pühapäev, 19. detsember 2010

Sell Stargate Universe to another channel?

I recently posted this to GateWorld, but getting it here in my blog is just faster. I slightly edited the text for less ambiguity and better grammar.

On causes and effects

1. I read some of the possible factors for cancellation by SyFy and one of them was timing, where a four-month delay throughout the winter is bad for an arc-based show, because new and casual viewers could quickly lose interest, which is why ABC kept airing "Lost" without much interruption. I belive that the choice to move the series to Tuesdays was a bad move (schoolkids are busy doing homework, other people working inside a week, while Fridays are freer).

2. The other problem is in marketing the show: First-viewing rights went to Anglo-Saxon countries (U.S., then Canada, then UK and Australia) and then some other country's channel got the episodes later or that channel wasn't quite interested: people in that country already had the episodes online (by any means): iTunes does not extend to enough useful territories, Hulu is only U.S.-based and did anyone consider having the episodes up on VEVO (an ad-supported YouTube project)?

The trick is in timing: Some very successful movies (The Matrix series came to mind) are screened near-simultaneously worldwide to avoid losses in second and third countries, because by the time a movie screens there, people in those might have already seen the material outside the movie theatre and may thus stay away from there.

Crazy idea #1: is for MGM to produce a quality SGU episode and launch it as a movie, worldwide (with nearly the same production budget). And many episodes back-to-back that way. I know it hasn't been done before.

Crazy idea #2: In trying to continue SGU on another channel, a collection of interested TV networks from around the world (I first thought Europe, where Atlantis was very popular, but then there's Australia, NZ, Japan, and maybe some friendly Latin-American countries) could create a collective financing pool to help produce SGU with the current producers keeping the creative freedom and all those channels could then near-simultaneously air the episodes. This would off-set the need to get individual episodes by ambiguous means. Now, how to get the channels interested in product and project, is another matter.

In addition, good DVD marketing could also help.

Farscape had the Library project and the Military/Navy project — donate VHS's (at the time) and DVD's to libraries and military/navy outposts. We could do the same and even more.

(This was my first post on GateWorld)

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