11 ms·

The great cancellation: why megabucks TV shows are vanishing without a trace

60 points by yowzadave 3y ago

Agingcoder 3y ago
´ based on a legendary piece of intellectual property. ´ I’d have said ´ book´ instead, but IP and the associated business idea seems to be the new normal for culture. I find it a bit sad.
- gumby 3y ago
  "Content" is uninteresting unless it can be monetised. I mean, why would anyone write a blog post or piece of software, much less a book or a song if there were no money attached?
  - rolph 3y ago
    philanthropy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philanthropy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philanthropy
  - 2023throwawayy 3y ago
    I've written many blog posts, pieces of software, and songs, that have all made exactly $0.
    - gumby 3y ago
      And I'm glad you have! I was complaining that in public discourse, anything not monetizable is disregarded, despite it making up (IMHO) the bulk of human activities and creation.
      - 2023throwawayy 3y ago
        So you forgot to add /s to your original post.
        gumby 3y ago
        I added the second sentence of the post instead.
- bluepod4 3y ago
  What do you mean by “new”? Superman and Batman have been around for almost 80+ years. Pokémon is approaching 30 years. Hollywood movies made in the 1920s were remade in the 1930s which were remade in the 1940s which were remade in the 1950s and so on. People have also been writing articles that mention this “new” normal for decades. But when does it stop being “new” lol? How were those new-ish Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings shows marketed? (I didn’t watch them.)
  - tnecniv 3y ago
    A Star is Born has been remade four times or so
    - bluepod4 3y ago
      Yep
- kmeisthax 3y ago
  The only thing more offensive than calling a book, movie, or TV show "intellectual property" is calling it "content". The former turns creative work into something you buy and sell on Fidelity[0] and the latter turns it into TikTok. Either way, the end result is human culture being made disposable. [0] As far as I'm aware, nobody has actually tried selling fractionalized derivatives of copyright, patent, or trademark interest on an open market. The closest you can do is buy shares of a media conglomerate. I assume it would at least be legally possible if you could get the SEC to sign off on it and write up a contractual structure for how the fractional owners of the work would agree on licensing it out.
- bluepod4 3y ago
  This isn’t new. It’s been happening for decades. Right? What’s different now?
  - fullshark 3y ago
    A decade getting too much (frankly poor) content instead of not enough of beloved characters/worlds/etc totally devaluing the product.
    - bluepod4 3y ago
      That doesn’t sound like what GP was saying.
compumike 3y ago
So just like the software industry story https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35614313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35614313 from a few months ago, is this a case where the accounting illusion of amortization (preventing companies from deducting expenses as they occur, and instead spreading out already-incurred expenses into the future) is creating a short-term incentive to destroy real products and services? How is this better than simply working on a cash basis, letting companies take the loss in year 1 when they build X, and then, for tax purposes, carry forward those net losses against the future revenues? Sure seems much simpler.
- pdntspa 3y ago
  It sounds like you may need to drink the coolaid about how an endless cycle of debt financing is the only way to survive as a business
AlbertCory 3y ago
Another reason not mentioned for cancelling those shows: no one watched them? Not that I'm representative, but there was only one in there that I watch: Severance.
- pqdbr 3y ago
  The article mentions shows being cancelled after they were made and ready to stream. Even if nobody is going to watch it, if you already paid for the production and it’s ready, why not put it online?
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    You're right, but I suspect they have some pre-availability numbers -- who would watch this if it were available? Test markets, focus groups, etc.
- chiefalchemist 3y ago
  Perhaps. But the article mentions shows that were made, ready to go, then canceled. And others might not have had much audience, but once they're available and streaming, how much overhead is there to just leave them there?
thinkingemote 3y ago
Another thing to mourn is that these shows will a) quickly disappear from streaming services and b) never get a hard copy (e.g. dvd) release
- rolph 3y ago
  >>b) never get a hard copy (e.g. dvd) release<< maybe not one considered legal.
causi 3y ago
Every day is a good day to maintain a personal media archive. They can take it off Disney+ but they can't take it off my hard drive.
aqme28 3y ago
I know taxes are complicated, but can someone explain how a complete loss today is financially better than a smaller loss* over a longer period? * or possibly a profit, but no one will ever know.
