Seinfeld

Seinfeld began as a 23-minute pilot titled "The Seinfeld Chronicles".

The pilot was filmed at Stage 8 of Desilu Cahuenga studios, the same studio where The Dick Van Dyke Show was filmed (seen by the crew as a good omen), and was recorded at Ren-Mar Studios in Hollywood.

The pilot was first screened to a group of two dozen NBC executives in Burbank, California, in early 1989.

NBC's practice at the time was to recruit 400 households by phone to ask them to evaluate pilots it aired on an unused channel on its cable system.

An NBC research department memo summarized the pilot's performance among the respondents as "weak", which Warren Littlefield, then second-in-command in NBC's entertainment division, called "a dagger to the heart".

Comments included, "You can't get too excited about two guys going to the laundromat", "Jerry's loser friend George isn't a forceful character", "Jerry needs a stronger supporting cast", and "Why are they interrupting the stand-up for these stupid stories?" Seinfeld and David did not see the memo for several years, but after they became aware of it, they hung it in a bathroom on the set.