SEATTLE, May 29 (UPI) —
America’s Amazon shopping website says it has ordered its first five original series based in part on customer response to online pilots for the shows.
The company announced plans Wednesday to stream "Alpha House," "Betas," "Annebots," "Creative Galaxy" and "Tumbleaf" exclusively on Prime Instant Video Amazon and LOVEFiLM later this year and in 2014.
"We are thrilled at the enthusiastic customer response to our first original pilots," Roy Price, director of Amazon Studios, said in a statement.
"We built Amazon Studios so that customers could help decide which stories would make the very best movies and TV shows. It’s exciting to see the process in motion, doing exactly what we set out to do. The success of this first set of pilots has given us the push to try this approach with even more shows — this is just the beginning."
"We’re thrilled to have emerged safely from this harrowing exercise in online democracy," said Garry Trudeau, creator of "Alpha House," a show about four senators sharing a house in Washington.
"All of us at ‘Alpha House’ thank both Amazon and its wise and wonderful customer base for such a happy outcome. As the future of episodic TV packs up and moves to Seattle, we hope the audience will continue to have as much fun watching the show as we have making it."
"Alpha House" stars John Goodman, Clark Johnson, Matt Malloy and Mark Consuelos.
Set in the land of Silicon Valley start-ups, "Betas" follows four friends as they attempt to strike it rich with a new mobile social networking app. Ed Begley Jr., Jon Daly, Joe Dinicol, Charlie Saxton and Karan Soni star in the show.
"Annebots," "Creative Galaxy" and "Tumbleaf" are children’s programs.