Television pilot: History and Key Facts

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. Television networks use pilots to determine whether an entertaining concept can be successfully realized and whether the expense of additional episodes is justified, much like pilot experiments serve as precursors for choosing which full-scale research projects will move forward with an investment of time and money. Variety estimates that, across the big four US networks alone, roughly 100 pilots will be reviewed by network executives each year, with only a little over a quarter proceeding to the series stage, with the remainder never being seen by a viewing audience.

Once a pilot has been successful in getting a show ordered to series, the pilot itself might be used as the series premiere, or as a later episode, or may never be used at all in the series run. 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.

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.

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