A television pilot is the first episode of an intended television series. It may be slightly longer than a normal episode (sometimes it may approach twice the length so if sold, it will later be broken down into two episodes) and is intended to get network programming executives, and later the public, interested in the series. However, pilots are rarely fair examples of what a "normal episode" of a series is like, since they usually set the general background and tell the origin story for the series (e.g., if the series is about two angry roommates, the pilot will probably show how they met).

While many pilots are shot, few make it to the screen, and even fewer go on to become full-fledged television series. Competition at the network level is intense, with advertising money and choice viewer demographics at stake.

Origins of a pilot episode

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The concept for a pilot is generally "pitched" to network executives by a producer or writer. If interested, the network will fund the writing of a script. This may happen 50 times in a particular year. At this point various stakeholders at the network propose changes, and rewrites occur to satisfy those demands. If a project is unable to meet these changes, it will often be shelved or enter "development hell", a period of perpetual rewrites and recasting that lasts until the pilot is deemed completed or the producers give up on the project.

If the script for a pilot has satisfied the stakeholders at the network and is sufficiently exciting, then the production of the pilot itself can begin. On average, only about 10% of the scripts commissioned by Hollywood networks actually get to the production stage.

Production of the pilot

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Pilots are expensive to produce. Before a network commits to funding an entire pilot episode, it often requests a pilot presentation, a one-day shoot that, when edited together, gives a general idea of the look and feel of the proposed show. Some pilots can be just a few minutes long (ex: 10 minutes or less); however, such pilots will not be shown on the air unless more material is subsequently added to them to make them at least twenty-two minutes in length, the actual duration of a nominally "thirty minute" program (taking into account commercials). Occasionally, more than one pilot is commissioned for a particular proposed television series to evaluate what the show would be like with modifications. The Original Series is a famous example of this situation.

An example of change between the making of a pilot and the making of a series is To Tell the Truth in 1956. The original title of the pilot was Nothing But the Truth and the show was hosted by Mike Wallace. The program host was changed to Bud Collyer, and the title changed to To Tell the Truth.

Bare-bones pilot

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Some series (such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer) are given bare-bones pilots that are never intended to be shown to the public. These pilots are made on a substantially smaller budget, contain no real special effects, and feature a condensed story. In Buffy's case, the pilot was barely 20 minutes long and took place entirely within Sunnydale High. This allowed the writers and producers to show off the style and general mood of the show, and convince the network to pay for a more polished two-hour pilot, which was then aired.

Airing the pilot

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Pilots usually run as the first episode of the series, unless the series ended up being so different from the pilot that it wouldn't make sense (in this case the pilot, or portions of it, is reshot or rewritten to fit the rest of the series). The pilot for Gilligan's Island, for instance, showed the castaways becoming stranded on the island. However, three roles were recast before going to series, with the characters either modified or completely altered to the point where the pilot could no longer be used as a regular episode. The series began with the second produced episode, with the characters already on the island. The story from the pilot was largely reworked into a flashback episode which aired later, although with several key scenes reshot.

There have been exceptions to this rule when a network or a producer has chosen to run the pilot at a later date. Series for which this has happened include the first The Original Series series, where the second, modified pilot ("Where No Man Has Gone Before") was aired as the third episode, and footage from the original pilot ("The Cage") was edited into newer footage to produce the two part episode "The Menagerie". The more recent television show Firefly set a particularly curious example, where the series was officially cancelled before the pilot aired as the final televised episode. Critics of the Firefly move complained that airing the pilot out of sequence made it difficult for audiences to understand what was going on; when the series was subsequently released on DVD, the pilot became the first listed episode.

Occasionally, pilots that fail to launch a series are nonetheless broadcast as TV-movies or as specials, usually as filler or as attempts by networks to recoup some of their investment in the production. Examples include the one-hour 1982 pilot for a never-produced Modesty Blaise series, and a 1986 pilot for The Saint in Manhattan, which had failed to launch a new series of Simon Templar adventures for television. Presumably strong ratings for such broadcasts are capable of changing the network's mind, but this rarely occurs. On some occasions, a pilot film for a televised series will air separately long after the series itself has been cancelled. Such was the case with the pilot film for A Man Called Sloane, which featured a different actor in the title role; Death Ray 2000 aired a full year after Sloane was cancelled.

Backdoor pilots

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A backdoor pilot is a television movie, other TV special event, or even an otherwise normal episode of an already established series that is being used as a trial balloon—if audiences respond and ratings are good, the studio or network may order subsequent episodes from the creators. An example of the former would be when ABC aired its Dinotopia mini-series; although audience response to the mini-series was favorable, the following series was short lived. Again, Star Trek provides a famous example of the latter "backdoor pilot"-type with the episode, " Earth" where the crew of the Enterprise encounters Gary Seven, a character with his own agenda with the planet in a story that was intended to introduce the character and the premise of his adventures in a proposed series of his own (see spin-off).

More recent examples are NCIS, which began as a two-part episode of JAG, and New York, which began as an episode on Miami, which itself began as an episode of Crime Scene Investigation.

Similarly, the first two seasons of the original Twilight Zone had several instances of backdoor pilots, none of which were successful in establishing a new series. The Twilight Zone itself was a development from a backdoor pilot ("The Time Element") written for Playhouse 90 but finally airing as an installment of the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse: the cover page of the shooting script refers to "The Twilight Zone". The airing of a second, more conventional, pilot episode ("Where Is Everybody?") followed 11 months later and served as the first official episode of the legendary series.^*

At one time many pilots not selected for production as full series were aired as parts of anthology programs; these shows, which were often aired as summer replacements, were regarded as potentially holding more of the audience than repeat showings of old episodes of popular programs and this usage allowed the recoupment of at least a small part of the large development cost. Also, in a very few, rare instances, public interest could result in network executives taking a second look at the decision not to go forward with the series. One of the best known examples is "Love and the Happy Days", a rejected pilot for a TV series about a family in the 1950s, which was aired as an installment of the popular anthology, Love, American Style; this, combined with the popularity of the film American Graffiti (both productions starring Ron Howard) resulted in the series Happy Days being commissioned. The practice of airing pilots is now very seldom seen; pilots are more apt to be screened to focus groups than to a mass audience. Few pilots not selected to go into production as a series are ever aired in any form.

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