Sixteen new TV shows you'll never see

Shows you won’t find on TV next season—and why they didn't make the cut

By Eric Almendral, Special to Metromix

Say you have the world’s greatest idea for a TV show and are somehow lucky enough to pitch this idea to TV network muckety-mucks. If the muckety-mucks like the idea, they’ll ask you to write a script, and if they like the script, they’ll order a pilot. The pilot, a complete sample episode of the series, will then be used to try to convince the muckety-mucks’ superiors that the show can score huge ratings and rake in big advertising dollars. Should be a cinch, right? Yet every year networks order dozens of pilots then cast most of them aside, never to be seen by the viewing public when the new season schedules are announced in May.

Sadly, even the most insightful industry wonks cannot fully fathom the bewildering choices of television executives deciding which pilots get to grow up to become series. For creators, each discarded pilot is a rejection of their world’s greatest idea. For the stars, it’s a mortgage payment on their Hollywood Hills mansion, a missed shot at the Big Time, or a lost chance to return to the limelight. Don’t worry, James Van Der Beek, there’s always next year.
 
Here's a glimpse at the 2009 shows that could have been.