51Fn6RhuMLL._SX300_After Amazon’s “harrowing exercise in online democracy,” two adult comedy pilots remained: “Alpha House,” about a group of misfit senators who share a house in Washington, D.C. and “Betas,” a show about a group of friends hoping to hit the big time with a new social networking app.

Now, the company is looking to see if the wisdom of the crowds has given it a couple of hits.

The two shows will premiere in the next couple of weeks, with “Alpha House,” written by “Doonesbury” creator Gary Trudeau, launching on November 15, and “Betas” launching a week later on November 22.

Interestingly, the company has decided to take a page out of broadcast TV’s playbook when it comes to distributing the shows. Rather than unleash an entire season all at once like Netflix, the first three episodes of each show will be available the first week that they air, followed by one episode a week throughout the rest of the 11-episode season.

One of the advantages to that model is that the production crew doesn’t need to complete filming and post-production for the entire series in order for Amazon to launch it. Since Netflix fired the first shot in the original content wars, Amazon needs to catch up and establish itself as a viable competitor.

If you missed the pilots when they were up for voting, they’re available for Amazon Prime customers now at amazon.com/AIV.

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