Amazon No Longer Using Viewer Feedback to Select TV Pilots
It looks like Amazon‘s public pilot season having a direct say on what pilots will be greenlit by the streaming service has been quietly shelved for now.
While presenting at this summer’s Television Critics Association (TCA) press event in Beverly Hills this past weekend, Amazon Studios Head Jennifer Salke revealed that the viewer voting system, which played a strong factor in the platform regarding which pilots to option for a full series, has been discontinued for the foreseeable future. Instead, Amazon will use its own internal metrics and selection process to ultimately determine what pilots will be picked up.
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“I’d never say ‘never’ but that version is not something we’re doing,” revealed Salke. “We’ll use our own testing barometers and some user data but the public voting process has been set aside for now.”
While the public pilot season was never the only input Amazon used to select new series for the streaming service, it did play a role in helping acclaimed series such as The Man in the High Castle, Transparent, and Mozart in the Jungle get a full series order. When asked why the old system was being dropped, the studio executives indicated it was the long development time between tallying the pilots’ votes and a series full premiere versus simply ordering a series straight to order like Netflix or HBO.
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“One of the things we learned is it took too long to get shows customers wanted,” Amazon Studios Co-Head of Television Albert Cheng explained. “You need up taking way too long to get the actual season done.”
Upcoming series such as Jack Ryan, The Boys, and The Lord of the Rings all were ordered straight to series by Amazon instead of undergoing the public pilot season which is likely how new series will be optioned by the streaming service in the future.
(via Entertainment Weekly)