theankler.com: The idea of pilot season is an old-fashioned one. Used to be that TV writers would spend the late spring and summer developing ideas, pitch in August or September, write scripts through the fall after getting a pilot script order, then turn them in so that executives could read those scripts on their flights to the East Coast for the holidays. Come January, you’d know whether that pilot was getting shot and by May whether you’d have a series on the air in the fall. By the end of upfronts in May, the cycle would start all over again.
2 comments:
It’s shocking to me that the work it takes writers to develop scripts in anticipation of a green light is completely free labor. As streaming service original series(es) and shows that release straight to streaming have become more widespread, this neverrending year-round development season definitely puts even more of a strain on writers and showrunners. Plus, with rampant cancellations of shows that don’t break box office records right out the gate, it’s common that streaming services will commission an entire season of scripts just to cancel the show. It’s not easy to churn out these scripts––writers are not machines who can simply output that much work for free and with no payoff. It’s unfair to the creatives involved, and their work deserves to be compensated and treated with more stability, even if the show that has been commissioned never comes to fruition. Obviously part of this is the nature of show business, but I’ll be curious to see how the streaming focus continues to make changes.
I think writers should be paid during the creative process of coming up with ideas. The concept of generating an entire show premise and a complete pilot script just to maybe get a bite and maybe get it produced all for free until the production begins is sad. I think designing is work and unpaid work is only something you do when you go to college and get drilled into the floor with work far beyond your high school’s wildest dreams. However it is difficult to break systems and change the way things have been done for a long time. I think the production companies for TV shows should hire pools of people to generate new ideas over the course of x amount of time while being paid. I’m sure there’s a lot of flaws in that plan I don’t know about but paying the people thinking up the shows should be getting paid while generating ideas.
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