TVSquad

The script for the new CBS comedy pilot I'm in Hell found its way onto this thread on A Special Thing dot com, and I decided to take a gander.

As mentioned before, the series focuses on an affluent jerk played by Jason Biggs who dies in a car crash and is sent to Hell on Earth (which to him is Akron, OH). The series also stars David Cross as the devil who makes sure Biggs' life is sufficiently cruddy.

When I received the preview screeners for the new fall pilots earlier this summer, I resisted every request from friends to lend them out, copy the discs, or upload the contents. My feeling, and the feeling amongst everyone here at TVS, is that the networks are doing us a favor by sending these; why betray their trust by creating a Torrent of a show and distributing it?

I guess not everyone feels the same way we do. The Wall Street Journal recounts how pirated videos for ten pilots -- including Jericho, The Nine, and Heroes -- are making their way around the Internet. This is putting the networks in an odd position; they like the advanced buzz that has developed amongst the public before the shows even air, but they're upset because their shows are being pirated. For instance, a CBS spokesperson told the WSJ that "[w]e're pleased that there's an early demand for our shows but the marketing benefits can't excuse what is illegal theft of our programming."

What the article explains to me is how all these TVS readers have been able to see the pilots, as we've seen in the comments for our network previews. Actually, I kind of knew that these pilots were available as Torrents, but I guess I was just in denial.

[via Mediabistro]

After I heard that Nobody's Watching, the failed pilot that was leaked to YouTube and became very popular, was picked up by NBC, I got a sinking feeling that we were going to start hearing about other pilots somehow making their way to the web.

Well, I didn't have to wait long. This article reports on the appearance of the pilot for a comedy called The Adventures of Big Handsome Guy and His Little Friend, on smaller video sites (I followed the links in the article and found a copy on Vidking.com; here's part one and part two). The pilot, based on a little-seen movie about two friends with very different viewpoints on life, was turned down by Fox for their fall lineup, but they still have an option to pick it up by December. The network is trying to get copies of the pilot removed from these sites, but is having a tough time. Hm. Think the creators would jeopardize their deal with Fox by leaking it? Stranger things have happened.