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According to one Hollywood agency’s stats so far this year, 33 comedy pilots have been picked up by CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX. Only 3 are written by women. And 36 drama pilots have been picked up by CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox. Only 6 are written by women. This is being called “the worst year in a decade” for female writers and showrunners. “‘Created By’ is a credit where the money and power is — and women are being denied it,” one source keeping track tells me. “Nina Tassler, Les Moonves, Christina Davis, Steve McPherson, Susanne Patmore, Channing Dungey, Angela Bromstead, Kevin Reilly, Peter Rice need to comment on why they all gave women the sack this year.”
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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i think the networks are looking for good scripts and would make a pilot written by an orangutan (male, female or hermaphrodite) if they thought it could be on the air for five years.
@Backlash
I agree. It’s the same way its assumed black writers write black, but white writers can write black, white, Jewish, Indian, native american, asian, ensemble, anthology….
oh please, like all these shows written by men are brilliant.
Backlash is right.
1) This article severely lacks context. How many new shows were written by women? If only 4 comedies were written by women, 200 were written by men, and only 33 got picked up, 3 of which were written by women, that’s a profound difference than if there was 200 from each gender.
2) Why the profound difference? Is it because there’s a natural tendency to write differently between men and women and what currently sells is what is stereotypically written by men? If so, wouldn’t that be more of an issue with the market? Not to say those in power cannot influence the market through forced exposure, but they certainly have bosses and shareholders to answer to, and they need to pick up what sells.
Sorry people, got a newsflash for you all. The industry is not a level playing field, never has, never will. Everyone struggling to get a script picked up and feels that their age, sex, or orientation has been a deterrent has to suck it up and deal with it. Keep on doing what you do because you love it and if the “Gods” smile down on you, then it is your time and the result would be worth it. That’s life.
Thank you, Wesley for the comment of sanity. If women want to get more pilots on the air, write more and better scripts. It’s that simple.
I’m sorry, but these companies will pick up shows that they think are going to make money no matter the sex of the writer. I agree with Wesley.
I hate to bring it up, but how many of these ‘men’ are gay? Hollywood also has gay people who can theoretically write for women, giving straight women 1/3 of the market. I agree that gay women don’t have a reputation for writing male parts. Am I out of touch?
Those comedy numbers are slightly off: Gail Lerner, Shana Goldberg Meehan, Jenny Lee (with Howard Morris), Kourtney Kang (with Joe Kelly), Jackie Filgo (with Jeff Filgo) and Nastaran Dibai (with Jeffrey Hodes) all have pilots. More importantly — you have to look at the script orders vs the pilot orders, something not mentioned here. How many women were in contention for a pickup to begin with? Yes, it feels like there’s a bias, but these numbers only tell half the story.
Thank you for reporting this. It’s amazing at how we are overlooked and our ideas not taken seriously.
Come on. They’re going to make what they feel are the best pilots. That’s really it.
Has it crossed anybody’s mind that maybe there weren’t any good pilots written by female writers this season? Maybe it’s a content issue and NOT a sexist issue?
Why doesn’t somebody make MAD MEN for WOMEN?
They have. It’s called MAD MEN.
Nikki, you rock!!!! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!
Wow. You are so amazing.
I can’t believe you are pointing out the truth like this.
This pilot season has been brutal to female writers. In Comedy the pick up for female written scripts is down 50%.
In drama it is down 40%.
It’s sad that some kid who doesn’t live or work in Hollywood and has never had a job in this industry feels he has the right to comment on a process (pilot season) he has absolutely no clue about.
Do the writing credits really come into play for things like this? I know they have done in the past but in this day, not saying that this day is feminist but how many pilots were actually submitted by women and out of them, how many were actually good? I doubt half the orders pilots are even good (though NBC, IIRC, has a lot of promise this upcoming year – as does The CW).
This is an awesome post. I am speechless. Thanks Nikki for doing this. When you get told to sit in the back of the bus and shut up forever it does something to your psyche and it’s not good.
Discrimination is not a popular subject in Hollywood.
Thanks for being so brave.
Nina Tassler , Les Moonves, Christina Davis , Steve McPherson, Susanne Patmore , Channing Dungey , Angela Bromstead , Kevin Reilly, Peter Rice need to comment on why they all gave women the sack this year.
Yes, this overwhelming majority of men clearly shows the sexism at work here, because… oh, wait, 5 out of 9 people here are women . With Ostroff that would make 6 out of 10.
Are you saying that women are incapable of sexism against women? Because if you are, well, that is pure idiocy.
It’s ridiculous to assume that the networks consciously gave women “the sack” this year. Networks are allowed to reject bad pilots or pilots they perceive as not generating a solid audience. This year, it just happened to be the case that these pilots were written by a disproportionately high number of women.
Although this is unfortunate, it’s irresponsible and reckless to generate a sexism panic in Hollywood right now, particularly since TV audiences are shrinking quickly. Why this is important is because, next year, Hollywood might over-compensate and pick a disproportionately high number of pilots written by women, regardless of quality.
In the end, Hollywood is a capitalist landscape, which goes by the mantra of “Give the audience what they want.” Audiences don’t care which gender the author of a TV show is; they only care about the final product.
Both women and men have the ability to deliver that stellar final product. When that’s achieved, then it’s all a matter of letting the work speak for itself.
Bravo for doing the leg work on this, Nikki. This is a serious problem and the networks need to be outed on it. Women’s voices need to be heard and when they get the chance we get shows like 30 ROCK, WEEDS, GREY’S ANATOMY… Hello? Anyone listening?
It’s sad to say, if you want a pilot picked up you should partner with a guy….All Shawn Ryan has to do is call Kevin Reilly and he can get whatever you want picked up. They don’t even read it if you have a big guy attached.
We’re out here and we’re writing great pilots. I read about a study that found that if readers knew a woman wrote a play, they found the protagonist unlikable, but if they thought a man wrote it, they found her likable. Same findings with whether they liked the piece.
Let’s encourage each other and work to get over this because it’s diluting the quality of our product as a whole.
Right. Because it is absolutely impossible that the pilots written by women just weren’t as good this season.
Wesley, I wish someone would explain to me why women have done so well in Law, Medicine and many other fields. But in so-called liberal Hollywood, there is still the perception that women “aren’t good”. You cannot imagine how many bad scripts and bad films I’ve seen by young male hotshot writer/directors who are confident far beyond their abilities. Just as men overestimate their attractiveness, they also overestimate their intelligence and talent. Maybe if women were allowed to work in Hollywood, today’s films and television shows wouldn’t be so bad.
How many were written by black writers?