Firefly cancelled!

[Mallus]

You know Mistwell....

.... you might change your mind after the next few seasons' of nothing but American Idol and Joe Millionaire clones...

Better funded public TV wouldn't be such a bad thing. My current favorite show is a BBC import called "Coupling". Beats the hell out of any sitcom currently running in the US, IMHO....

 

[Ranger REG]

You know what this all teaches us, boys and girls? It teaches us what we could have if we had maximally funded public television. Imagine, if you will, a TV channel with money, but not addicted to profit. One with the same mindset that kept Dr. Who on the air for decades...

Actually it taught me that most of us gamers are armchair critics who would not want to go through the trouble of obtaining a communications and business administration degrees to work in the TV industry and finally earn enough capital to start up a network aimed at science fiction fans, however little they may be.

After all, if we do so, we may be criticized by other armchair critics, and that's lethal to our already fragile egos.

 

[Mistwell]

Re: You know Mistwell....

.... you might change your mind after the next few seasons' of nothing but American Idol and Joe Millionaire clones...

Better funded public TV wouldn't be such a bad thing. My current favorite show is a BBC import called "Coupling". Beats the hell out of any sitcom currently running in the US, IMHO....

You do know that BBC America is NOT publically funded, right?

I am a big fan of So Graham Norton. Cracker is good too.

 

[Umbran]

Boy are you a funny guy. Yeah, we should go to a max public TV system, where your number of channels is reduced from 300 to 6.

Um, Mistwell, go back and read what I said, please.

Saying that really well funded public TV might bring us what we want does not in any way say that we should eliminate the usual corporate TV. There's no reason that the two could not coexist.

Next time, perhaps you'd like to consider if you are reading things correctly before you get so sarcastic, hm?

 

[Welverin]

Well we should use this experience to remind us all to tell the networks we are watching shows like this as soon as the start! That means sending letters and emails as soon as you find out you like it and making sure to let them know you're not in a neilson family. This way they'll know people were watching from the beginning and hopefully realize the neilson ratings just aren't representative.

 

[Mistwell]

Um, Mistwell, go back and read what I said, please.

Saying that really well funded public TV might bring us what we want does not in any way say that we should eliminate the usual corporate TV. There's no reason that the two could not coexist.

Next time, perhaps you'd like to consider if you are reading things correctly before you get so sarcastic, hm?

I read you correctly. Maximally funded public TV is usually mutually exclusive with extensive corporate TV. Empirically, in nations that very heavily fund lots of public television, the private television is small to nonexistant. Government subsidies have a significant impact on capitalism. They tend to eliminate the unsubsidized version of that industry, and television is not an exception. I'm sorry if my post offended you in some way, that was not my intent at all - I actually kinda thought you were joking a bit when you said it, or at least fantasizing while knowing you were leaving out the bad parts. I wouldn't have been sarcastic if I had thought you were being totally serious (well okay I might have, but that wasn't the case this time). Again, sorry if you thought I was being inappropriate in my response.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Well, I don`t know all the american/english expressions for TV "organization", but in Germany, we have a mixture.

There are ARD ("Das Erste"/"The First"), the ZDF ("Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen" / Second German TV), several (typically regional focuses, though most can be received in whole Germany, like N3, BF, SWF...) "Dritte"(Third) and the private TV stations like RTL, SAT1, Pro7, Kabel1, VOX and many other ones.

Interestingly, most of the (let`s call them forth) stations do broadcast Science Fiction (Startrek, Andromeda, Lexx) or Fantasy/Action (Buffy, Angel).
But: These shows come from foreign lands (mostly USA), obviosuly, they didn`t create them.
Own productions are rare, among the funded stations as among the private ones.
But there are still some, typically co-produced with other, foreign stations.

Well, what`s the point of this: No system guarantees the right support for us SciFi/Fantasy fans.
The funded stations have to answer the question: Are our productions useful for /accepted by the public, since the public pays for it.
The private have to ask: is our viewership great enough to afford these movies and series - do we have enough money from commercials?

A result seems to be: we have thousands (exaggeration) of "hospital"-shows, talkshows, "law"shows (that typically run in the afternoon) or crime shows, but only few really good shows. (in my opinion - though some of the shows are good - "Tatort" has brought several good characters and stories).

Mustrum Ridcully

 

[Umbran]

I read you correctly. Maximally funded public TV is usually mutually exclusive with extensive corporate TV. Empirically, in nations that very heavily fund lots of public television, the private television is small to nonexistant.

This may be true, however, said countries did not, IIRC, have a massive corporate Media Machine in place when they started such funding. Order of operations probably matters.

Plus, where did I say the funding should come from the government? All I said was that it be "public" - which does not equate with "government". Perhaps you don't watch PBS stations much? There are these pretty impressive "begathons" they hold a couple times a year. Without them, PBS stations would fold. But with them, a touch of government funding, and a few corporate donations, they manage some pretty impressive shows. Now, imagine if many more people gave money to support such stations.

Heck, you don't even need public TV. You only need publicly funded, non-profit production. Let's think about this for a sec...

Someone mentioned that Firefly cost $2 million per episode. So, you get 2 million people together, each pays a whole whopping $22, and there's the production of one season.

For $100 per year, the members of Two Million Fans Productions could fund the production of four such shows, and have enough left over for a half-season show like Witchblade.

