Yes, no and maybe

There's a forward planning meeting this week at the production company where I work. This is all to do with trying to forecast the income we might pull in over the next year. This is a bewildering prospect for me on two levels. One is that although I have worked in tv for ten years, I still don't know how a production company makes its money. We get an amount to make a series and if we come under budget we keep the rest - fairly obvious, but I can't see how any company with permanent staff can make enough profit to grow. I know if I had my own company - which, if any would-be investor were to read this, is highly unlikely - I'd be scared of hiring any permanent staff: they'd bleed me dry on a daily basis. 
Anyway, the other reason 'forward planning' spooks me is that I can't assume that any of the shows I'll be pitching to broadcasters will get made. I've said elsewhere that good ideas are no guarantee of success - after recording a very good pilot on one occasion, I tried to encourage the creator with: "Well at least we know it's a good idea and it works", to which he replied "Oh come on, it must have something going for it."
So I can lay out half a dozen good ideas to my superiors, which may all look great on paper, but my lack of Derren Brown-type powers to influence, or even know what's going on inside the mind of commissioners means I might just as well lead the family cow into the meeting and announce my plan to swap it for some magic beans. 
Broadcasters receive ideas into three mental compartments -
Definitely No (suprisingly small - they are adept at not letting you down face to face)
Definitely Yes (small enough to make Rachel from S-Club 7 feel uncomfortable)
and Maybe - which is massive; a hundred-foot high teetering pile of indecision.
There's a cliche among programme pitchers that a quick 'no' is their second-favourite answer. There's also a cliche among programme commissioners that programme pitchers always say that but don't mean it. Hence we have this big mound of ideas, all of which might be quite good, which no-one quite knows the destiny of, and most of which the commissioner hopes will quietly be forgotten about and just go away - a bit like when a child divides a portion of spinach into several smaller pieces and tries to pretend they've finished eating.
Well, like the child with spinach, I can't really get angry about it- it's kind of a fact of life.
The problem is it's not helping me complete my income forecasts very accurately. Someone needs to invent a Maybe currency. Is this what 'futures' are?