- readthenotes1 3y ago
  Let's say you have $1B in profit this year and a really terrible show that cost $1B to make. You can either write it off and pay no taxes on those profits ($200M saved), or not ($200M squandered) (I'm assuming 20% tax rate just to make math easier.) Also, many executives have compensation packages tied to financial metrics and they've been known to game those metrics for personal gain.
rossdavidh 3y ago
"...2021’s Ultimate Slip ’N Slide was cancelled after the crew all came down with a highly infectious variant of explosive diarrhoea that can be spread through tainted water." Wait, why didn't we get an article on just that?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- phonon 3y ago
  https://www.thewrap.com/slip-n-slide-show-nbc-diarrhea-shut-down/ https://www.thewrap.com/slip-n-slide-show-nbc-diarrhea-shut-...
  - rossdavidh 3y ago
    You know, if they had worked this properly, the delay/shutdown could have just stoked interest, and they would have ended up with a much bigger audience. On the other hand, if the people involved aren't willing to return, that's understandable.
    - fullshark 3y ago
      I'm guessing the show was really an ad for the toy, and the toy manufacturers killed it.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- dinkleberg 3y ago
  You’re asking the right question here. We need to hear more about that.
  - sliken 3y ago
    It was a shit show.
polski-g 3y ago
This article doesn't really explain the "why". The title is very misleading.
- rwmj 3y ago
  In particular, why remove existing shows from streaming services. How does that affect accounting?
  - readthenotes1 3y ago
    I'm sure there are other reasons but at least it drives viewers to other shows that they want us to watch.
- fullshark 3y ago
  Seems like the economic logic of streaming has changed, and this article failed to explain how, merely hint at it.
  - kmeisthax 3y ago
    The economic logic of streaming never changed, it's just that it never made sense. All of the decision making for what shows get made require, at a minimum, some kind of attribution for what people actually want to see, and remuneration commensurate with that attribution. That attribution and remuneration also needs to be transparent so that everyone involved in the production can negotiate their value. In movies, the attribution was ticket sales, later home video rentals and sales. TV was attributed with Nielsen numbers and ad spend. Streaming doesn't work this way: they don't sell ads[0], and they don't charge per view, they just charge a flat fee. How that flat fee gets remunerated to the producers of the shows and movies on their platform is a complicated mess. Attribution could be done with view counts, except streaming services have been very notoriously cagey with those numbers. In fact, part of the reason why SAG-AFTRA is getting stonewalled on streaming is that nobody in the industry wants those numbers to be public. What happens if you don't get attribution is that the actual creative work gets devalued. You can see this in the wording that the streaming services use: they no longer show movies or TV shows, but "content" - i.e. entertainment slurry. The value of their service is not in the creative work it can provide to you but the delivery mechanism used to get it there. It's a weird parallel to the net neutrality arguments of yesterdecade, where ISPs didn't want to be 'dumb pipes', but instead actively managing the traffic of their users. And to be clear, streaming services do a lot of active management. I suspect that if SAG-AFTRA wins, a lot of really embarrassing reports will come out suggesting that all these streaming exclusive shows were actually pulling in terrible numbers and that streaming is not nearly as much of a growth market as people thought. [0] Well, up until recently, anyway.
pimlottc 3y ago
How much of this tax reduction is based on convoluted Hollywood accounting? If the tax on the value of the show is higher than the streaming revenues, doesn’t that imply that the valuation is bogus? Can someone explain how the numbers add up here?
- WorldMaker 3y ago
  I don't think a lot of it is actually taxes but that "blame it on the IRS" has been a PR spin win for Hollywood. (Some small amount of it is taxes, which muddies the waters just enough for plausible deniability and PR spin.) I think some of it is plain old opportunity cost and "vaulting". Streaming a classic on your own streaming network doesn't generate money like selling DVDs/Blu-Rays or another streaming network paying you to license it. I think a lot of it is probably residuals owed to writers and actors and other staff. Many of the shows being vaulted right now are the sorts of "steady trickle" viewership shows with presumably expensive residuals owed to current creative talent: enough people are watching that the companies see the residuals they are paying on it, but not enough people that they like how much they are paying for it. Maybe some of that is also how much of the vaulted shows are tied to writers and actors actively striking. It seems a bit unlikely of a coincidence in timing how many of these shows disappearing are happening at various stages in the strike. I would hope the National Labor Relations Board is paying close enough attention and taking notes to try to find out just how much is "coincidence" and how much is retaliatory income cuts.
