Television pilot

For a list of television episodes titled "Pilot", see Pilot (television episode).

A "television pilot" (also known as a "pilot", "pilot episode", and "series premiere") is a standalone episode of a television series that is used to sell the show to a television network. At the time of its creation, the pilot is meant to be the testing ground to gauge if a series will be successful, and is therefore a test episode of an intended television series. It is an early step in the development of a television series, much like pilot lights or pilot studies serve as precursors to the start of larger activity, or pilot holes prepare the way for larger holes. Television networks use pilots to discover whether an entertaining concept can be successfully realized. After seeing this sample of the proposed product, networks will then determine whether the expense of additional episodes is justified. They are best thought of as prototypes of the show that is to follow, because elements often change from pilot to series. Variety estimates that only a little over a quarter of all pilots made for American television proceed to the series stage, although the figure may be even lower.

Most pilots are never publicly screened if they fail to sell a series. If a series eventuates, pilots are usually – but not always – broadcast as the introductory episode of the series.

Pilot season

Each summer, the major American broadcast television networks –including ABC, CBS, The CW, Fox, and NBC –receive about 500 brief elevator pitches for new shows from writers and producers. That fall, each network requests scripts for about 70 pitches and, the following January, orders about 20 pilot episodes. Actors come to Los Angeles from elsewhere in the United States and around the world to audition for them. By spring, actors are cast and production crews assembled to produce the pilots.

Casting is a lengthy and very competitive process. For the 1994 pilot of Friends, casting director Ellie Kanner reviewed more than 1,000 actors' head shots for each of the six main roles. She summoned 75 actors for each role to audition, then chose some to audition again for the show's creators. Of this group, the creators chose some to audition again for Warner Bros. Television executives, who chose the final group of a few actors to audition for NBC executives; as they decide whether to purchase a pilot, network executives generally have ultimate authority over casting. Since the networks work on the same shared schedule, directors, actors, and others must choose the best pilot to work for with the hopes that the network will choose it. If it is not chosen, they have wasted their time and money and may have missed out on better career opportunities.

Once they have been produced, the pilots are presented to studio and network executives, and in some cases to test audiences; at this point, each pilot receives various degrees of feedback and is gauged on their potential to advance from one pilot to a full-fledged series. Using this feedback, and factoring in the current status and future potential of their existing series, each network chooses about 4 to 8 pilots for series status. The new series are then presented at the networks' annual upfronts in May, where they are added to network schedules for the following season (either for a fall or "mid-season" winter debut) and at the upfront presentation the shows are shown to potential advertisers and the networks sell the majority of the advertising for their new pilots. The survival odds for these new series are low, as typically only one or two of them survive for more than one season.

Types of pilot

Standard pilot

Production

If a network isn't totally sold on a potential series' premise but still wants to see its on-screen execution, and since a single pilot can be expensive to produce, a pilot presentation may be ordered. Depending on the potential series' nature, a pilot presentation is a one-day shoot that, when edited together, gives a general idea of the look and feel of the proposed show. Presentations are usually between seven to ten minutes, however, these pilot-presentations will not be shown on the air unless more material is subsequently added to them to make them at least 22 or 45 minutes in length, the actual duration of a nominally "30 minute" or "60 minute" television program (taking into account television commercials). Occasionally, more than one pilot is commissioned for a particular proposed television series to evaluate what the show would be like with modifications. Star Trek and All in the Family are famous examples of this presentation-to-pilot-to-series situation.

An example of change between the making of a pilot and the making of a series is To Tell the Truth in 1956. The show's original title at pilot was Nothing But the Truth and was hosted by Mike Wallace; by the time it became a series, the title was changed and Bud Collyer was tapped as host.

