A television pilot (also known as a pilot or a pilot episode and sometimes marketed as a tele-movie) in United Kingdom, Ireland and United States television, is a standalone episode of a television series that is used to sell a show to a television broadcaster or other distributor. A pilot is created to be a testing ground to gauge whether a series will be successful. 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. A successful pilot may be used as the series premiere of a new show, or as a later episode, though some are never aired at all. Some series are commissioned straight-to-series without a pilot (although an increasing number of such series have their first episodes titled "Pilot"). On some occasions, pilots that were not ordered to series may also be broadcast as a standalone television film or special. A backdoor pilot is a telefilm that serves as a proof of concept for a full series, but can be broadcast as a standalone film on its own even if the full series is not picked up. Television networks use pilots to determine whether an entertaining concept can be successfully realized and whether the expense of additional episodes is justified. Variety estimated that only a little over a quarter of all pilots made for American television proceed to the series stage. There have also been cases where feature films shown in cinemas like M*A*S*H, The Cowboys and Logan's Run inadvertently became "pilots" which inspired later television series.
Pilot season
Each summer, the major American broadcast television networks – including ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, The CW, Univision, and Telemundo – receive about 500 brief elevator pitches each for new shows from writers and producers. That fall, each network requests scripts for about 70 pitches and, the following January, orders about 20 pilot episodes. Actors come to Los Angeles from within the area or elsewhere in the United States and around the world to audition for them. By spring, actors are cast and production crews assembled to produce the pilots. Casting is a long, competitive process. 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. She only called back 75 to audition again for the show's creators. Of this group, the creators chose some to audition again for Warner Bros. Television executives, who chose the final group of a few actors to audition for NBC executives; as they decide whether to purchase a pilot, network executives generally have ultimate authority over casting. Since the networks work on the same shared schedule, directors, actors and others must choose the best pilot to work for with the hopes that the network will choose it. If it is not chosen, they have wasted their time and money and may have missed out on better career opportunities. Once they have been produced, the pilots are presented to studio and network executives, and in some cases to test audiences; at this point, each pilot receives various degrees of feedback and is gauged on its potential to advance from one pilot to a full-fledged series. Using this feedback, and factoring in the current status and future potential of their existing series, each network chooses about four to eight pilots for series status. The new series are then presented at the networks' annual upfronts in May, where they are added to network schedules for the following season (either for a fall or "mid-season" winter debut), and at the upfront presentation, the shows are shown to potential advertisers and the networks sell the majority of the advertising for their new pilots. The survival odds for these new series are low, as typically only one or two of them survive for more than one season.
Types of pilots
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