The Canadian Public ®This show idea was inspired by what happened with the pilot episode of the TV show “Global Frequency”. According to the comic book’s creator Warren Ellis, the executives at the WB Network were so annoyed over the unauthorized release of the pilot on the Internet that they killed the entire series. [Ref.] Many now see this decision as a mistake. After watching the pilot, the response on the Internet was overwhelmingly positive.
For the benefit of those who don’t know what a pilot is, before a new show receives the green light for a full season, the producers will create a pilot episode — a “demonstrator” of the proposed series — which sets up the major characters and demonstrates visually what the show is all about.
Normally these pilots never make it to air and are often forgotten long after the proposed show has been rejected. But if you have a Canadian pilot on your hands, and you possess all the broadcast rights, instead of having a handful of “suits” be the only ones to watch the show, how about letting us all watch it together and decide for ourselves if it’s worthy or not of a full season’s run? Will the show take off? Or will it crash and burn to the ground?
Unlike the channel’s other show ideas licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada license, this particular show is not a true series on its own. Instead, it’s more of a placeholder for other television shows. As a consequence, the requirement that the show must be distributed on the Internet will not apply since it’s not directly associated with any of the channel’s original show ideas. The choice of distributing your show on the Internet will be entirely up to you.