On the Lot is a single season reality show and online competition for filmmaking, produced by Steven Spielberg, Mark Burnett and David Goffin.
[1] The show, which aired on Fox, featured filmmakers competing in weekly elimination competitions, with the ultimate prize of a million-dollar development deal at DreamWorks.
Votes could be made online at thelot.com, in addition to landline calls and Verizon text messages, and were permitted for two hours after the show.
The show also aired on SABC 2 in South Africa from July 19 until early August, when it was removed from the schedule.
Of them, 48 resided in the United States (21 of them in Los Angeles, CA) and 40 already worked professionally in the film industry.
Boxes are colored to indicate weekly groupings:[14][15] The judges for the audition rounds were Carrie Fisher, Brett Ratner, and Garry Marshall.
[16][better source needed] In round one, the 50 semi-finalists were each given one of five loglines, and had approximately twelve hours to expand the idea into a full story.
The remaining contestants were given 24 hours to write, shoot, and edit a two-and-a-half-minute short film based on the theme "out of time".
[10] In round three, each of the 24 remaining contestants was given one hour with a professional set and film crew to shoot a given page of script.
Almost none of this final challenge was aired on the televised episode, but short selections of the task and judgment footage were included in several outtake clips on the show's official site.
The one-page shorts were categorized into four different scenarios: the rotunda, the law library, the cop bar and the bedroom.
In week ten, the final five contestants were tasked with making films featuring automobiles for "Road Night."
In week eleven, four remaining contestants were tasked with making films inspired by the contest-winning logline: "A man wakes up, rolls out of bed and finds himself in a dress...but can't remember what happened the night before."
However, like its premiere, the ratings did not hold up after the lead-in show ended, losing half of Dance's audience.
The Fox Network and Univision tied for fourth for the entire night at 1.8/3, behind CBS, ABC and NBC, respectively, which mostly aired reruns.
For the targeted audience, Lot averaged a 1.3 adults 18–49 rating, according to Nielsen overnights, placing fifth in its first airing in its regular timeslot, behind even Univision.
[21] Fox tried a different approach for the fourth episode, having it lead-in for the season finale of ratings hit, House.
[22] The fifth episode was another attempt at coupling Lot with House, which resulted in worse ratings than the previous week.
Lot had 1.2/4 share, or 2.8 million viewers, behind top-rated America's Got Talent and the NBA Finals.
[24] According to Nielsen overnights, Lot dipped even lower on its seventh episode, with only a 1.0 rating, tying it with ABC's shows Fast Cars and Superstars and George Lopez.
[25] For its finale and the announcement of the winner, the reality series saw a slight bump as it moved up to 1.1/4 in the 18–49 demo, although the net remained well behind the other major broadcasters in the 8 o'clock hour.
Variety wrote, "it’s hard to imagine this ill-conceived Fox reality show was sold on anything more than the “Steven Spielberg meets Mark Burnett” marquee billing.
This awkward mish-mash owes as much to Burnett's “The Apprentice” as to the little-seen “Project Greenlight,” and the premiere's weak opening ratings, despite an “American Idol” lead-in Tuesday, don't bode well for a boffo network run.