CS Weekly Archive > From the Trenches > 02/09/07

Everybody's Watching...Online

by jason davis

Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence takes to the Internet to give failed pilot Nobody's Watching the chance to build the fan following traditional broadcast outlets can no longer wait around for.

"It'll probably be the obsession that ends my career," says Bill Lawrence of Nobody's Watching, a 2005 pilot he co-wrote and produced with Garrett Donovan and Neil Goldman for the now defunct WB network. The pilot, which premiered on YouTube in June 2006, follows two Ohio TV addicts to Hollywood where a studio sets them up to produce a sitcom without telling them that they're actually part of a reality TV show.

"We somehow suckered NBC into giving us some money to try to do something on the Internet," explains Lawrence who took a break from overseeing a segment where the cast performs the entire ten-year run of Friends in one minute. "We're building a fan base on the Internet. Half the battle on a new television show nowadays is getting people to tune in and check it out initially. Then, it will succeed or fail based on quality." Lawrence believes that an inexpensive series given a test drive on the Internet and then brought to television has a much stronger chance at succeeding than shows premiered in a vacuum. "People have so many entertainment options now that the days of being able to run commercials on your own network for a new show expecting people to check it out are over."

"I think, eventually, someone's going to create content on the Internet and have it grab the zeitgeist and become a television hit," he continues. "Right now, no one's found a way of making money doing it, which obviously always drives the business." Lawrence foresees a future where a network could release all its potential pilots online, allowing a diverse audience to determine what eventually makes it on the air. He's certain that it's a better strategy than the present practice of showing pilots to paid audiences in some stuffy room in the Valley. "I'm always suspect of people that are going to give up their Friday nights for $40 to watch a television show. I don't think [they're] the people that are going to decide for all America if they're going to like or not like a show." According to the WB's test screenings, Nobody's Watching failed because it "was too complicated a premise." "We put that pilot on the Internet and we got responses, critical reviews—some negative, some positive—from 15,000 people and no one mentioned that it was too complicated. On the other hand, the testing was the first valuable testing I had ever read, because these were people that were not paid 40 bucks to sit in a room. They actually took the time to watch something on their own and then write about it."

Noting that the show's premise was tweaked based on that feedback, Lawrence explains that he and his staff were able to trace discernable throughlines in the criticisms that allowed them to refine their concept. "Why not use that as your testing especially when it becomes a self-promoting tool? The second the potential audience feels that they're responsible for putting a television show on the air, you've essentially marketed a new TV show and given it a boost on its initial tune-in audience."

Jason Davis is the DVD Manager for CS Weekly , a contributing editor for Creative Screenwriting Magazine, and has written for Cinescape.com, MSN.com, and created the TV series Studio 13, which ran on Lorne Michaels' Burly TV network. He lives in the small space left over by his ever-expanding library of books, movies, and music.

Nobody's Watching courtesy Warner Bros.

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