As the curtain falls on the 2025 Upfronts—a glitzy blur of NFL tie-ins, AI-powered ad tools, and reality shows about reality shows—it’s hard not to feel a pang of nostalgia. There was a time when this week in May was television’s most exciting moment. A time when the industry didn’t just announce what was coming—they rolled the dice. Welcome to what used to be known as pilot season.

In the heyday of broadcast TV, the Big Three—ABC, NBC, CBS—would greenlight upwards of 100 pilots every spring. Some came in hot. Most came in messy. Unfinished edits, placeholder music, temp VFX—it didn’t matter. The point wasn’t perfection. It was pressure-testing ideas. Audiences weighed in. Advertisers had their say. Executives haggled. And from that crucible, a handful of shows would make it to air. If two or three of them made it to a second season? That was a win.

It was imperfect, chaotic—and incredibly generative.

Writers got their shot. Unknown actors became stars. Production designers, editors, DPs, and sound engineers all had opportunities to break through. Pilot season wasn’t just about content. It was a farm league. A talent pipeline. An entire ecosystem designed to surface new voices across departments—not just in the writers’ room, but across craft and crew. If a pilot went, that meant dozens of creatives—from PAs to art directors—got to stretch their skills and put their work on display. That opportunity doesn’t really exist anymore.

Some of television’s most enduring icons came through this gauntlet. Family Guy, for instance, was canceled twice before becoming a staple of pop culture, revived by fan demand after DVD sales exploded. That kind of second chance—fueled by real audience passion—feels almost impossible in today’s world of “drop everything, move on, rinse, repeat.”

The death of pilot season didn’t happen overnight. The rise of streamers made the January-to-April crunch irrelevant. Development stretched into a year-round blur. Studios began skipping the test phase altogether and went straight to series. On paper, that sounded like creative liberation. In reality, it’s given us a landscape flooded with half-formed ideas, forgettable shows, and few breakout hits.

Today, a typical streamer might greenlight over 100 shows a year. But the signal-to-noise ratio? Abysmal. Viewers scroll endlessly. Algorithms push endlessly. But clarity? Chemistry? That rare magic of a pilot that hits just right? It’s been lost in the noise.

So here’s a radical idea: bring back pilot season. Just update it for the streaming age.

Imagine this: Every spring, platforms like Netflix, Prime Video, or Hulu roll out 10 pilots over a one week span. A curated drop. Think trailers, live panels, social voting, and feedback baked right into the interface. Audience engagement becomes the greenlight metric. Viewership, rewatch rate, shares, sentiment—let the audience help decide what deserves a full season. And give creators data they can actually use.

Sure, there are objections. Some creatives fear having unfinished work judged by the masses. There’s concern about “American Idol-izing” the process. But participation doesn’t have to be mandatory. And for many producers—especially emerging ones—it could be a lifeline. A way to escape years in development purgatory with nothing to show for it.

This wouldn’t be right for every genre. But for workplace comedies, genre shows with wide appeal, and ambitious formats looking for breakout energy—it’s a perfect fit. It’s also an opportunity to rebuild the missing middle of the industry: the learning grounds where tomorrow’s showrunners, editors, and designers first get their reps.

The infrastructure is already in place. The platforms have the audience. They have the data. They’ve built the biggest delivery systems in entertainment history. But they’ve never turned those tools back toward the development process.

Why not let your viewers help choose what’s next? Why not turn pilot season into a streaming event—a content drop and a marketing campaign and an R&D lab, all rolled into one?

No, the old model wasn’t perfect. It was messy. It was inefficient. It left a lot of good stories on the floor. But it also gave us Cheers, Friends, The Office, Modern Family. Shows that didn’t just survive the gauntlet—they defined a generation.

Pilot season is dead. But maybe it shouldn’t be.

Its spirit—of risk, discovery, experimentation, and wide-open opportunity—is exactly what this era of television needs more of. For creators. For crews. And for the audience.

It’s time to bring it back.