Jon Daly, a regular actor and writer on Comedy Central’s Kroll Show and the host of the Earwolf podcast Rafflecast, has been cast in the lead role in a new comedy pilot from Amazon, Variety reports. The show is called Betas, and it’s one of several comedy pilots online retailer Amazon is developing in hopes of turning some of them into its first comedy series. Daly will star as Hobbes, a guy in Silicon Valley trying to raise money for his app called “BRB†so that he can move on from his ex-wife and reward the quartet of computer geeks who coded the app. The show was created by newcomers Evan Endicott and Josh Stoddard, and Due Date/King of the Hill writers Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland are onboard as showrunners.
Betas is one of seven pilots in development at Amazon, a list of shows that also includes The Onion Presents: The News, starring Jeffrey Tambor, and Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau’s political comedy Alpha House, starring John Goodman. Unlike major TV networks, who never air the pilots they don’t pick up to series, Amazon will be debuting all of its pilots online and picking up the ones that viewers like most, which is just one way that this new streaming TV model already makes more sense than the dying broadcast model.