- atduskgreg 3y ago
  The write off is based on the cost of creating the show. I think the article is wrong/sloppily phrased in its line about the value of the company. If they remove a show then it will never generate any future revenue so they can write the cost of producing it off as a loss. The real scandal here is how little viewership streaming shows get and how little revenue they generate off of that viewership. Particularly for how expensive these shows are. I wrote a couple of comments elsewhere in the thread about some specifics and consequences. But the takeaway is that the last decade+ of super expensive “prestige” shows on streaming has been a huge bubble that isn’t supported by the underlying revenue generated by the shows. In 2022 Netflix spent $16 billion on producing shows [https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/netflix-content-spending-cash-in-2022-1235496740/ https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/netflix-content-spendi...] to generate shockingly few viewing hours (which is why they will never agree to WGA demands to release viewership numbers in order to pay writers residuals; their stock would go to 0 if those numbers ever became public). The future of streaming is ad-supported cheaply produced reality TV, ie exactly what niche cable looked like in 2008.
jeroenhd 3y ago
Whatare the implications of these tax write-offs in terms of piracy? If a company decides it'll never air a show again, what claim of ownership do they still have to prevent pirates from spreading the show for them? I'm sure the studios still be considered the copyright owners, but I don't think there's any ethical reason why they could possibly sue you for releasing something thst they cannot ever release themselves for tax purposes. They binned their shows, so why should the law protect their copyright?
- prepend 3y ago
  They can still make money later and will just pay taxes. Just because they value it at $0 doesn’t mean it has no potential future value. It just means when they claim they value they won’t have any costs to deduct. So future profit margins are higher.
  - goodcanadian 3y ago
    Well, yes and no. If they reasonably believe they can make future revenue from it, it would be dishonest (and illegal) to value it at $0. I have no doubt that they are playing funny accounting games, but they have to play within the rules set by the IRS.
    - prepend 3y ago
      Dishonest isn’t what’s important. What’s important is legal and generally accepted and allowed accounting principles. Which I’m pretty sure they are following since they are required to follow these and are audited and checked up on by the SEC and others. But yeah, everyone is doing as funny accounting as possible. That’s why we have laws and rules to specify what’s allowed. And it would be truly insane to talk about this on investor calls and whatnot if it was illegal.
  - slowmovintarget 3y ago
    It's only an asset if viewers can see it. If they never show it, and never put it on media, it's not an asset and has zero value for tax purposes. So poof Westworld disappears and is no longer an asset.
rsynnott 3y ago
In their list of examples of historical cancellations-before-airing, they missed one of the most baffling. "Heil Honey I'm Home!" was a 1990 British sitcom, stylistically parodying 1970s US sitcoms (over-the-top canned laughter, applause whenever characters enter the room, etc), about Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun as a suburban couple, along with their Jewish neighbours. Somehow, eight episodes of this were made (though not shown), and a pilot was actually _screened_, by a proper company (one of the predecessor companies to what's now Sky). It's very difficult to understand how anyone thought this was a reasonable thing to make.
- j-bos 3y ago
  Reminds me of the Monty Python skit about a bording house resident called Monsieur Hilter
- pjc50 3y ago
  More recently, an entire reality TV series was made before they noticed that one of the contestants had Nazi face tattoos: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/oct/30/skys-the-chop-axed-over-contestants-face-tattoos-linked-to-far-right https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/oct/30/skys-th...
- LocalH 3y ago
  Ade Edmondson's character in Bottom was named Eddie Hitler and no-one batted an eye
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    Oh, sure, this _can_ work (particularly as a throwaway joke, as in Bottom - "Any relation?" "Yes!"). However, in the case of the above show, it... didn't. The pilot's available on Youtube, or at least used to be. It is Not Good. Hitler in sitcoms is a bit like brain surgery. When done carefully, judiciously, sparingly, by highly skilled professionals, it can work well, but the haphazard amateur approach is quite undesirable.

