(originally written for ALARM Magazine in February 2008)
The pilot season is dead. Long live the pilot season.
In the last issue of Alarm I offered a list of good stuff to catch up on during the desolate final weeks of the television writers strike. Hopefully you found something to treat your TV fix, but now it’s back to business. The writers and producers have resolved their differences, and settled on an absurdly intricate deal that involves many fractions of pennies worth of compensation for the digital exploitation of television shows. As the scribes of Hollywood return to their laptops, we’ll see many of our favorite shows return for what remains of this season. Hopefully for the networks, writers and producers, audiences will return as well.
But, perhaps more importantly, we’ll see how all of this drama affects the almighty pilot season. For those not familiar with the inner workings of the TV industry, a pilot is kind of like a starter episode of a TV show. It’s a single episode upon which the potential of a series is judged (many pilots end up also serving as the first episode of a show). If the pilot impresses the network execs, more episodes of the show are ordered and scheduled.
The “pilot season” is the time of year when networks commission pilots for new shows from the studios. The producers then cast and shoot the pilots, hoping they will be picked up as a series. The final products are usually delivered during the summer, and the networks decide which warrant placement on their fall schedules, which still need a little tweaking before they’re strong enough to become series, and which will find themselves in the dustbin of TV history.
Pilot season has changed a lot over the past decade, with more shows being developed and produced year round. The influx of new original programming on cable has had a lot to do with this, since cable networks lean towards premiering new series in the winter and summer, thereby avoiding stiff competition from networks in the fall premiere and spring finale seasons. With more money going into cable programming all the time, the result is that there are always some pilots being produced year round. However, cable nets still aren’t granted the budgets to order quite as many pilots as the broadcast networks, so the bulk of pilot production has still resided in the winter and spring… possibly until now.
The strike did end in time to save some of the traditional pilot season, but it will be hard to see the real effects until next year. Most people expect the networks to order fewer pilots this year, and to order many shows straight to series. There are a ton of hybrid situations in between, such as the new Knight Rider series, which was produced as a two-hour movie for air, and could be picked up as a series based on that.
Networks also sometimes order what’s called a “presentation,” which tend to be shorter and less refined than full pilots. The major advantages are that they’re cheaper for the networks to commission, and can save everyone money if the shows need serious retooling before going to series. But, at the same time, they don’t offer quite the same picture of a series as a full pilot episode. Also, from the studio side, these shorter presentations can’t air as an actual episode of the series. Once they’re ordered, reworked and reshot as a full episode, they can end up costing the production company more than a straight pilot.
Still another possibility is for networks to order six or eight episodes of a promising series right off the bat. This is also a bit of a double-edged sword for the studios though, since, while it is most of an order, they won’t know until into its run whether or not it will be picked up for more episodes, which makes it difficult to sell internationally, and can cause a host of issues with regard to scheduling the actual production.
NBC has already come forth and claimed to be doing away with the traditional pilot season, offering advertisers a full 52-week slate of programming for next year, without hinging everything on the usual fall season. CBS and the CW, seem to be sticking more to schedule and have notably ramped up pilot production for fall shows since the strike ended. ABC is largely focusing its production efforts on successful returning series like Lost and Grey’s Anatomy. Fox executives mocked NBC’s announcement on the basis that it’s nothing new, since they have scheduled many of their big ticket shows like 24 and American Idol outside of the typical fall premiere season for years.
It will be interesting to see how things play out in the next few months, but it seems clear that the writers strike has definitely sped up some changes to the pilot season that have been happening slowly for years. On one hand, it doesn’t look like this year will bring the complete destruction of pilot season, as some have foretold. However, viewers can surely expect to see less emphasis on the fall season over time, and more new shows rolling out year round.
All in all, I think this is a good thing for television. As if it’s not enough to keep up with so many shows on so many networks, we now have as many new ways to watch television. Between dvrs, dvds, on-demand, ipods, and streaming internet video, the business of television is changing rapidly, and production schedules need to change with it. Personally, I was overwhelmed trying to keep up with new shows last fall, and then by the time the winter lull hit I was bored stiff, even before the strike. Networks moving to premiere new shows year round will make TV more consistent, and make it a lot easier for audiences to check out more shows that might otherwise get lost in the chaos of September. At the very least, spreading some of the fall premieres around the year will make my DVR a much happier place in the fall.
