I think the economic analysis of this is incomplete.
There is more to the cost of airing a pilot than just the production cost of the pilot, and this even assumes the network has agreed to assume the cost of that.
There is the cost of lining up advertisers for the commercial breaks during, before, and after the pilot.
There is the displacement of the show(s) that would've otherwise filled the time-slot the pilot occupies.
There is the opportunity cost of the advertisers you might have lined up if you hadn't punted the incumbent for the pilot.
The more pilots you elect to air, the more often you have to make these trade-offs. If there are a sufficient number of incumbents that can be thoughtlessly traded for pilots like this, I'd wonder about the general program management of the network, and how long they've been allowing things to stagnate.
Even if you just sacrificed a week, that is a huge amount of potential revenue to sacrifice for the sake of picking the "right" set of shows.
And, even if all the economics for airing every pilot works out, it still doesn't guarantee much. You are still gathering data based on what people say they might want to watch based on a snapshot. I can't imagine this is going to be particularly predictive of a series's performance. This seems similar to someone taking a vote on whether a movie sequel ought to be produced from an audience who had just seen the original; I can see far more people asking for that many Scary Movie sequels as actually went to see them.
Most of the lack of space and time to show these would be solved by offering them for free via On Demand; or on YouTube and hulu, both of which have advertising platforms that would consider this remnant ad inventory.
Huh? Pilots are already not necessarily shown to the general public via broadcast television. Making them more easily available via the internet can only serve to increase their exposure. No one is requiring anyone to watch these like "homework", just like consuming any possible entertainment isn't "homework". If they are available via On Demand for free, then people can watch them just like they watch other shows.
"What if a network devoted one week, maybe in early summertime, to airing all its pilots for the fall season, with viewers voting on their favorites? You turn your otherwise failed pilots into content for a weeklong American Idol-style competition"
I read all three of the paragraphs in the "article". Note that my original response was in the context of azanar's comment, about the economics of doing what is suggested in the OP.
There'd be a hell of a lot more petitions to "Bring back x!"
Every pilot, now matter how ridiculously niche, would attract some grouping of die-hards creating petitions, fan-fiction, costumes and more.
'Please reconsider your decision to cancel Large-Nostril Boris, an excellent character representing all of us with above-average nasal volume and providing hope to everyone around the world. Sign on if you agree, or read my Boris fan-fic here!'
You say that like it's a bad thing, but couldn't you then determine the profitable niche segments and run with those? It's getting cheaper and cheaper to make a show. And distribution isn't limited to TV channels - online, DVD... That fits pretty well into the overall trend of the internet resulting in deep specialisation.
just throw them all on Hulu and collect direct metrics. why on earth would you have people vote or rely on Nielsen? each view is a vote, and there is no limit of time-slots on Hulu
I think it is a far more valid statement to say that demographics who use Hulu are a subset of the demographics advertisers will pay to interrupt with their message, probably enough of a subset that some advertisers just won't bother to advertise as at all.
However, targeting certain demographics by way of traditional advertising, like paying to interrupt everyone watching a broadcast television station, can suck as bad or worse, depending on the demographic.
As far as I can think of, it comes down to a couple of decisions: how much do you believe the medium, and not just the content, is going to affect the number of hits you get; and, how much is the feedback data you gather from your medium going to help your advertising campaign become more successful. There may be fewer people on Hulu, but your television does not provide a "thumbs-up" button at a per advertisement granularity.
So, while I think that the metrics would be bogus for trying to get a representative sample of a collective demographic who might watch motion video on any medium, I also don't think there is no worthwhile demographic information to be gleaned from posting one's media content on Hulu. It feels like a game of tradeoffs, and one you can probably only make an informed decision on by doing test runs, and seeing what data comes back.
Hopefully, this doesn't seem too pedantic; I just thought your assertion was too broad.
Advertisers do pay to reach demographics on Hulu - just look at all the advertisement breaks in videos on Hulu. The problem is that there is no distinction between Hulu users who also watch Television and Hulu users who do not watch television; this compounds the problem of not knowing if the Hulu users who watch Television are a sufficiently representative sample of Television viewers to predict whether a show would succeed.
Which is probably what you meant, but your phrasing was (to me) a bit off.
The other problem is that people that watch shows online might not even consider watching the same show on television even if they're avid TV viewers. For example people who flock to "OMG this pilot is hilarious!!!" links on social media when bored probably aren't going to watch the series during prime time
It's not far from the reasons you might choose to do internal betas and focus tests instead of test marketing every revision and variant you come up with from concept to product.
If pilots were all released on HULU, then a season filled with middling to poor pilots would be reviewed as such. And then no matter how much a studio might try to improve the best of the lot, they'd have those negative reviews dragging down performance of the ultimate product.
