You still have not not said which market you work for, and judging by your simplistic comments without any actual evidence or thought process to back up what you say, you seem rather naive in the business sense and really common sense in general.

If it was as ineffective as you say, why would the networks continually waste money (as you say) in producing a pilot? Despite what you say, you cannot possibly judge the potential of a series on a script alone. You actually need to see the script executed to see what works and what doesn’t. Hence the need for a pilot. As you will have seen from many pilots aired as well with their respective series, a lot can change from the pilot to a series, so it is a crucial creative process, for either better or worse depending on what your feelings are for the programme. If the script alone was that good, why then are there so so many changes from pilot to series?

With only a few exceptions the networks do not air pilots before they’ve committed to producing (usually) 13 episodes and most of those exceptions come in the form of back door pilots. Knight Rider is the only recent example I can think of where a pilot/TV movie was made and aired before a series commitment was made. If the networks were actually airing pilots to gauge public reaction and get some kind of ratings expectation for the shows then I’d absolutely agree that they serve some kind of purpose but the networks don’t do that, instead they finance a pilot (which isn’t cheap) and the executives who have already read the scripts and heard the series pitch watch that pilot and decide whether to give a series commitment or not, the pilots only see the light of day to the general public after that decision has been made.

The whole system as it currently stands is largely ineffective and perhaps more importantly more expensive than it needs to be. The only reason the networks still make pilots now is pretty much out of habit rather than a real need for them. You don’t need to see a pilot of The Mentalist to know that’s a show that works just like you don’t need to see a pilot of Dollhouse to know that’s a show that doesn’t work. Everything you need is there in the script and the pitch.

I wonder if putting extra $$$ in extending a 1-hour pilot into a 2-hour movie is worth the one-shot airing. To me it seems to be wasted money.

Alex, which international market do you work in?

Alex is right, most other countries do manage without having to have a pilot for a series, however the are numerous factors involved.

1. British seasons are far shorter than American ones, usually 6 to 8 episodes, therefore the cost is not nearly as great as American producued programmes.

2. Tax payer funded channels in western countries. It would not be economical for them to produce a pilot and then go back and shoot a series. After all tax payer funded money is at stake.

3. Local Drama Quota. This is a minimum requirement in some countries that force networks to produce a certain amount of drama. In Australia there is usually a reluctance for a commercial network to produce Australian drama as American imports are far cheaper and usually get the same ratings. So pilots are generally a waste of time, as no channel is going to commission a dozen pilots and then judge which ones to use to fit the quota rule. It’s a waste of time and money. However, Channel Ten has commissioned pilots in the form of tv movies in the past. If they are a success then they get a season. Though even with a show already produced before it hits broadcast in Australia and it immediately flops it still really isn’t seen as something that could have been avoided due to the quotas in place. It just costs the networks millions.

If you don’t pick up a pilot (thus making the producers happy) why would they want to assist the execs in creating an ending for a dead project?

Execs will just have to deal with the fact that pilots may be money makers or money breakers.

As for releasing pilots, my idea is that you have an alternate ending that would be there in case the show is not picked up. That way the show can easily be released as a standalone movie, and the majority of the world will have no idea that it was once a pilot. You don’t market it as a failed pilot, but as a DTV movie. Sure, there will be some people who know and who will beg for more, but the majority of the audience for the movie will just see it as a one time thing. If it does well enough on DVD, they could release a sequel. This obviously wouldn’t work for all/most pilots, since a lot of them wouldn’t work as movies, but there’s at least a few a season that it would work for.

On the subject of making money out of pilots you don’t pick up, its a double edged sword. The fear is that you’ll air or release a pilot you passed on and people will love it and you’ll ultimately look stupid for not picking it up. The CW got into enough trouble over Body Politic and hardly anybody had seen that if more people had then that would have been even bigger. Personally though I don’t know why passed on pilots aren’t slotted into the summer schedule in place of repeats. Hell they could even air them online, I’m sure Hulu would love a ‘pilots’ section that could be part of their proposed subscription service. They’d at least make back some money off of that even if it wasn’t much.

