What does 'greenlighting' mean in the television business?

What does 'greenlighting' mean in the television business?

When a reality television show is first pitch to its network, it won't be greenlit but it might get purchased, meaning that something will be committed. They'll say, We want the rights to this so don't pitch this to anybody else. It's not a TV show yet. We are not promising it's gonna be on TV. We just want the right to look at it further." They'll pay for that right to look at it further. Then they'll go through some internal process to figure out whether they want to greenlight the reality show, and greenlighting it is actually saying, "We're going to commit millions of dollars to making this an actual television show on TV for people to see."