Imagine a world in which the NFL, the NBA and Major League Baseball all decided to move their seasons to the same time of year. It would be chaos, for fans and the professional sports business alike. And yet, in television, that's essentially what happens during pilot season.
The broadcast networks traditionally order pilots during the first few months of the year. From there, it's a race to find the best actors, hire a crew, build sets and produce a show before May, when the upcoming fall schedules are announced. The field has always been crowded, but this spring, several cable networks and online retailer-turned-programmer Amazon are also developing new shows that they hope will go to series (cable networks typically produce pilots throughout the year, usually avoiding the spring).
read moreJohn Malkovich has been tapped to star as Blackbeard on NBC's upcoming pirate series Crossbones, the network announced Monday.
read moreTalk about outsourcing! An increasing number of TV's all-American cops, firefighters and doctors are being played by actors not from the U.S. of A.
Of course, foreign actors have been hiding their accents to play Americans for years. House's Hugh Laurie was so skilled at trading in his upper-crust Cambridge lilt to play the titular grumpy doctor that many viewers were shocked to find out he was British when he spoke with his real voice on an awards show or during interviews...read more