"Do you know what is the business model in the entertainment industry?" Make 10 shows and hope that one of them works, "huffed Donaghy (played by Alec Baldwin) to the exasperated producer Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) in a recent episode." "We produce more failures that pilot the French air force."
Many executives of flesh and blood share similar doubts about season pilot, which, after more than half a century, remains a sacred but extravagant of the TV biz custom.
In January of each season, scripts for dozens of drivers of prospective series are approved for production by the five broadcast networks. Each is bucking for a mooring on the range of the next season. Then, in the week "upfront" in mid-May, the frantic process is resolved when networks announce their schedules.
Only a handful of new shows win a slot. The rest becoming landfill.
This year, about 90 pilots for shows by script are in the running for a home network.
Among them are period shows such as "Pan Am," a glamorous SOAP on the hostesses of the airline in the middle of the 1960s and "poe", a whodunit set in the mid-1840s with Edgar Allan Poe as a writer-detective (both for ABC), and, for NBC, a melodrama set in Chicago at the Playboy Club during the golden age of sexual liberation in the 1960s.
There's of fabrications: "Charlie's Angels" (ABC) and "wonder woman" (nbc). And a version Americanized British police hit "Prime Suspect" (NBC), one of five imports.
Among the many candidates series supernatural, CW "awakening" centers on two sisters who are on the sides of a zombie uprising.
The series veteran Jimmy Smits could be back as a detective ("Metro," NBC). "Home improvement" Star Tim Allen seeks a return to sitcom on ABC still stirring on malehood ("the last days of Man"). Kiefer Sutherland could return as a father with an autistic son who can predict the future ("Touch," Fox). And unique "Buffy" star Sarah Michelle Geller would be a woman fugitive seeking refuge per capita the identity of her sister's twin, with unpredictable results ("Ringer," CBS).
Or maybe none of these shows will get a wink of eye network. Until you get too enthusiastic to one of them, don't forget that the vast majority of the drivers will go invisible and hiding from the public for which they were intended.
"The interesting thing about season pilot is, how has no meaning.".
It is not imaginary exec Jack Donaghy talking. "This is the real life, screenwriter and producer, Peter Tolan, whose past credits include"Larry sanders Show,"" job ", the film"Analyze this"and"analyze that"and the drama of firefighters of Denis Leary"rescue Me"(whose last episodes will be broadcast on FX this summer).
All stages of season pilot "have some aspects of madness for it", Tolan says with wonder barely disguised. And he should know. This go-around, it has not one, but two drivers in the running.
Take the casting process, which, for all of these drivers is simultaneously.
"You find you're quite desperate to hire some people, but all four at once or five different performances would like, too," says Tolan.
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