FOX released the 2-hour Virtuality pilot as a “movie” and neither fans nor the producers was happy about that. Virtuality now has been released on DVD.

Do pilots, or don’t do pilots. This isn’t an either-or scenario. Both methods can work, and both methods can definitely fail. The problem isn’t the nuts-and-bolts of the process. The problem is the people making the decisions on what to go forward with and what not to. If you have people making smart decisions, you will do well, with many fewer hits than misses. If you don’t, then you miss more than you hit.

This formula Fox came up with can be a money saver, which is probably good, but no formula will ever guarantee making a hit show. People make hits, not processes.

The real concern with co-production from my standpoint is that it continues the unfortunate allocation of risk incumbent in vertical integration; which only really reared its ugly head after the end of fin-syn rules. My argument isn’t really that regulation is fantastic, but that pilot production was a way for network decision makers to have access to potential shows without internalizing risk. The move to co-production of this sort eliminates the intermediary decision levels; gutting the marketplace of programming ideas. In this sense, all television after the end of fin-syn and PTAR will head down this road. Meaning, less transparency, more cronyism, weaker shows, and non-modelable decisions. An army of Ben Silverman’s is waiting in the wings for co-financers to crown them.

I guess you must have slept through 1987, when the “CBS Summer Playhouse” did just that. Well, except for the picked up to series part. (Feel sorry for all those losers who wasted their money calling the 1-900 number, since CBS couldn’t have cared less about their opinions.)

With that said, I would rather see FOX broadcast dead air than ever inflict “Two Dollar Beer” upon the unsuspecting public.

Using Australia as an example, Australia already has to spend millions on Australian drama to meet the local law of having local drama quota points. If these aren’t met, the channel is in trouble. I can hardly see them forking out more money than they need to on uncertain drama as it is.

Not to mention it is far cheaper for overseas networks to purchase episodes once they know the programme is a hit. Channel 7 is already regretting purchasing Flash Forward which has lost over a third of its viewers.

It might work with American networks, but as people can see for themselves the track record is hardly stellar.

The best way to move forward would be to do what Fox did with Glee, air one pilot and if it is met with success produce a series at a later date. I realise Knight Rider tried this, but that was hardly a new concept and probably only succeeded on the nostalgia factor.

I mean, NBC for instance, is owned by GE; they’re happy to drive their news into the ground if this “green” initiative will mean they get to make wind turbines. And the biased coverage really shows.

Are the two Fox units actually related?

Personally I still think pilots are the way to go as they can be pretty spectacular (Lost, FlashForward). To cut losses on pilots that aren’t picked up, maybe networks could package all of them into a DVD which could then be sold. Not only would the networks be able to make a little extra revenue but tv fans would benefit by possibly stumbling across some gems (Virtuality).

The only problem is that because of the rights being sold for video release, the box set of season one of Twin Peaks does not contain the pilot episode.

And the book analogy doesn’t really work. I’m not sure how many scripts you’ve read, but trying to imagine how they will end up on screen isn’t an exact science. I’m sure you’ve read books that you loved that were turned into movies you hated. It’s the same thing, and it’s not just down to casting. Some things just don’t work on screen the way they did on paper.

However, plenty of 5+ year old shows run on cable, and if an anthology of horror/supernatural can work with Twilight Zone’s various incarnations, perhaps these pilots could be categorized by genre. Maybe fill the rest of the necessary time with people talking about the project and where it would have gone and that would still be something to sell and even cheaper than a two hour movie. There have to be at least enough leftover pilots for Romance, Comedy, Action, etc. to do anthologies cheaply for some cable network somewhere.

Regarding the thread’s topic though, I can tell whether I like a book without paying people to act it out. I don’t see why a script would be so different except that it would weed mistakes out from the casting department.

Yes, pilots are expensive and most of them end up being a complete waste of money, but without them, it’s impossible to know what you’re really going to get. I wonder if there’s some way to make money off of pilots that aren’t picked up. It would be interesting to see a studio try to make a two hour movie for a pilot, which can then be released on DVD if/when not picked up. Have two different ending scenes, one for if it gets picked up, one for it if doesn’t. It would cost more initially, but maybe they would be able to make enough money back to make it worth it?