Why is that not every animated TV pilot get greenlit?

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ivyeight6
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03 Feb 2023, 5:10 am

Some animated TV pilots get made, but some doesn’t. What might be the reason why they doesn’t get to?



Radish
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03 Feb 2023, 7:09 am

Probably the number of viewers isn't high enough to make production viable, or the pilot flopped and wasn't highly rated by a lot of people. A pilot tests the water to see if production is going to make any money.


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Princess Viola
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03 Feb 2023, 10:41 am

It's the same reason why any pilot doesn't get greenlit. If a pilot episode of a show doesn't work out well, gets negative audience response from test-screenings, etc., why would the network that the pilot was pitched to decide to order more episodes from that pilot instead of ordering a season from a pilot that actually seemed successful?

Of course, there are also examples of pilot episodes that get rejected and then might get picked up later (or not at all, but are still considered great pilots that should've been a series dammit) and why that is is answerable with a simple thing: networks can't greenlight every single pilot pitched to them, some good ones will unfortunately end up getting rejected.



lostonearth35
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03 Feb 2023, 1:31 pm

You mean the pilots of animated shows get viewed by a test audience, and yet many of them *still* get released to the public even though they're terrible, like Velma, Santa Inc, and Fairview??? 8O

At least Sesame Street knew better, they once made an episode that was going to be about Mr. Snuffleupagus's parents getting a divorce, but when they showed it to their child test audience the kids believed in the exact opposite in the message they were going for, as in the kids believed that their parents getting divorced was their fault and that their parents still didn't love them. So the episode never aired. But modern Sesame Street does have a character, Abby Cadabby, a fairy godmother in-training whose parents live apart and she has a stepbrother.



Princess Viola
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03 Feb 2023, 3:59 pm

lostonearth35 wrote:
You mean the pilots of animated shows get viewed by a test audience, and yet many of them *still* get released to the public even though they're terrible, like Velma, Santa Inc, and Fairview??? 8O

Well a lot of shows might just skip the pilot stage and go right to a series order.

So maybe that's how crap gets released. :?: