Kralyevich builds Pipeline 39

November 18, 2011 by Barry Walsh

Vincent Kralyevich, founder of New York-based Kralyevich Productions Inc. (KPI), has launched a new prodco, Pipeline 39, following the winding down of the company he’d founded in 1992.

KPI’s last production job was this year’s The Rising: Rebuilding Ground Zero, a 6 x 60-minute series produced in association with Dreamworks and executive producer Steven Spielberg and airing on Discovery and Science. Over its 19-year history, the prodco delivered series and specials to a variety of cable network clients, ranging from assorted Discovery Communications nets to History (projects included the 10 x 60-minute Clash of the Gods and the hour-long Getting Out Alive), to HGTV and The Smithsonian Channel (2008′s The Sweet Lady with the Nasty Voice, profiling rock and roll legend Wanda Jackson). The company was acquired by Lightworks Enterprises in 2007.

Kralyevich says that the aim of the new prodco is to provide a leaner, meaner machine with which to deliver a range of programming to clients – not just the blue-chip doc specials and series that KPI was becoming known for.

“As a company we just became really top heavy and weren’t able to adapt,” he says of KPI. “I thought in order to do that I’d need to start from scratch.

“The key difference [with Pipeline 39] is getting back into renewable series,” he adds. “We used to do a lot of renewable series [at KPI] and because of the overhead that we had, we started to only be able to do specials that were more costly, so it priced us out of a lot of series. What we’re looking to do here is start fresh and seek series with networks where we can get an order for six or 13 episodes and hopefully they get renewed the next year.”

He adds that he’s looking forward to playing a more “hands on” role in the pitching and producing processes.

“With KPI, I got very heavily involved with the board of directors and these other layers of management, and I had less hands-on time with development and production,” he says. “So I started elbowing my way into those situations and I became a bit of a third wheel within my own company.”

While stating that KPI was wound down by its owner over the span of three months, Kralyevich says it was still challenging to say goodbye to long-term partners and employees. According to Kralyevich, two members of the KPI management team, senior VP of development Bill Hunt, and senior VP of production Kristine Sabat, will be forming a new company.

Meanwhile, Pipeline 39 Entertainment, repped by the alternative department at APA, currently has a series in development for The Weather Channel and a project in production for National Geographic Channels International. Kralyevich says he’s hiring producers, editors, APs and line producers per job as well as freelance development people that he’s worked with before on projects. “Now we can get the person who’s best for that [particular] job,” he says.

Pictured: Kralyevich, left, and crew prepping a Siberian shoot for History’s “Getting Out Alive”

Tags: KPI, Pipeline 39 Entertainment, The Rising: Rebuilding Ground Zero, Vincent Kralyevich