For the 1994 pilot of Friends, casting director Ellie Kanner reviewed more than 1,000 actors' head shots for each of the six main roles. Ĭasting is a lengthy and very competitive process. By spring, actors are cast and production crews assembled to produce the pilots.
Actors come to Los Angeles from within the area or elsewhere in the United States and around the world to audition for them. That fall, each network requests scripts for about 70 pitches and, the following January, orders about 20 pilot episodes. Pilot season Įach summer, the major American broadcast television networks – including ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, PBS, Univision, and Telemundo – receive about 500 brief elevator pitches each for new shows from writers and producers. Variety estimates that only a little over a quarter of all pilots made for American television proceed to the series stage. A pilot is best thought of as a prototype of the show that is to follow, because elements often change from pilot to series. Television networks use pilots to determine whether an entertaining concept can be successfully realized and whether the expense of additional episodes is justified. Its purpose is to introduce the characters to an audience before the creators decide on whether or not they intend to pursue a spin-off series with those characters. On some occasions, pilots that were not ordered to series may also be broadcast as a standalone television film or special.Ī " backdoor pilot" is an episode of an existing series that heavily features supporting characters or guest stars in previously unseen roles. Some series are commissioned straight-to-series without a pilot. It is, therefore, a test episode for the intended television series, an early step in the series development, much like pilot studies serve as precursors to the start of larger activity.Ī successful pilot may be used as the series premiere, the first aired episode of a new show, but sometimes a series' pilot may be aired as a later episode or never aired at all. A pilot is created to be a testing ground to gauge whether a series will be successful. For a list, see List of television episodes titled Pilot.Ī television pilot (also known as a pilot or a pilot episode and sometimes marketed as a tele-movie), in United Kingdom and United States television, is a standalone episode of a television series that is used to sell a show to a television network or other distributor.
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