Broadcast

Pilots usually run as the first episode of the series, and more often than not are used to introduce the characters and their world to the viewer. However, the post-pilot series may become so different that it would not make sense for the pilot to be aired. In this case, the pilot (or portions of it) is often re-shot, recast, or rewritten to fit the rest of the series. The pilot for Gilligan's Island, for instance, showed the castaways becoming stranded on the island. However, three roles were recast before going to series, with the characters either modified or completely altered to the point where the pilot could no longer be used as a regular episode. As a result, CBS aired Gilligan's second produced episode, which had the characters already stranded on the island, first; the story from the pilot was largely reworked into a flashback episode which aired later (with several key scenes re-shot). Even Gilligan's theme song, which was originally done as a calypso number, was rewritten and recomposed to be completely different. Another example was in the original Star Trek where most of the footage of the original pilot, "The Cage," was incorporated into the acclaimed two part episode, "The Menagerie," with the story justification that it depicted events that happened several years earlier. Conversely, the second pilot for Star Trek, "Where No Man Has Gone Before", aired as the third episode of the show's first season, even though it included some casting and costuming differences that set it apart from the preceding episodes (enough that a literary work based on one of its spin-offs would actually place the episode in a parallel universe).

Other times, a made-for-TV-movie is filmed as the pilot, but because of actors not being available, the series intro is reshot and the first reshot episode is considered the pilot. The Cagney and Lacey original movie had Loretta Swit (M*A*S*H), as Chris Cagney, but when she could not get out of her contract, they reshot it with Meg Foster, who after the first season was replaced with Sharon Gless; Therefore, the original movie is not considered a pilot, and is not included in the series collections. In some cases, this does not hamper broadcast, such as Jackie Cooper playing the role of Walter Carlson in the TV movie pilot of the 1975 series The Invisible Man, but replaced by Craig Stevens for the remainder of the series; the pilot is still considered part of the series and released to DVD as such.

Demos

Since the mid-1990s, television producers and networks have increasingly used presentation tapes called "demos" in lieu of full-length pilots. These demos tend to be substantially shorter than a standard episode, and make limited use of original sets and post-production elements. The idea is merely to showcase the cast and the writing. These types of pilots are rarely broadcast, if ever, although the material is sometimes partially retrofitted onto a future episode of the resulting series. A demo prepared at an early stage, normally using amateur equipment, is also known as a sizzle script.

Some series sold using demos:

• One Tree Hill
• Saul of the Mole Men
• Knowing Me, Knowing You... with Alan Partridge
• Charmed
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• King of the Hill
• 101 Dalmatians: The Series
• Recess (TV series)
• Pepper Ann
• PB&J Otter
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
• Suits
• MAD
• Batman: The Animated Series

The "demo" episode is not a new concept, as The Munsters was sold on the basis of a 13-minute demo episode in 1964, while Who's Afraid of Diana Prince? in the late 1960s attempted without success to launch a comedic Wonder Woman series.

Backdoor pilots

A backdoor pilot is defined by Variety as a "pilot episode filmed as a standalone movie so it can be broadcast if not picked up as a series." It is distinguished from a simple pilot in that it has a dual purpose: It has an inherent commercial value of its own while also being, as Alex Epstein describes it, "proof of concept for the show, that's made to see if the series is worth bankrolling."

This definition also includes episodes of one show introducing a spin-off. Such "backdoor pilots" most commonly focus on an existing character from the parent series who is planned for their own spinoff show — for example, when Denise (Lisa Bonet), an established character on The Cosby Show, was planned to be spun off to A Different World, a Cosby Show episode was devoted to Denise traveling to visit the college which would become the new show's setting, and meeting some of the new show's supporting characters.

In other cases, however, an episode of the parent show may also focus on one or more guest characters who have not previously appeared in the show; for example, the backdoor pilot for the television sitcom Empty Nest was an episode of The Golden Girls, which relegated that show's regular stars to supporting characters in an episode devoted to new characters who were introduced as their neighbors. Feedback on the episode resulted in Empty Nest being extensively reworked before its debut; while the "living next to the Golden Girls" setting was retained, the series ended up featuring characters different from those in the original Golden Girls episode.

