Discovery

This seems to be NBC Announcement Week. A day after we reported that the Peacock network was going to scrap their upfront presentation this year comes this news: they’re getting rid of pilot episodes too!

Jeff Zucker says that pilots are too expensive and often aren’t even a good indication of what the rest of the show’s episodes will be like (we’ve seen this with many shows recently - the first episode is big and expensive and incredible and then the following episodes…not so much). Also, many shows never even get beyond a pilot episode, so he doesn’t want to spend millions on pilots.

This makes sense on a lot of levels, especially financial, but I wonder exactly what NBC (and other networks, because I’m sure others will follow NBC’s lead) will do to pick new shows that go on their schedule Just rely on the scripts Sample scenes that are shot It seems to me that the networks will still want “first episodes” of a series but won’t invest millions in one pilot episodes to attract advertisers and create buzz. I also think this is NBC’s way of saying “we’re going to have more reality and game shows.”

[via TV Tattle]