Now, you laugh at me and say, "Ha! That handles producing the show, but not airing it." Well, that becomes easy. You see, the subscribers of TMFP don't want any profits. They only want to be able to see the show. So, they turn to a channel and say, "I will sell you this show for pennies. Zero overhead. You get every single cent of advertising revenue the show produces."

Now, you set TMFP on scooping up quality shows - Farscape, Firefly, Witchblade - things for which we know there's an audience.

People gripe a lot, "The Neilsen's don't represent us!" "The big networks don't care!". But in those cases, people are griping about something for which they've paid nothing more than waiting for the commercials to end. Well, folks, you get what you pay for, now don't you?

 

[Whodat]

People gripe a lot, "The Neilsen's don't represent us!" "The big networks don't care!". But in those cases, people are griping about something for which they've paid nothing more than waiting for the commercials to end. Well, folks, you get what you pay for, now don't you?

Only if you look at from the perspective of “You (the viewer) don’t pay for these programs, so be happy with what you get.”

But I think you’re missing the bigger picture.

Networks go through a lot of effort trying to find out how many people watch certain programs at certain times. They also need to know which demographics watch what shows. This helps them know which advertisements to run during certain programs.

This research has even spawned its own industry. AC Nielsen harvests these numbers and in turn sells their data back to the networks.

Yes. They sell the information. It isn’t free.

So, in a hypothetical situation wherein a show (for this example, I’ll call it… “Farscape”) had a loyal following, but let’s say that the viewing numbers were not accurately represented in the Neilsen research data. Now let’s say that the network which airs Farscape (I’ll call them “Sci-Fi”) had shelled out money to AC Nielsen for their flawed research data. Would you say that the network “got what it paid for?”

Or look at the advertisers who paid money to the Sci-Fi channel for their airtime. Advertisers, who have been told which programs are being watched by key demographic audiences. Advertisers who can pull ads from programs which they deem offensive, or aren’t reaching the right audience. Would you say that the advertisers “got what they paid for?”

The problem, as I have stated before, is that the rating system is broken. If there are 250 million people in the U.S., and roughly 95% of the households have television sets, how can Neilsen Media Research poll only 5,000 households and call that a sampling?

I find it staggering that in an age of cell phones that e-mail, televisions that get 300+ channels via satellite, and self-adhesive postage stamps (don’t ask), NMR is relying on the same polling size that they were using twenty years ago.

I’ve heard it mentioned that NMR is “looking into” an eventual sampling of TiVo viewers – with no mention on why it hasn’t already happened, or how much longer it will take to implement.

When NMR finally starts looking into larger slices of what we actually are watching – then sponsors will be getting what they are paying for.

/End rant.

I do like your idea of a fan-based production company, though.

"I'd buy that for a dollar!"

 

[Villano]

This may be true, however, said countries did not, IIRC, have a massive corporate Media Machine in place when they started such funding. Order of operations probably matters.

Plus, where did I say the funding should come from the government? All I said was that it be "public" - which does not equate with "government". Perhaps you don't watch PBS stations much? There are these pretty impressive "begathons" they hold a couple times a year. Without them, PBS stations would fold. But with them, a touch of government funding, and a few corporate donations, they manage some pretty impressive shows. Now, imagine if many more people gave money to support such stations.

Heck, you don't even need public TV. You only need publicly funded, non-profit production. Let's think about this for a sec...

Someone mentioned that Firefly cost $2 million per episode. So, you get 2 million people together, each pays a whole whopping $22, and there's the production of one season.

For $100 per year, the members of Two Million Fans Productions could fund the production of four such shows, and have enough left over for a half-season show like Witchblade.

Now, you laugh at me and say, "Ha! That handles producing the show, but not airing it." Well, that becomes easy. You see, the subscribers of TMFP don't want any profits. They only want to be able to see the show. So, they turn to a channel and say, "I will sell you this show for pennies. Zero overhead. You get every single cent of advertising revenue the show produces."

Now, you set TMFP on scooping up quality shows - Farscape, Firefly, Witchblade - things for which we know there's an audience.

People gripe a lot, "The Neilsen's don't represent us!" "The big networks don't care!". But in those cases, people are griping about something for which they've paid nothing more than waiting for the commercials to end. Well, folks, you get what you pay for, now don't you?

I have 2 problems with what you said.

First, I doubt that this system would result in a different television landscape than we have now. There would still be a million reality shows because that's what a lot of (stupid) people watching tv want to see and would be willing to pay for.

Also, if one show does this and succeeds, then others will follow suit. Suddenly, you have a hundred new shows vying for tv time (some of which might concievibly be so bad that a network wouldn't want to air them no matter the cost).

And, while it would be nice to think that the investors wouldn't want any profit, I don't think that would happen. At the very least, they would want some creative control which, if given, would severly drop the quality of the show (most people aren't professional writers for a reason; they can't write and/or aren't creative).

And, regardless of how cheap the show is to produce, advertising is the bread and butter of the industry. The networks would still want to know haw many people are watching in order to determine their commerial rates (think of how the commercial time during the Super Bowl is much, much higher than any time else).

If they totally ditched the rating system, it would fall to judging which shows have the most money backing them since that means the most viewers or richest viewers (2 things advertisers are most intereseted in). This would mean that people who could invest the most would have the most control of tv.

Secondly, what do you mean by "people are griping about something for which they've paid nothing more than waiting for the commercials to end"? Unless you're relying on an antenna, you are probably paying a cable or satellite bill.