Now that Netflix is stirring up a whole lot of viewers for its original series like House of Cards and this little show called Arrested Development, other media bigwigs are trying to figure out how to get a piece of this sweet, sweet action. To that end, Amazon announced today that it’s planning five new TV series in the nearish future.

Amazon picked the winning shows out of 14 pilots it already filmed, using viewer feedback to make its choice, reports Reuters.

The pilots currently in the pipeline are:

“Alpha House”, a political comedy starring John Goodman; “Betas”, a comedy about start-up culture in Silicon Valley; “Annebots”, a kids’ show about robots; “Creative Galaxy”, an animated art adventure series; and “Tumbleaf”, another kids’ show about a small blue fox named Fig.

The shows will debut only on Amazon’s Prime Instant Video service later on in 2013 and also in early 2014.

“We’re thrilled to have emerged safely from this harrowing exercise in online democracy,” said Garry Trudeau, the famed cartoonist behind Alpha House of beating out the other competitors. That show will start airing in November.

It’s a big step for Amazon, and should put the heat on Netflix and Hulu, both of which are already in the original programming game. This whole democratic process of picking out TV shows for future viewing could also go over well with the public — because getting to pick out what you actually want to see instead of being forced to scroll through innumerable channels filled with things you don’t want to see? Why, that’s just the American way. Or at least, it should be [ahem, cough, cable companies, cough].

Amazon moving ahead with five original TV series [Reuters]

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