Skip Scott Collins' entire Los Angeles Times column, about networks foregoing series pilots, until you get down to the bottom, where there is this single piece of brilliant advice:

To me, the great pilot debate seems like the self-conscious vibrations of another media business rattled by audience declines and technological change.

So if executives need a manifesto, here's one: Viewers don't care what a network's business model is. They don't care how many media "platforms" the programs are on. They won't notice whether a network makes a lavish pilot or orders straight to series based on a treatment communicated telepathically from a guru in an ashram. Viewers just want good shows. Will they always line up for them? No. But good shows have better odds than lousy ones. [LAT, via Chicka]