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THE TELEVISION PILOT
“First and foremost, don’t try to create the next big hit show. Second, audiences come for a concept but they stay for the characters. Know that in today’s very crowded TV universe just about every idea has been pitched, tried or aired so it is more important than ever to be truly singular in both concept and execution to stand out and be noticed. And more than anything, create something from passion and not commerce. No one knows where the next hit is coming from but the shows that are hits all come from a place of a writer creating a world, a story and a character that they must write.” — Emmy Award winner Jonathan Littman, president, Jerry Bruckheimer Television and executive producer, CSI, CSI: NY, CSI: Miami, Hostages
WHY YOU SHOULD WRITE A PILOT
A TV pilot is one of the best things you can have in your writing portfolio. It’s a chance to really show off your creativity and what you’re made of as a writer. If it’s good, a pilot script can open doors for you. If it’s great it can get you hired. So, I would encourage you to sit down, think outside of the box and push yourself to come up with something new and innovative; something we haven’t seen before. Do yourself a favor: don’t just write another comedy about a dysfunctional family or another show about some cop — unless you can put an original spin on it. Like Dexter. He’s a blood spatter analyst in the Miami Metro Police Department…but unbeknownst to his colleagues he leads a double life as a serial killer. Dexter’s motives aren’t selfish; in fact they’re anything but. He wants to rid the world of those criminals who commit the most heinous and offensive crimes. Now that’s interesting. Interesting character, interesting premise. It’s a new, fresh take on a cop show. For your pilot to really stand out, you’ll have to come up with something just as ground-breaking and good. It will be fun…I promise.
Once your pilot is complete, I hope you will try every avenue available to you to get the show produced. But, I don’t want you to be disappointed if your pilot doesn’t get on the air. Most pilots — even those written by big name writers — don’t make it into production. And as a new writer just starting out, your chances of getting your show up and running are (I am sorry to tell you), even less. And there is a good reason for this.
In order to get a pilot off the ground, you must be a showrunner with years of experience and have an enormous track record of hit shows under your belt. It all comes back to the bottom line: television is a business. Think of it this way. Let’s say Coca-Cola has a job opening for president of the North American division. They get two applications. Candidate “A” has just graduated magna cum laude from the Wharton School of Business, and while enthusiastic, has never stepped foot inside a soft drink company. Candidate “B” graduated from Harvard Business School and has worked for 15 years as vice-president of production for PepsiCo. If you were CocaCola, which candidate would you hire to oversee your North American division? Of course you would go with Candidate “B” because he has considerably more experience, and so you would trust that he knows what he is doing and that he could move the company forward.
The same principle applies to television. With new shows, the pressure to succeed is tremendous. The cost of failure is astronomical. There is so much money to be made or lost that networks and studios simply can’t take a chance on unknowns. They need someone with experience. People who sell pilots are generally expected to run writing staffs. It’s hard to know how to run a writing staff when you’ve never even been on one.
“We look for originality and fresh voices. In the network game, however, we certainly have to look for writers who have a track record. It is not like a feature film because its success is tied to the exquisite execution of one 110-page screenplay. We need someone who we know can create and tell 100 of these stories and deliver them on schedule. We obviously look for ideas that have depth and growth potential so that they are worthy to stay on for several seasons.” — Steve Stark, president of production, Lionsgate Television
I know what you’re thinking. Two words: Lena Dunham. Yes, Lena has had a tremendously successful career thus far. But she worked hard and put herself out there with her short film, Tiny Furniture, which won best narrative feature at South By Southwest Music and Media Conference. She followed that with Girls, a bold comedy, which was different from anything else on television. That’s all wonderfully exciting, and I hope when you put yourself out there, it all goes equally well for you. But the cold, hard truth is most people aren’t Lena Dunham. She’s the exception to the rule. If you’re still not convinced, do yourself this favor. Make a list of 20 TV shows currently on the air. (And yes, make them shows that are at least in the top 50 as opposed to shows that are obscure.) Write down the name(s) that appear after the words “Created By.” Then go to IMDB.com, type in those names and see how many of those showrunners come back without having any credits. My guess is the answer will be zero. Please know that I am not telling you this to discourage you. Just the opposite, actually. More than anything, I want you to succeed. And I know from experience the best and fastest way to success is to be prepared. I applaud Lena’s quick rise to the top in this tough industry. However, what inevitably happens when news breaks of a person who has had a seemingly fairy tale–like ride to the top, is that other young writers start to believe that it’s easy. And then they don’t work as hard, which invariably leads to an even deeper disappointment because the expectations for smooth sailing were so high. The truth is, things that look easy rarely are.
