Is it? Have the economics of TV budgets changed to the point that it's no longer financially viable? It seems that the Original Star Trek had pretty darn good production values back in the day.
Terminator - Cancelled
Firefly - Cancelled
Babylon 5 - Outstayed its welcome and new spinoffs- Cancelled.
Star Trek - ditto
nuBSG seemed to have a good run with good production value.
What do you think?
Most of the highest grossing movies of all time are SciFi. Almost all of them are "genre". Why does it seem that Genre TV is considered to be such a poor performer?
IT'S MY TRILOGY, AND I WANT IT NOW!
"[George Lucas] rebooted the franchise in 1997 without telling anyone." -skyjedi2005
"Yeah, well, George says a lot of things..." a young 1997 xhonzi on RASSM
"They're my movies." -George Lucas. 19 people won oscars for their work on Star Wars (1977) and George Lucas wasn't one of them.
xhonzi said:
Babylon 5 - Outstayed its welcome and new spinoffs- Cancelled.
xhonzi said:
nuBSG seemed to have a good run with good production value.
http://twister111.tumblr.com
Previous Signature preservation link
Has there ever been a time when good Sci-Fi was on TV with any regularity?
Now seems to have about the same as most other times. Stargate still has a spinoff, "V" is back on, we have Doctor Who, SyFy has a couple shows that look decent, and theres a lot of hype for Terranova, some new show about time travel.
EDIT
I never saw them, but aren't "Flashforward" and "The Event" major network sci-fi?
xhonzi said:
It seems that the Original Star Trek had pretty darn good production values back in the day.
While it was no cheap-o show, TOS did cut a lot of corners.
My favorite is the half-black/half-white episode with Frank Gorshim, where they have an invisible starship.
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.
A Goon in a Gaggle of 'em
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a professional standard show and to secure that funding television financiers tend to still use advertising and the outdated ratings system to calculate potential future profits.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).
Bingowings said:
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.
Yeah, but don't fans just love stealing?
Didn't the "Humble Indie Bundle" of games let fans pick a price, and most fans paid somewhere between jack and shit, and even with a minimum price of one cent, over 25% of fans pirated it anyways?
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.
Bingowings said:
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.
Has there ever been any successful examples of depending on fan generosity?
The only example that's even similar that I can think of was "Dr. Horrible's Blog" and that was produced by a group that already had a huge following from real media. It also was only available for free for a short time.
Idealism aside, a business model that depends on a small percentage of rabid fans to be willing to pay more than the entertainment is worth in order to cover for the countless hordes of thieves strikes me as unlikely to work well.
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.
TheBoost said:
Bingowings said:
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.
Has there ever been any successful examples of depending on fan generosity?
The only example that's even similar that I can think of was "Dr. Horrible's Blog" and that was produced by a group that already had a huge following from real media. It also was only available for free for a short time.
Idealism aside, a business model that depends on a small percentage of rabid fans to be willing to pay more than the entertainment is worth in order to cover for the countless hordes of thieves strikes me as unlikely to work well.
The semi-related The Guild survived on fan donations for the first season before picking up business sponsors (Microsoft, among others). It's now through four (albeit short) seasons. And it's always been free on the web.