TVSquad

Our friends at the New York Television Festival gleefully sent us a press release today announcing that the rights to one of the pilots that showed at the festival in September -- and was covered like a blanket by TVS -- has been picked up by a major network.

Split the Difference, which won both the comedy competition and the TV Guide Audience Award, is the first scripted pilot to be picked up in the two-year history of the festival, as well as the first to be picked up by a major network. It's a mockumentary-style comedy that revolves around the rivalry-filled and phony world of making television commercials.

I thought it was by far the funniest pilot in the comedy competition, but that the mockumentary format would have to change so it didn't look like The Office at an advertising firm. Good to see we'll get a chance to see how this show gets developed. You can see the full press release after the jump. And you can still see the pilot on MSN.

What I found interesting about the comedy pilots from the New York Television Festival is how slickly-done most of them were. Of the six pilots in this category -- the largest number of pilots in any category -- four looked like they could air on a network right now. And at least three of them had actors that should be recognizable to regular TV watchers. Of course, high production value doesn't necessarily translate to good comedy. But there were really fun and creative aspects in all the pilots. My reviews are after the jump, and you can watch the pilots on MSN.

Because of Tuesday night's festival kickoff party, I decided to sleep in a little yesterday. Because of that, I missed both a morning panel on the value of independent TV production, which included Doug Herzog, the president of Comedy Central. I also missed the screening for the first set of Drama pilots. But I did manage to catch the first batch of Reality pilots, the first batch of Comedy pilots, and a really funny panel discussion about the American family on TV.

Why was the panel hilarious? Because the three people on the panel were executive producers Mitchell Hurwitz of Arrested Development, Phil Rosenthal of Everybody Loves Raymond, and Mike Scully of The Simpsons. So no one was left unscathed joke-wise; even the creator of 7th Heaven was lovingly labeled a "whore."