ABC orders pilot for ‘Selfie,’ its latest attempt to turn a social media trend into a comedy
People always like to guess whether a new show will be a hit or miss — and newly-announced ABC pilot Selfie has the potential to be a huge miss. The show will be written by Suburgatory creator Emily Kapnek …
Context & Ripple Effects
ABC's order puts a script commitment behind creator Emily Kapnek coming off Suburgatory, betting that a photo-sharing habit can carry a half-hour sitcom. The pickup landed widely — eight outlets from Deadline and Hollywood Reporter to the Washington Post and Business Insider ran it on or about February 2, 2014, which says the 'internet trend becomes a TV show' angle now reads outside the trades.
It also lands in a season when the pilot itself is under scrutiny: since Amazon Studios began debuting its own 14 pilots free to viewers in April 2013, the closed-door network development process has an increasingly public comparator, raising the stakes on whether a traditional order like this can find an audience.
First-order effects
- Kapnek gains a high-profile development vehicle at ABC while still attached to Suburgatory, and ABC commits pilot-season budget to a format whose premise depends on a fast-moving social behavior rather than a proven character engine.
Second-order effects
- Rival broadcast networks face pressure to option their own social-media-derived premises before the trend cools, compressing development timelines that traditionally run years from observation to air.
Third-order effects
- If trend-chasing pickups become standard practice, the lag between internet culture and broadcast scheduling keeps shrinking — and networks increasingly compete with open-viewer models like Amazon's for which memes get institutionalized as scripted television.
The trend: Broadcast development is accelerating its mining of social media behavior for premises, racing trends that may expire before a series can reach air.