspiration to pursue important life projects, from singing to pitching startups on shows such as Shark Tank and one of Chris’s recent productions, Unicorn Hunters.

Lisa discovers that Chris is a lover of musicals. He’d love to produce a musical, having completed event and concert programming projects including Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty (they take a moment to admire Rihanna’s inclusive creative vision).

Finally, Chris shares his take on streamlining production services (without giving away “trade secrets”!) and his excitement for the new technologies that are making television production more efficient and showcasing a more beautiful end product.

About Lisa Crawford

Lisa Crawford is a cultural commentator and expert on the evolving relationship between fans and television creators. Lisa’s passion for understanding culture, audiences, and content stems from her varied experiences as a communications and marketing executive, writer, and media scholar.

Lisa has conducted original research on showrunner celebrity, consulting well-known showrunners and audiences across the United States and Canada to understand how the role has shifted in popular culture. ITVT published this work as the online column Run of Show, and Lisa has also served as a moderator at previous TV of Tomorrow Shows.

Lisa is the principal of an independent communications consultancy, Lisa Crawford Consulting. She is a graduate of the University of Toronto and the University of Southern California.