xhonzi said:

Babylon 5 - Outstayed its welcome and new spinoffs- Cancelled.

xhonzi said:

nuBSG seemed to have a good run with good production value.

...How the hell is B5 considered cancelled and, 2nd BSG not???? That makes zero sense. Ron Moore wanted 5 seasons, got 4. JMS wanted 5 seasons, got 5 seasons! Both their spin-offs got cancelled. . .
Anyways on the topic subject. I think it's just a time where networks are afriad of letting strange worlds and, new civilizations on the tv again. So sci-fi lite stuff gets okay'd. "Chuck" is sci-fi but, it's only got a few hints of it. "V" you mostly see the aliens in human disguises. Caprica looks like Earth for the most part. This conversly created a void without much extraordinary worlds on tv. So it made it easier for Avatar & other sci-fi movies to sweep in the money 'cause tv sci-fi was stuck in office type looks w/little to no aliens.

Mind you guys, sci-fi has cable to fund it now instead of national TV which which would be taking a bigger risk if they went with it. Cable channels tend to know their audiences better, hence why we (had) the Sci-Fi Channel.

Visual media is going through a bit of a paradigm shift.

The technology to do things like HD filming, special effects and editing are becoming relatively cheap but good amateur actors and writers are still hard to find.

It still costs money to produce a professional standard show and to secure that funding television financiers tend to still use advertising and the outdated ratings system to calculate potential future profits.

The result is a bone-yard of canceled story based series.

If now fan film makers and fan editors got together with some up and coming writing and acting talent and produced a few cracking good original mini-series and offered them for download with an honesty box donation collection the middle-man could be cut out entirely.

They would rarely make mega millions but hopefully most would break even and the contributors would have a great show-reel for professional work and the experience to do more quality amateur work.

Something similar happened in the late nineties when audio editing became relatively cheap and people started churning out some pretty amazing audio dramas (some of which went on to make a fair return but they were largely made out of the love of story telling).

 

That could be because it was new.

Some bands put out their music this way and because it's been going longer they actually find real fans who pay way over the normal purchase price because they support the band balancing out those who pay little or nothing at all.

If you cut out the middle men whatever gets paid ends up in your collection tin without having to give over the major chunk to a corporate fat cat.

So while it might take time it's pretty likely that at the least you will make your money back.

It depends, if your intention is to make money then you need a viable business model, if your intention is to make stories than all you need is a viable means to raise funds and recoup costs.