If pilot feedback is reasonably controlled, the studios have the option of polishing an almost-there concept (or more cynically: the best turd of the bunch) and not having reviews of its dodgy pilot dragging down performance of the final show.
This also means you can't manipulate the results by dumping shows in awkward time slots (interpreted another way, you avoid having to match each show to a time slot when its potential audience is likely to see it).
They indicate what people liked enough to, say, link on their website and get other people to watch. An inexact method, but then, so is like/dislike panels.
They can also measure things such as: what percentage of people decided to stop watching halfway through.
the class of people who filter pilots will resist strongly.
BTW this would work even better if there was a futures market in the success of all these trial pilots. one person = one vote is a fairly primitive and inefficient system.
"one person = one vote is a fairly primitive and inefficient system."
In this case, it is much more efficient than letting the viewers vote on the show. The handful of executives make their vote based on long-range criteria. They want a show that has staying power, is attractive to both advertisers and viewers, and fits in with the rest of their lineup.
The viewers aren't as savvy. Their vote will be based on how much they like a single episode. Viewers only see one side, they don't care about how much money the network can make from advertising.
The people picking the shows should be the people who can balance the needs of the viewers with those of the network. Those people are the executives.
instead of a counter-point, you're making a completely different point. the point here is prediction. networks want to be able to predict which shows will do well so they can draw advertising dollars. to do this they hire people whom they think will be able to make this prediction. It is unlikely, however, that these people can do better than a prediction market.
The executives also have experience judging how much work a pilot needs to become viable--if a pilot is pretty boring in its present state but has a lot of promise, they can think of things to change to make it better.
Of course, just as often as not, this is how executives ruin otherwise promising shows.
Years ago I once participated in a focus group for some early sitcom pilots. The shows had recognizable actors, but were really rough -- in production values, in line delivery and pacing, etc.
I never saw the shows we watched become actual series -- but if they had, the pilots would have had to have been refilmed to reach broadcast quality. So that might prove a barrier to opening up the unaired pilots -- while they're called 'pilots', they're not yet what audiences expect of a 'series premiere'.
Even if they've got potential, the participants might be embarrassed to have their rough form available to the public. Also, it might prove harder to tinker with the premise once fans develop -- swapping an actor or changing a character could generate an online backlash before episode one.
> What if a network devoted one week, maybe in early summertime, to airing all its pilots for the fall season
How dinosaurish. Flippin put them all online. Youtube will pick up hosting bill and even track how often they are viewed for you. I'm assuming air time is too valuable and limited to waste is why a "handful of TV executives" send 2/3rds of piolets to /dev/null
I for one would love this. Even if they just did it online for people to watch. It would provide a great way to get feedback on shows and would just lead to the networks making more money. It amazes me how shows like Burn Notice end up on TNT because network execs didn't think that it would be a good show.
Tell you what I'd like better - What if TV networks made public the scripts etc for shows that have been canceled. Nothing worse than getting involved in a series only to have it canceled at the end of the season (or prior). It's be great to be able to see what was planned and where the story was headed
I don't think that most canceled shows have many unproduced scripts (The Critic is one exception). Even if the writers know where the story was going
a) getting an explanation that's just a few paragraphs isn't as satisfying as actually seeing the conclusion.
b) some writers may not want to let people know what they had in store (Joss Whedon with Firefly for instance) and the ones that are willing to reveal what was planned are already doing that for their canceled shows.
A similar idea occurred to me with movies - a rejected scripts repository for unmade films would be interesting for the fanatics and occasionally might uncover a gem.
You might end up with a lot of garbage though.
I think you could take a step beyond this, and use the performance of those pilots to judge whether or not to continue borderline shows like Law & Order or to dump them in favor of a promising pilot.
There is more to the cost of airing a pilot than just the production cost of the pilot, and this even assumes the network has agreed to assume the cost of that.
There is the cost of lining up advertisers for the commercial breaks during, before, and after the pilot.
There is the displacement of the show(s) that would've otherwise filled the time-slot the pilot occupies.
There is the opportunity cost of the advertisers you might have lined up if you hadn't punted the incumbent for the pilot.
The more pilots you elect to air, the more often you have to make these trade-offs. If there are a sufficient number of incumbents that can be thoughtlessly traded for pilots like this, I'd wonder about the general program management of the network, and how long they've been allowing things to stagnate.
Even if you just sacrificed a week, that is a huge amount of potential revenue to sacrifice for the sake of picking the "right" set of shows.
And, even if all the economics for airing every pilot works out, it still doesn't guarantee much. You are still gathering data based on what people say they might want to watch based on a snapshot. I can't imagine this is going to be particularly predictive of a series's performance. This seems similar to someone taking a vote on whether a movie sequel ought to be produced from an audience who had just seen the original; I can see far more people asking for that many Scary Movie sequels as actually went to see them.