60 points by yowzadave 3y ago

´ based on a legendary piece of intellectual property. ´ I’d have said ´ book´ instead, but IP and the associated business idea seems to be the new normal for culture. I find it a bit sad.

gumby 3y ago
"Content" is uninteresting unless it can be monetised. I mean, why would anyone write a blog post or piece of software, much less a book or a song if there were no money attached?
- rolph 3y ago
  philanthropy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philanthropy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philanthropy
- 2023throwawayy 3y ago
  I've written many blog posts, pieces of software, and songs, that have all made exactly $0.
  - gumby 3y ago
    And I'm glad you have! I was complaining that in public discourse, anything not monetizable is disregarded, despite it making up (IMHO) the bulk of human activities and creation.
    - 2023throwawayy 3y ago
      So you forgot to add /s to your original post.
      - gumby 3y ago
        I added the second sentence of the post instead.
bluepod4 3y ago
What do you mean by “new”? Superman and Batman have been around for almost 80+ years. Pokémon is approaching 30 years. Hollywood movies made in the 1920s were remade in the 1930s which were remade in the 1940s which were remade in the 1950s and so on. People have also been writing articles that mention this “new” normal for decades. But when does it stop being “new” lol? How were those new-ish Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings shows marketed? (I didn’t watch them.)
- tnecniv 3y ago
  A Star is Born has been remade four times or so
  - bluepod4 3y ago
    Yep
kmeisthax 3y ago
The only thing more offensive than calling a book, movie, or TV show "intellectual property" is calling it "content". The former turns creative work into something you buy and sell on Fidelity[0] and the latter turns it into TikTok. Either way, the end result is human culture being made disposable. [0] As far as I'm aware, nobody has actually tried selling fractionalized derivatives of copyright, patent, or trademark interest on an open market. The closest you can do is buy shares of a media conglomerate. I assume it would at least be legally possible if you could get the SEC to sign off on it and write up a contractual structure for how the fractional owners of the work would agree on licensing it out.
bluepod4 3y ago
This isn’t new. It’s been happening for decades. Right? What’s different now?
- fullshark 3y ago
  A decade getting too much (frankly poor) content instead of not enough of beloved characters/worlds/etc totally devaluing the product.
  - bluepod4 3y ago
    That doesn’t sound like what GP was saying.

compumike 3y ago

So just like the software industry story https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35614313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35614313 from a few months ago, is this a case where the accounting illusion of amortization (preventing companies from deducting expenses as they occur, and instead spreading out already-incurred expenses into the future) is creating a short-term incentive to destroy real products and services? How is this better than simply working on a cash basis, letting companies take the loss in year 1 when they build X, and then, for tax purposes, carry forward those net losses against the future revenues? Sure seems much simpler.

pdntspa 3y ago
It sounds like you may need to drink the coolaid about how an endless cycle of debt financing is the only way to survive as a business

AlbertCory 3y ago

Another reason not mentioned for cancelling those shows: no one watched them? Not that I'm representative, but there was only one in there that I watch: Severance.

pqdbr 3y ago
The article mentions shows being cancelled after they were made and ready to stream. Even if nobody is going to watch it, if you already paid for the production and it’s ready, why not put it online?
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  You're right, but I suspect they have some pre-availability numbers -- who would watch this if it were available? Test markets, focus groups, etc.
chiefalchemist 3y ago
Perhaps. But the article mentions shows that were made, ready to go, then canceled. And others might not have had much audience, but once they're available and streaming, how much overhead is there to just leave them there?

thinkingemote 3y ago

Another thing to mourn is that these shows will a) quickly disappear from streaming services and b) never get a hard copy (e.g. dvd) release

rolph 3y ago
>>b) never get a hard copy (e.g. dvd) release<< maybe not one considered legal.

causi 3y ago

Every day is a good day to maintain a personal media archive. They can take it off Disney+ but they can't take it off my hard drive.

aqme28 3y ago

I know taxes are complicated, but can someone explain how a complete loss today is financially better than a smaller loss* over a longer period? * or possibly a profit, but no one will ever know.

