It's estimated that about 2/3 of pilot television shows developed in America never even make it to air. The major networks usually order about 20 pilots per season, and of those, around 6 are chosen to be premiere episodes. Of every fifty scripts commissioned, around ten or fewer are selected to be produced as pilots.
More facts about the TV industry:
- Major TV networks spend around 70% of their budgets on program development.
- In the 1950s, most networks outsourced the creation of new series to advertising agencies, who not only came up with the ideas for new television shows, but also wrote the pilots and decided what time they should be shown.
- An hour-long pilot program can cost as much as $2 million US Dollars to produce.