WHEN THE television networks unveiled their new fall lineups last week, one thing became instantly clear: Programmers are about to try something they've never tried before.
Yes, I know that assertion practically writes its own punch line. But seriously, the 2008-09 season is going to be experimental in a way the caution-bound TV industry has never before seen.
That's because for the first time, because of the writers strike and changing attitudes among the network brass, several high-profile new series, such as NBC's "Kath & Kim" and Fox's "Dollhouse," landed on the schedules without a single frame of film having been shot as a pilot episode. Other shows made the cut after executives screened stripped-down "presentations" rather than completed pilots. The networks will be flying, if you will, even more blindly than usual.
This is a noteworthy shift, one that can tell us a lot about where the TV business stands these days.
For decades, pilots have been the chief instruments executives use to assess whether a writer-producer's concept can actually fly as a series. Among other things, this kind of development gives jittery programmers a fig leaf, something supposedly solid beyond their own guts ("I don't know why that series bombed -- test audiences loved the pilot!"). Is the process fail safe? Hardly. If it were, flop TV shows would not exist. Great pilots do not, alas, invariably lead to great series. But pilots have been like internal-combustion engines or barrel-loaded muskets -- the best bad idea until a better idea came along.
Not this year. Three NBC series -- the comedy "Kath & Kim" and the dramas "My Own Worst Enemy" and "The Philanthropist" -- were ordered straight to series with no pilot. Writer-producer Joss Whedon of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" fame bypassed the pilot process in winning a midseason 13-episode order from Fox for "Dollhouse," his latest sci-fi drama. The CW's Tuesday drama "90210," an update on the old Aaron Spelling soap, likewise got the nod even though nothing has been shot (the network says it will make a full pilot this summer, although a spokesman said "90210" is on the schedule no matter what).
And other series received thumbs-ups after executives screened trimmed-down presentations instead of full pilots, such as CBS' midseason mystery "Harper's Island" (executives saw only a "cold open" that set up the show plus a brief trailer, about 15 minutes in total) and CW's teen soap "Surviving the Filthy Rich."
