Awards Circuit Column: HBO Max's hit medical drama has some in the industry missing the old primetime formula.
One of the hottest trends to come out of the network upfronts this year was the return of pilot season. NBC ordered a total of eight pilots this year — ordering half of them to series. Primetime’s back, baby!
Well, OK, let’s curb our enthusiasm. I give a ton of credit to NBC for producing pilots this year, a practice that was so maligned that the pendulum wound up going too far the other direction, as networks and streamers started bypassing the practice almost entirely. But we’re still a long away from the days when the broadcast networks would each order around 20 pilots, all within a few months of each other in winter. It was an insane practice, as the networks had to scramble and compete for the same limited number of performers and crew — and then get their project in order-ready shape before May.
And yet, I miss it. I miss the cycle of covering scripts in the fall, wannabe actors finding monthly Burbank apartment leases in January to try and get cast on one of 100 pilots, and then parsing buzz as the networks screened their finished projects. Chasing down rumors on which shows might go — and where they might air — right before the upfront presentations was practically a sport.
It was a practice that has sadly been lost. ABC only picked up two new series this year (off of no pilots) — and is patting itself on the back for renewing all of its primetime schedule for the first time ever. (That’s an easy feat in 2026 when much of your schedule is sports and reality.) CBS staggered its orders, avoiding a regular pilot cycle. Fox got out of the pilot biz a while back. So thank you, NBC, for at least trying to bring a little nostalgia to the field.
There was an art to how shows were developed and launched. In success, a full (usually 22-episode) season would airing weekly from September to May — with repeats thrown in, of course. New episodes were released like clockwork, making for a comforting schedule that we all shared together as a collective TV audience.
That’s honestly part of the reason why the media, the critics and TV industry execs continue to gush over HBO Max’s “The Pitt.” The John Wells/Noah Wyle medical drama was an immediate darling in Season 1, riding that wave all the way to the Emmy for outstanding drama series. In year two, the acclaim and the attention was even more intense — some would argue, with the fandom getting a bit too over the top, it was too much. But “The Pitt” means so much to this industry right now — a 15-episode series, shot in Los Angeles, airing weekly and returning on schedule every January — that its awards prospects are unstoppable.
There are few sure things at the Emmys, but you should absolutely not bet against “The Pitt” for the foreseeable future. For those of us who have been covering the TV beat since the launch of the original “E.R.” (actually, to be fair, I didn’t start my career until June 1995 — so I just missed that first season), there’s a lot of déjà vu over how “The Pitt” has similarly become a weekly institution.
The debate over binge vs. weekly grew old a long time ago. But the success of “The Pitt,” and how excited we get when there’s a new weekly episode, brings me back to the way we watched TV in the 1990s. Maybe we don’t need pilot season anymore, but I’m definitely here for the return of “Must See TV.”