Clearly, the writers strike has a lot to do with the current turn of events. By the time the three-month walkout ended on Feb. 12, networks simply didn't have enough time to develop material as thoroughly as usual before revealing their plans to advertisers in spring.
But pilots are also at the center of a broad philosophical debate within the TV industry. Some very important -- or at least, well-paid -- voices are beginning to wonder whether in an era of diminished audiences and ever-increasing paths of distribution, pilots have outlived their usefulness and simply become an expensive artifact of a bygone era.
As this column previously noted, NBC Universal boss Jeff Zucker caused a stir in the TV business this winter with a trade-show address that took aim at many of the industry's established practices. He unloaded heavily on the pilot process, which he criticized as wasteful and ineffective.
Zucker totaled up the depressing math: Last year the networks cumulatively spent more than $500 million developing new series and pilots. Eighty pilots were made. He reckoned that at most, eight of those led to series that would be likely to come back for a second season. "And of those eight, none could be considered a big success," he said. "Why not have the courage of our convictions and order series straight to air, just as we do now on the reality side?"
Zucker's rich surplus of self-confidence is a durable feature of his public persona, and his speech had a Moses-down-from-the-mountain quality that irritated many colleagues. ("He's a visionary, that guy," one studio executive remarked sarcastically when I mentioned Zucker's address.)
But NBC isn't the only place taking a second look at super-expensive development procedures. CBS has publicly stated that it's not necessary to spend heavily to get a sense of whether a show can work, and noted that it saved $70 million in the fourth quarter of last year alone through reduced pilot development costs.
The down-with-pilots movement exasperates other network chiefs, though. During his schedule presentation to advertisers in New York last week, ABC's Steve McPherson launched an impassioned defense of the pilot-based approach, calling it "the R&D of our business."
"If I was running a car company and I decided I was going to produce 700,000 cars from a sketch, just a concept, an idea and nothing more, with no prototype, no research, no additional strategy -- it makes no sense," McPherson told the crowd. "Shows like 'Lost' and 'Grey's Anatomy' wouldn't exist today without the development process."