Not all backdoor pilots lead to a series. In 1968, the Star Trek episode "Assignment: Earth" was intended as the pilot for a spin-off of the same name, featuring an alien-bred superhuman sent to watch over Earth in the 1960s; while the series was not picked up, its characters have appeared in numerous non-canon Trek productions set in the 20th century. The series finale of One Day at a Time in May 1984 was supposed to serve as a backdoor pilot to a spin-off featuring Pat Harrington, Jr.'s "Dwayne Schneider" character in a new setting,^{[citation needed]} but the network ultimately passed on the potential series. An example from an animated series would be in The Fairly OddParents episode "Crash Nebula" which was used as a backdoor pilot for a series called Crash Nebula, that was never produced. In a more recent example (June 2010), Lifetime was pursuing a spinoff procedural drama for Army Wives featuring Brigid Brannagh's character, police officer Pamela Moran. The fourth season episode "Murder in Charleston" was intended to serve as a backdoor pilot for the proposed spin-off. The episode sees Moran teaming up with an Atlanta-based detective on a murder that is related to a case she has been working on for the past three years. At the end of the episode, the detective encourages Moran to take a detective's exam, and to look for her if she is in Atlanta. In September 2010, however, Lifetime declined to pick up the project for a series. The Gossip Girl episode "Valley Girls" was supposed to be a backdoor pilot for a prequel spin-off series starring Brittany Snow as a young Lily van der Woodsen; the series was to be set in the 1980s. However, the show was not picked up.

A historically important venue for backdoor pilots has been the anthology series. They have variously been used as a place to show work still being actively considered for pickup, and as a venue for completed work already rejected by the network. With the decline of anthology series, backdoor pilots have increasingly been seen as episodes of existing series, one-off television movies, and mini-series. As backdoor pilots have either failed to sell or are awaiting audience reception from its one-time broadcast, networks will not advertise them as pilots, only promoting them as a "special" or "movie". It is thus often unclear to initial viewers of backdoor pilots that they are seeing a pilot of any kind, unless they have been privy to knowledgeable media coverage of the piece.

Unintentional pilots

While, as listed above, there are many telemovies or episodes within series intended as pilots, there are often telemovies or episodes within other series which are so popular that they inspire later TV series. Popular examples are South Park, which began as a duo of shorts its creators made at college, and Family Guy, which began life as a short, entitled The Life of Larry. A two-part episode of The Six Million Dollar Man introduced the character of Jaime Sommers who, despite dying in the story, was popular enough to narratively return to life and a spinoff series, The Bionic Woman, was commissioned. The 2006 Doctor Who episode School Reunion was intended as a one-off reunion appearance by Sarah Jane Smith, but ended up leading to a spin-off series, The Sarah Jane Adventures.

Put pilot

A put pilot is a pilot that the network has agreed to air. If the network does not air the pilot episode, the network will owe substantial monetary penalties to the studio. Generally, this guarantees that the pilot will be picked up by the network.

The Groovenians was a Put Pilot as it aired on Cartoon Network, but never got picked up.

Unsold pilot

Unsold television pilots are pilots developed by a company that is unable to sell it to a network for showing.

As distinguished from "first episode"

A pilot episode is generally the first episode of a new show, shown to the heads of the studio to whom it is marketed.

The television industry uses the term differently from most viewers. Viewers frequently consider the first episode available for their viewing to be the pilot. They therefore assume that the first episode broadcast is also the episode that sold the series to the network. This is not always true. For instance, the episode "Invasion of the Bane" was not a pilot for The Sarah Jane Adventures because the BBC had committed to the first season before seeing any filmed content—yet it is routinely referred to as a pilot.

Sometimes, too, viewers will assign the word "pilot" to a work that represented the first appearances of characters and situations later employed by a series—even if the work was not initially intended as a pilot for the series. A good example of this is "Love and the Television Set" (later retitled "Love and the Happy Days" for syndication), an episode of Love, American Style which featured a version of the Cunningham family. It was in fact a failed pilot for the proposed 1972 series New Family in Town, not a successful pilot for 1974's Happy Days. So firmly embedded is the notion of it as a Happy Days pilot, however, that even series actress Erin Moran views it as such, as well as its creator, Garry Marshall.

On other occasions, the pilot is never broadcast on television at all. Viewers of Temple Houston, for example, would likely have considered "The Twisted Rope" its pilot because "The Man from Galveston" was only publicly exhibited in cinemas four months later. Even then, "The Man from Galveston" had an almost completely different cast, and its main character was renamed to avoid confusion with the then-ongoing series.

See also

• Channel 101 and Channel 101 NY, venues for the public exhibition of demos

External links

• NYTimes: No Smooth Ride on TV Networks’ Road to Diversity (2009)
• Television Obscurities - Unsold Pilots on Television, 1956-1966
• Television Obscurities - Unsold Pilots on Television, 1967-1989