readthenotes1 3y ago
Let's say you have $1B in profit this year and a really terrible show that cost $1B to make. You can either write it off and pay no taxes on those profits ($200M saved), or not ($200M squandered) (I'm assuming 20% tax rate just to make math easier.) Also, many executives have compensation packages tied to financial metrics and they've been known to game those metrics for personal gain.

rossdavidh 3y ago

"...2021’s Ultimate Slip ’N Slide was cancelled after the crew all came down with a highly infectious variant of explosive diarrhoea that can be spread through tainted water." Wait, why didn't we get an article on just that?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
phonon 3y ago
https://www.thewrap.com/slip-n-slide-show-nbc-diarrhea-shut-down/ https://www.thewrap.com/slip-n-slide-show-nbc-diarrhea-shut-...
- rossdavidh 3y ago
  You know, if they had worked this properly, the delay/shutdown could have just stoked interest, and they would have ended up with a much bigger audience. On the other hand, if the people involved aren't willing to return, that's understandable.
  - fullshark 3y ago
    I'm guessing the show was really an ad for the toy, and the toy manufacturers killed it.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
dinkleberg 3y ago
You’re asking the right question here. We need to hear more about that.
- sliken 3y ago
  It was a shit show.

polski-g 3y ago

This article doesn't really explain the "why". The title is very misleading.

rwmj 3y ago
In particular, why remove existing shows from streaming services. How does that affect accounting?
- readthenotes1 3y ago
  I'm sure there are other reasons but at least it drives viewers to other shows that they want us to watch.
fullshark 3y ago
Seems like the economic logic of streaming has changed, and this article failed to explain how, merely hint at it.
- kmeisthax 3y ago
  The economic logic of streaming never changed, it's just that it never made sense. All of the decision making for what shows get made require, at a minimum, some kind of attribution for what people actually want to see, and remuneration commensurate with that attribution. That attribution and remuneration also needs to be transparent so that everyone involved in the production can negotiate their value. In movies, the attribution was ticket sales, later home video rentals and sales. TV was attributed with Nielsen numbers and ad spend. Streaming doesn't work this way: they don't sell ads[0], and they don't charge per view, they just charge a flat fee. How that flat fee gets remunerated to the producers of the shows and movies on their platform is a complicated mess. Attribution could be done with view counts, except streaming services have been very notoriously cagey with those numbers. In fact, part of the reason why SAG-AFTRA is getting stonewalled on streaming is that nobody in the industry wants those numbers to be public. What happens if you don't get attribution is that the actual creative work gets devalued. You can see this in the wording that the streaming services use: they no longer show movies or TV shows, but "content" - i.e. entertainment slurry. The value of their service is not in the creative work it can provide to you but the delivery mechanism used to get it there. It's a weird parallel to the net neutrality arguments of yesterdecade, where ISPs didn't want to be 'dumb pipes', but instead actively managing the traffic of their users. And to be clear, streaming services do a lot of active management. I suspect that if SAG-AFTRA wins, a lot of really embarrassing reports will come out suggesting that all these streaming exclusive shows were actually pulling in terrible numbers and that streaming is not nearly as much of a growth market as people thought. [0] Well, up until recently, anyway.

pimlottc 3y ago

How much of this tax reduction is based on convoluted Hollywood accounting? If the tax on the value of the show is higher than the streaming revenues, doesn’t that imply that the valuation is bogus? Can someone explain how the numbers add up here?