The pilot season is dead. Long live the pilot season.
In the last issue of Alarm I offered a list of good stuff to catch up on during the desolate final weeks of the television writers strike. Hopefully you found something to treat your TV fix, but now it’s back to business. The writers and producers have resolved their differences, and settled on an absurdly intricate deal that involves many fractions of pennies worth of compensation for the digital exploitation of television shows. As the scribes of Hollywood return to their laptops, we’ll see many of our favorite shows return for what remains of this season. Hopefully for the networks, writers and producers, audiences will return as well.
But, perhaps more importantly, we’ll see how all of this drama affects the almighty pilot season. For those not familiar with the inner workings of the TV industry, a pilot is kind of like a starter episode of a TV show. It’s a single episode upon which the potential of a series is judged (many pilots end up also serving as the first episode of a show). If the pilot impresses the network execs, more episodes of the show are ordered and scheduled.
The “pilot season” is the time of year when networks commission pilots for new shows from the studios. The producers then cast and shoot the pilots, hoping they will be picked up as a series. The final products are usually delivered during the summer, and the networks decide which warrant placement on their fall schedules, which still need a little tweaking before they’re strong enough to become series, and which will find themselves in the dustbin of TV history.
Pilot season has changed a lot over the past decade, with more shows being developed and produced year round. The influx of new original programming on cable has had a lot to do with this, since cable networks lean towards premiering new series in the winter and summer, thereby avoiding stiff competition from networks in the fall premiere and spring finale seasons. With more money going into cable programming all the time, the result is that there are always some pilots being produced year round. However, cable nets still aren’t granted the budgets to order quite as many pilots as the broadcast networks, so the bulk of pilot production has still resided in the winter and spring… possibly until now.
The strike did end in time to save some of the traditional pilot season, but it will be hard to see the real effects until next year. Most people expect the networks to order fewer pilots this year, and to order many shows straight to series. There are a ton of hybrid situations in between, such as the new Knight Rider series, which was produced as a two-hour movie for air, and could be picked up as a series based on that.
Networks also sometimes order what’s called a “presentation,” which tend to be shorter and less refined than full pilots. The major advantages are that they’re cheaper for the networks to commission, and can save everyone money if the shows need serious retooling before going to series. But, at the same time, they don’t offer quite the same picture of a series as a full pilot episode. Also, from the studio side, these shorter presentations can’t air as an actual episode of the series. Once they’re ordered, reworked and reshot as a full episode, they can end up costing the production company more than a straight pilot.
Still another possibility is for networks to order six or eight episodes of a promising series right off the bat. This is also a bit of a double-edged sword for the studios though, since, while it is most of an order, they won’t know until into its run whether or not it will be picked up for more episodes, which makes it difficult to sell internationally, and can cause a host of issues with regard to scheduling the actual production.
NBC has already come forth and claimed to be doing away with the traditional pilot season, offering advertisers a full 52-week slate of programming for next year, without hinging everything on the usual fall season. CBS and the CW, seem to be sticking more to schedule and have notably ramped up pilot production for fall shows since the strike ended. ABC is largely focusing its production efforts on successful returning series like Lost and Grey’s Anatomy. Fox executives mocked NBC’s announcement on the basis that it’s nothing new, since they have scheduled many of their big ticket shows like 24 and American Idol outside of the typical fall premiere season for years.
It will be interesting to see how things play out in the next few months, but it seems clear that the writers strike has definitely sped up some changes to the pilot season that have been happening slowly for years. On one hand, it doesn’t look like this year will bring the complete destruction of pilot season, as some have foretold. However, viewers can surely expect to see less emphasis on the fall season over time, and more new shows rolling out year round.
All in all, I think this is a good thing for television. As if it’s not enough to keep up with so many shows on so many networks, we now have as many new ways to watch television. Between dvrs, dvds, on-demand, ipods, and streaming internet video, the business of television is changing rapidly, and production schedules need to change with it. Personally, I was overwhelmed trying to keep up with new shows last fall, and then by the time the winter lull hit I was bored stiff, even before the strike. Networks moving to premiere new shows year round will make TV more consistent, and make it a lot easier for audiences to check out more shows that might otherwise get lost in the chaos of September. At the very least, spreading some of the fall premieres around the year will make my DVR a much happier place in the fall.
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