A peek into TV's frenzied pilot season

On a chilly Friday in the middle of this year’s pilot season, the period during which the sample episodes of the wannabe fall series are produced, Berlanti was preparing for some March madness of his own. He spent much of this whirlwind, 12-hour day shuttling from City Hall downtown, where “Stone” is being shot, to trailers several blocks away for story meetings with writers on his current series, ABC’s “Brothers & Sisters.”

Afterward, he traveled to London to film singer George Michael (the focus of Stone’s inexplicable visions), followed by a trip to San Francisco for some “Stone” location shooting. Then it was back to Los Angeles to wrap the “Stone” pilot, before heading to New York to start “Dirty Sexy Money,” which stars Peter Krause (of “Six Feet Under” fame) as an idealistic lawyer caught up in some dirty dealings.

From concept to production, Berlanti will have spent nearly 10 months on the “Stone” pilot, which he and co-writer Marc Guggenheim sold to ABC last summer.

But not every producer has that luxury.

Many have to wait until fall to pitch the concept of the series to network programmers. If the execs like what they hear, the pilot script is hustled into the network office before Christmas, with a production green light coming, it’s hoped, just after the New Year.

Then it’s a three-month scramble to hire the writers, directors, actors and the rest of the production staff for the pilot, which has to be shot and submitted in advance of the May upfronts.

With so many shows for the networks to choose from, what makes any one of them stand out?

“So much of it is casting,” says Berlanti, who tapped Jonny Lee Miller for “Stone” just after Miller’s “Smith” was axed by CBS.

“I try and cast all the leads first,” says Berlanti, who rounded out the “Stone” ensemble with, among others, Loretta Devine, Victor Garber and Natasha Henstridge. “It tells the network, the studio, and ultimately the audience, the tone of the show.”

So what happens to “Eli Stone” if it doesn’t make the cut?

Some producers have been taking their passed-over pilots to the Internet, hoping to create buzz — and maybe get a second chance.

“Scrubs” creator Bill Lawrence put up his failed WB pilot “Nobody’s Watching” on YouTube, where it became a hit with Web fans. “Aquaman,” a pilot the CW scrapped last year, also had a brief airing on YouTube, and is now being sold through iTunes.

Internet hype hasn’t actually saved any shows. But the insatiable hunger for online video suggests the Web may hold promise for future producers looking to get a show in front of potentially millions of people without a network’s blessing.

“In all fairness to the networks, no one can really predict what will be a hit,” says Guggenheim. “It’s all about timing.

“But as I watch the whole thing come together,” he adds, “it’s hard to imagine that we’re only doing this so that I have a DVD and a bunch of people in my living room watching it, instead of millions of people.”

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