WorldMaker 3y ago
I don't think a lot of it is actually taxes but that "blame it on the IRS" has been a PR spin win for Hollywood. (Some small amount of it is taxes, which muddies the waters just enough for plausible deniability and PR spin.) I think some of it is plain old opportunity cost and "vaulting". Streaming a classic on your own streaming network doesn't generate money like selling DVDs/Blu-Rays or another streaming network paying you to license it. I think a lot of it is probably residuals owed to writers and actors and other staff. Many of the shows being vaulted right now are the sorts of "steady trickle" viewership shows with presumably expensive residuals owed to current creative talent: enough people are watching that the companies see the residuals they are paying on it, but not enough people that they like how much they are paying for it. Maybe some of that is also how much of the vaulted shows are tied to writers and actors actively striking. It seems a bit unlikely of a coincidence in timing how many of these shows disappearing are happening at various stages in the strike. I would hope the National Labor Relations Board is paying close enough attention and taking notes to try to find out just how much is "coincidence" and how much is retaliatory income cuts.
atduskgreg 3y ago
The write off is based on the cost of creating the show. I think the article is wrong/sloppily phrased in its line about the value of the company. If they remove a show then it will never generate any future revenue so they can write the cost of producing it off as a loss. The real scandal here is how little viewership streaming shows get and how little revenue they generate off of that viewership. Particularly for how expensive these shows are. I wrote a couple of comments elsewhere in the thread about some specifics and consequences. But the takeaway is that the last decade+ of super expensive “prestige” shows on streaming has been a huge bubble that isn’t supported by the underlying revenue generated by the shows. In 2022 Netflix spent $16 billion on producing shows [https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/netflix-content-spending-cash-in-2022-1235496740/ https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/netflix-content-spendi...] to generate shockingly few viewing hours (which is why they will never agree to WGA demands to release viewership numbers in order to pay writers residuals; their stock would go to 0 if those numbers ever became public). The future of streaming is ad-supported cheaply produced reality TV, ie exactly what niche cable looked like in 2008.

jeroenhd 3y ago

Whatare the implications of these tax write-offs in terms of piracy? If a company decides it'll never air a show again, what claim of ownership do they still have to prevent pirates from spreading the show for them? I'm sure the studios still be considered the copyright owners, but I don't think there's any ethical reason why they could possibly sue you for releasing something thst they cannot ever release themselves for tax purposes. They binned their shows, so why should the law protect their copyright?

prepend 3y ago
They can still make money later and will just pay taxes. Just because they value it at $0 doesn’t mean it has no potential future value. It just means when they claim they value they won’t have any costs to deduct. So future profit margins are higher.
- goodcanadian 3y ago
  Well, yes and no. If they reasonably believe they can make future revenue from it, it would be dishonest (and illegal) to value it at $0. I have no doubt that they are playing funny accounting games, but they have to play within the rules set by the IRS.
  - prepend 3y ago
    Dishonest isn’t what’s important. What’s important is legal and generally accepted and allowed accounting principles. Which I’m pretty sure they are following since they are required to follow these and are audited and checked up on by the SEC and others. But yeah, everyone is doing as funny accounting as possible. That’s why we have laws and rules to specify what’s allowed. And it would be truly insane to talk about this on investor calls and whatnot if it was illegal.
- slowmovintarget 3y ago
  It's only an asset if viewers can see it. If they never show it, and never put it on media, it's not an asset and has zero value for tax purposes. So poof Westworld disappears and is no longer an asset.

rsynnott 3y ago

In their list of examples of historical cancellations-before-airing, they missed one of the most baffling. "Heil Honey I'm Home!" was a 1990 British sitcom, stylistically parodying 1970s US sitcoms (over-the-top canned laughter, applause whenever characters enter the room, etc), about Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun as a suburban couple, along with their Jewish neighbours. Somehow, eight episodes of this were made (though not shown), and a pilot was actually _screened_, by a proper company (one of the predecessor companies to what's now Sky). It's very difficult to understand how anyone thought this was a reasonable thing to make.

j-bos 3y ago
Reminds me of the Monty Python skit about a bording house resident called Monsieur Hilter
pjc50 3y ago
More recently, an entire reality TV series was made before they noticed that one of the contestants had Nazi face tattoos: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/oct/30/skys-the-chop-axed-over-contestants-face-tattoos-linked-to-far-right https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/oct/30/skys-th...
LocalH 3y ago
Ade Edmondson's character in Bottom was named Eddie Hitler and no-one batted an eye
- rsynnott 3y ago
  Oh, sure, this _can_ work (particularly as a throwaway joke, as in Bottom - "Any relation?" "Yes!"). However, in the case of the above show, it... didn't. The pilot's available on Youtube, or at least used to be. It is Not Good. Hitler in sitcoms is a bit like brain surgery. When done carefully, judiciously, sparingly, by highly skilled professionals, it can work well, but the haphazard amateur approach is quite undesirable.