So let’s first focus on getting you to write an outstanding pilot script. Remember, cream rises. If you do the work and do it well, you will ultimately be rewarded. To make you feel better, let me tell you why you actually may not want your pilot script to sell before you are experienced enough to shepherd it though the studios and networks and run the show and the writing staff. If you don’t have a proven track record, they will likely attach another writer who does have enough experience to be the showrunner. That person may or may not share your creative vision. Many writers — tongue in cheek — compare having pilots made to having a child. It’s not a bad analogy. The goal here is to create something of which you will be the primary caregiver and nurturer for many years down the road. It’s not something you want to put up for adoption or hand over to somebody else.
A good friend who was once an executive at a major production company often spoke about writers who really didn’t have the experience to run shows, yet somehow had garnered pilot deals. The result, she said, was almost always the same — both writer and show bombed. This same friend went on to be a very successful writer in her own right and was eventually offered pilot deals of her own. For a long time she turned them down because even after years of being a writer/producer on hit shows, she didn’t think she was quite ready for the day-to-day realities of showrunning. A lot of people think, “How stupid. How could someone turn down a deal on their own show and all of that money?” Actually she was being quite smart. Before stepping up to the plate, she wanted to be 100% certain that she could do the job and that she wouldn’t fall on her face in front of the entire country. By biding her time and perfecting her craft, her shot of getting something on the air that will last is, I believe, considerably better than if she had gone for it right out of the gate.
HOW PILOT SEASON WORKS
Before you start to write your pilot, I think it’s important that you have a clear understanding of what “pilot season” is and the process shows go through to get on the air.
Traditionally, in network television there are five seasons. winter, spring, summer, fall, and the most exciting of them all, “pilot season.” Pilot season is when writers pitch new series ideas to the networks, and the networks decide which ideas they are going to make into pilots. Though the heart of pilot season really takes place from January through April, it actually starts much, much earlier.
Shortly after July 4th, networks open their doors for writers to come in and pitch ideas for new series. From July through September, executives will hear hundreds of ideas from oodles of hopeful writers. By the time all is said and done, networks will order pilot scripts from only a handful of those writers. Because producing a pilot is so outrageously expensive, only a small percentage of those scripts will make it into production, and an even smaller number will actually make it onto the air.
Hard as it may be to fathom, it takes more than a year from the time a pilot is pitched to the time the show first airs. Here is a rough calendar of how everything times out:
● May–June: Writers pitch new series ideas to production companies and/or studios.
● July–September: Networks hear pilot pitches. Deals are made and scripts are ordered. Writers begin work.
● October–December: Writers work with production companies, studios and networks to develop the pilot script. Multiple drafts get turned in for notes.
● January: Networks announce which pilots they will “greenlight” (order into production.)
● February–April: Hectic and crazy months in the television industry. The pilots that are going into production must be cast, deals must be negotiated, sets must be constructed, and the script is probably still undergoing changes. Then, the show must be shot and edited.
● Early to mid-May: Network executives convene in New York City for what is known as the Upfronts. This is where, one by one, each network unveils its line-up for the new Fall season to advertisers. The hope is advertisers will be so bowled over by what they see that they will race to buy advertising time upfront, hence the term.
● Mid-May–Memorial Day: Once the new Fall season is in place, agents scramble to get writers staff jobs. These few weeks represent the busiest and most anxiety-riddled time for most writers. If you aren’t hired onto a show by Memorial Day, it is likely you will spend the year looking for freelance assignments unless something opens up on one of the cable series, which often operate under a slightly different schedule.
● June: Writers go to work on the new season. They flesh out character arcs for the season — meaning they look at where each character will be when the show goes on the air in September, and where each character will be when the show ends in May. They also do story arcs, mapping out the direction of the show for the entire season. Writers also try to get ahead by stockpiling scripts before production begins and everything gets hectic. Most shows can stockpile a few, but generally once production goes into full swing, any jump they may have had usually seems to vanish.
● Late July–August: The actors come to work and the show goes into production.
● September–October: The new Fall line-up hits the air.
