Network fear: the Net as a copilot

THE Internet is giving Hollywood a nervous breakdown.

Way, way back in prehistory -- let's say, 2004 -- if you made a TV pilot and the network didn't pick it up, the judge's decision was final.

But now you have a savior, an ally, a friend with millions of other friends. You have YouTube.

Alex Gregory and Peter Huyck are smart young TV writers with an impeccable resume, their credits including "King of the Hill," "Frasier" and "The Larry Sanders Show." (Gregory is also a cartoonist for the New Yorker.) With the influential backing of Jon Stewart's production company, they sold a pilot to Comedy Central called "Three Strikes." It's about a bunch of vagabond baseball players who, having been kicked out of the majors for various offenses -- from steroid use on up -- are trying to keep their dream alive playing for a backwater minor-league team in Fresno.

The pilot seems right in Comedy Central's strike zone, combining affectionate satire with raunchy escapades -- one highlight is a sequence in which the players humor their do-gooder team owner by taking a group of blind kids on a boat trip, all the while engaging in shenanigans with some prostitutes stashed below deck. But the network gave the show a thumbs down in February.

Did Comedy Central blow the call? See for yourself. The entire pilot, in three segments, was posted on YouTube several weeks ago. (To watch, go to YouTube and type in "Three Strikes.") Whether it is still there after this column appears is another issue, since Viacom, which owns Comedy Central, is suing YouTube's parent company and has pulled all its shows from the site.

If I were a network programmer today, I'd be popping Nexium left and right. Thanks to the Web, TV fans can now make their own judgments about whether a network chief's decision to ax a show was a smart move or sheer idiocy. Gregory and Huyck have no harsh words for Comedy Central -- "The whole process was absolutely great," says Huyck, "until the show got killed." But they are fascinated by the game-changing nature of the Internet, which can provide a second hearing for pilots that would have previously been consigned to the video graveyard.

"You can see why people find YouTube subversive," says Gregory. "If you were to put all the failed pilots up there and some of them became popular at a time when the shows the networks put on as series were failures, it would make them look terrible. In fact, it would make their jobs look superfluous. If you prove their taste wrong or incorrect, that's a pretty dangerous scenario."