The days of networks shooting 50 pilots in a month are no more. Driven by the constant threat of streaming churn, networks can no longer afford to lock their best ideas into a rigid September premiere window.
Yet, the end of pilot season might be slightly exaggerated. Broadcasters aren’t abandoning pilot season; they’re unbundling it. With NBC ordering eight pilots, the most for any network since 2022, and streaming giants like Hulu and HBO Max starting to introduce pilots before committing to full orders, we’re seeing the rise of a hybrid model.
The traditional fall launchpad is no longer a destination, it’s just the opening act of a year-round distribution cycle.
This follows some promising trends seen in last year’s television cycle. Here’s how broadcasters have redefined the launch:
ABC
Last year, ABC picked up one spinoff series in the fall, 9-1-1 Nashville, with 2-3 additional pilots getting picked up for the midseason cycle, continuing a trend at ABC where they’re piloting projects outside of the traditional pilot window following the success of Will Trent and Shifting Gears. Throughout 2025, 9-1-1 Nashville generated 1.6 billion impressions, with 1.2 billion coming on broadcast. Shifted Gears saw 1.2 billion impressions, with 960 million on broadcast, and Will Trent had 529 million impressions, with 450 million on broadcast.
CBS
CBS, however, embraced the more traditional format, with six fall pilots in the 2025-2026 television season. The broadcaster introduced FBI CIA, The Equalizer, Einstein, DMV, Zarna and The Neighborhood. Among these pilots, DMV generated 8 million impressions, with 5 million coming on CTV.
For the 2026-2027 season, Cupertino, which premieres on October 8, has been very CTV heavy, making up 86% of total impressions tracked. We’ve observed over 12,000 spots on broadcast, generating 39.7 million impressions. Conversely, CBS has heavily promoted Eternally Yours on broadcast, with over 51,000 spots, generating over 1 billion impressions. The show, which starts the same day, has seen only 45 million CTV impressions.
NBC
NBC had a mix between fall premieres and midseason releases with its pilot slate, introducing six new shows for the 2025-2026 season. Three dramas, Suits: LA, Grosse Pointe and The Hunting Party, debuted in midseason, while Brilliant Minds, St. Denis Medical and Happy’s Place premiered during the fall. Suits: LA saw 1.27 million impressions, The Hunting Party had 59 million impressions, with 56 million on CTV, and St. Denis Medical also focused on CTV, with 50.8 million of its 69.4 million impressions coming on streaming platforms.
So far, NBC has heavily promoted its new show Line of Fire, which premiered on September 21, with over 43,000 spots on broadcast and over 844 million impressions. It has been a broadcast heavy campaign, with CTV making up only 136,000 impressions.
Fox
Fox, which entirely pulled away from pilots during the pandemic, also introduced six new shows last year, led by Celebrity Weakest Link and 99 to Beat in the fall, with Memory of a Killer, The Faithful, Best Medicine and Fear Factor: House of Fear coming in the winter window.
Fox favored broadcast for Celebrity Weakest Link, with 101 million of its 120 million impressions coming via linear. On the other hand, Memory of a Killer and Fear Factor: House of Fear were mostly on CTV, with the former seeing 132 million of its 148 million impressions coming on CTV, while the Fear Factor reboot had 10 million of its 11 million impressions on streaming.
Media planning for the hybrid era
The fall pilot season is not dead, it just looks different from peak broadcast television. As a result, the unbundling of pilot season means the traditional Upfront playbook no longer applies. To capitalize on TV’s new release schedule, marketers need to rethink what the traditional television calendar means for their media plans. The continued presence of the Upfronts and renewed experimentation with pilots suggest that fall will remain an important programming window—it is now simply one of several moments advertisers need to plan around.
To win in this hybrid landscape, brands must adapt to three fundamental shifts:
1.) Prioritize budget flexibility
For brands, flexibility is increasingly important. Rather than committing the bulk of television budgets around September premieres, advertisers should preserve dollars that can follow promising programs into the winter and early spring. New shows are inherently difficult to predict, so maintaining a more fluid budget gives marketers the ability to increase investment around breakout hits while limiting exposure to programs that fail to build an audience.
2.) Capitalize on Next-Day Streaming
Additionally, brands should look to leverage the next-day streaming window, as increasingly more viewers choose to watch on their own schedules. The success of the most recent season of Dancing with the Stars can demonstrate the value of next-day viewers, where streaming helped deliver the show’s best telecast since the 2020-2021 season.
This creates an opportunity to approach a new series as a cross-platform audience rather than simply a time slot. Brands can use linear to capture concentrated attention surrounding a premiere, streaming to reach incremental and catch-up viewers and digital channels to maintain frequency as conversation around a show develops.
3.) React Rather Than Predict
Ultimately, the changing pilot season rewards advertisers that can react rather than predict. Instead of betting heavily on which September premiere will become the next breakout hit, brands can maintain a presence during fall, reserve budget for midseason launches and use early audience signals to determine where to scale. Pilot season may be less predictable than the peak TV era, but for advertisers prepared to follow audiences across platforms and throughout the year, that can create more opportunities, not fewer.