“You look for a lot of different things depending on what network you’re at. You’re looking for something that’s going to resonate with the audience of the particular network your greenlighting for. No one ever knows what’s going to work. Anyone who tells you they did or do is lying. But usually you have a filter or checklist of things you’re looking for in a program that meet some kind of criteria in order to get greenlit. But at the end of the day, they’re always judgement calls. They just are.” — Doug Herzog, president, Viacom Media Networks Entertainment Group, on what goes into the decision-making process when greenlighting a show
NETWORK SCHEDULE: FRIEND OR FOE
Once your show is on the network schedule, you still have one more giant hurdle to overcome: timeslot. The day and time where the network places your show can make or break you. What about the competition? Are you up against an established hit program, which would pull a large chunk of the already fragmented audience away from your show? What is the lead-in, the show that’s on directly before yours? Does it do well in the ratings so that your show might pick up some of its audience? Or is it something relatively few people watch, which could make it all the more difficult for your show to find an audience? These things are key indications of how your series will do in the ratings, and they can ultimately make a difference in whether the show stays on the air or gets canceled.
A good example is Touched by an Angel. CBS originally put the show on Wednesday evenings. The ratings were dismal. Cancelation loomed on the not-so-distant horizon. But creators John Masius and Martha Williamson must have had an angel watching over them. Somehow the powers-that-be at CBS saw the light and recognized the show’s potential. They moved the program to Saturday evenings and saw an increase in the ratings, so it stayed there for a season. Then, Les Moonves took over the network, and in what can only be considered a brilliant scheduling decision, he moved the show to the coveted 8:00 Sunday night timeslot, coupling it with 60 Minutes. It was a perfect fit. The show took off — generating huge ratings, and regularly placing in the weekly top-ten most-watched shows list. In its nine-year run, Touched became one of CBS’ biggest hits. The irony is, it just as easily could have been canceled.
“Don’t be derivative. Young writers today have a disadvantage because of being bathed in media with the explosion of cable and the Internet. To be original is challenging. The temptation is to be derivative. Young writers should be vigilant and uncompromising with themselves to be original in this epidemic of copycatting.” — Oscar nominee, Emmy Award winner, and Peabody Award winner Rebecca Eaton, executive producer, Downton Abbey, and Masterpiece Theatre and Mystery!
WHY SOME CABLE NETWORKS OPERATE UNDER A DIFFERENT TIME CLOCK
One of the most important things that networks do is schedule the day and time their programs will air. A huge part of this decision-making process is known as counter-programming, which means sizing up what the competition is doing, and then doing something bigger, better, different, or opposite in order to pull in viewers and win the timeslot. Historically, summer television was always a time of reruns. In fairness to the networks, the audience diminishes in the summer months; families go on vacation, sweltering nights beckon people to little league games, or even to just their front porch. It makes no difference. All that matters is that in the summer people aren’t watching TV like they do in the winter. Still, every year, there are those couch potatoes who want the option of having some kind of television to watch other than reruns.
Not so long ago, the cable networks heard the call and seized the opportunity. They began to introduce new shows in the summer, and grateful viewers followed. It may seem obvious, but this seemingly small counter-programming move turned out to be genius. The viewers who were now watching original series on cable and talking about it at the water cooler the next day, were viewers who weren’t watching network television, which of course equals a huge loss in revenue. And once the cable networks had the viewers hooked on their shows, the broadcast networks had to fight all the harder to win them back. It was an uphill battle, which they didn’t always win. Because of this, it is not uncommon now to see new network offerings at scattered times throughout the year, including the summer. However, for broadcast networks, the heart and soul of the prime time schedule still continues to be unveiled in May and put on the air in September or October. But all of this is likely to change in the near future. Fox chairman Kevin Reilly recently announced that Fox will do away with pilot season. Expect other broadcast networks to follow suit, paving the way for programs to be developed and produced all year long. In my opinion, this is the only way they will be able to stay competitive with cable networks and streaming services like Amazon and Netflix who continue to churn out quality TV series on their own terms and time clocks. This is all very good news for writers.
“I probably look for three things when I read a script and it depends what I’m reading it for. If I’m just reading it to get to know a writer, I probably — on the comedy side look to see if it’s funny. Somebody could write a script that’s structurally all over the place but if it’s really, really funny, I’d think, okay, there’s a purpose for this writer. Or I look for that voice. Is there a voice in here, even if it is all over the place? Is there something that’s just jumping out at me or connecting with me?…then obviously I love that too. And obviously structure. If the writer has a sense of being able to tell a story. If it’s an original piece of material, I think people underestimate how hard that is to create either a half hour or an hour of a real world, where the characters feel real and there’s a story that makes sense for that amount of time. So I kind of look at those three things. If someone has all three of them, it’s like lightening in a bottle.” — Tal Rabinowitz, executive vice president comedy programming, NBC Entertainment