NBC Grounds All Pilots...

[clockwork]

NBC has promised to axe the glitzy pilots of new series traditionally produced at great expense by US broadcasters, saving around $50m a year in the process.

Days after announcing plans to end another of the US television industry's cherished traditions by pulling the plug on annual "upfronts", presentations to advertisers, the NBC Universal chief executive, Jeff Zucker, said the ongoing US writers' strike had made the network re-examine its attitude to pilots as well.

He said the cost of a typical pilot, many of which are never made into a full series, had soared from $3m to $7m in three years. Because that bore no relation to the eventual cost of a standard episode and was an increasingly poor indication as to its eventual success, Zucker added that they were becoming redundant.

Every year, US producers pull out all the stops to produce pilots for series they hope will be picked up by broadcasters.The original article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jan/22/television3?gusrc=rss&feed=media) which references the writers' strike and Zucker's opinions on the future of scripted TV.

The same story, as reported on Mediaweek (http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/recent_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003700545&imw=Y) and NYT (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/23/business/media/23pilots.html?_r=1&oref=slogin)

[icerose]

So what does this mean for us writers and for the series themselves for that matter? What is the alternative to pilots?

[clockwork]

Ordinarily, during pilot season, NBC buys and produces (say) fifteen pilots. These are one hour shows that are then audience-researched in an attempt to determine which will be the most popular. The ones that make it through (say 6) are then given an initial run of thirteen episodes.

This year, NBC will still read through pilot scripts but they will skip the piloting production process and instead green-light the 6 shows they believe will do best, with an initial run of 13 or however many episodes. It means they don't end up with 9 multi-million dollar pilots that are dead in the water and will never be shown.

I don't know the actual numbers of shows considered:shows produced so the numbers above are for illustrative purposes only.

I'm not sure how it will affect their process of working with writers. I'm not knowledgeable enough about that industry to guess but perhaps someone else will have a clearer idea.

[icerose]

It makes sense business wise. I'm surprised those big time execs did that in the first place.

[Plot Device]

One industry veteran was saying (about five months ago) that in her experience, it a network typically has to crank out about a dozen misses before it can achieve one hit. It's a lottery of sorts.

If her assessment of the overall process is correct, then that means with this new, conservative, streamlined process, they are in effect reducing the base number for their initial roll of the dice, and thus also reducing the number of potential hits they can eek out of each crap shoot.


Whoever will be giving these rare greenlights to these few lucky pilots had better be ... right.

[nmstevens]

One industry veteran was saying (about five months ago) that in her experience, it a network typically has to crank out about a dozen misses before it can achieve one hit. It's a lottery of sorts.

If her assessment of the overall process is correct, then that means with this new, conservative, streamlined process, they are in effect reducing the base number for their initial roll of the dice, and thus also reducing the number of potential hits they can eek out of each crap shoot.


Whoever will be giving these rare greenlights to these few lucky pilots had better be ... right.


I'm reminded of an anecdote -- which I'm afraid I'm going to have to paraphrase because I don't really recall the details.

A major studio had just been acquired by a major overseas company and the studio heads had gone half way around the world to explain how they did business -- how the movie business worked.

And they were explaining, "In an average year, we make thirty movies. Out of those thirty, we predict that five of them are going to be extremely successful -- huge hits. And we exect that around five of them will be disasters -- complete failures and they won't even make back the cost of production. And we expect that around twenty of them will be moderately successful."

And one of the Big Executives who'd just bought the company raises his and says, "Excuse me but -- why don't we just not make those five?"

If the networks actually had the ability to read a script and pick a hit -- why does anyone imagine that they wouldn't have been doing that all along? Why wouldn't they have read the scripts and only picked hits to turn into those expensive pilots? Why wouldn't every show turned into a pilot go on to become a successful series?

It's as if a casting director says -- it's just too expensive to do screen tests -- that hasn't been giving us good results, anyway. So, instead, we're getting rid of screen tests and we're just going to look at actors' resumes and head shots and cast that way.

And the ellimination that step is going to improve the end result how?

This is what's known as "false-savings" -- because in the particular financial quarter where they would be spending a lot of money on pilots, they won't be, and so their financial picture will look a lot better -- in that quarter.

But since the process is likely to lead to a worse crop of new shows, since it will mean committing to shows that haven't been put in front of an audience in the form of a pilot, it probably will lead to fewer successful new shows -- which is the whole point of the process -- so in the long run, it will cost them money, because it will cost them viewers.

NMS

[Plot Device]

So NBC is now about to slit their own throats ... all because of the all those beancounters up on the eleventh floor who don't know jack-shyte about Story.

ABC and CBS are rejoicing.

[icerose]

Eh, yeah I can see that. It is hard to judge an audience from reading the words in your corner office.

[MrWrite]

And even when they get a hit show it doesn't matter because they will probably pull the plug on it anyway as they did with Journeyman which in my opinion was the best series by far.

[LIVIN]

And even when they get a hit show it doesn't matter because they will probably pull the plug on it anyway as they did with Journeyman which in my opinion was the best series by far.

Did they pull the plug on Journeyman? :rant:

I just assumed it disappeared into the writing strike oblivion.

[MrWrite]

Yeah sadly the best tv show in years has been canned. They have no clue do they?

[clockwork]

I found this from Kevin Falls on NBC's Journeyman website--

Well, this is the message I didn't want to post. I'm sure as most of you know by now, Journeyman will likely not be getting a back nine order. Rather than dwell on the reasons behind this decision, my fellow Executive Producer, the great Alex Graves and myself would rather remind people that our last two episodes will air next Monday night, December 17 th at 10 PM and Wednesday December 19th at 10 PM. These two episodes will provide some answers, plenty of speculation, a few surprises and hopefully some satisfying closure. They are, I promise you, very entertaining.

Rest of the message here (http://blog.nbc.com/journeyman/).

Also found this interesting article posted just recently about the termination of dozens of contracts between producers, writers and the TV studios - due to the strike, of course.

The force majeure ax swung wide Monday as four TV studios -- CBS Paramount Network TV, Universal Media Studios, 20th Century Fox Television and Warner Bros. TV -- tore up dozens of overall deals.

All four issued similarly worded statements blaming the writers strike for the terminations, which are expected to save the studios tens of millions of dollars. But none came close to the nearly 30 overall deals axed at ABC Studios on Friday. CBS Par and 20th TV each dropped half that number. UMS and WBTV stayed in the single digits, with WBTV's termination tally said to be less than five deals. Like ABC Studios, CBS Par, UMS, 20th TV and WBTV mostly went after writers, producers and directors with no active projects.

Apparently it's a "force majeure" which appears to be the TV studio's version of habeas corpus.

Rest of the article here (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i1f048e311710f2fb986d4b8abebcc401).

[ricetalks]

When a studio produces 30 pilots and the majority fail, it's not like they produced them thinking they were going to fail. They seriously believed each and every one of them had the potential to be a major hit with an audience. If they had the ability to pick out a decent idea in the first place, that's the way they would have done business all along. So what will change? In the long run, not much.