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When Social Media Meets TV, Are the Results Worth Watching?
blackbearnh writes "Forums and chat groups are letting fans organize and discuss their favorite shows with increasing ease, but what happens when the writers and producers of TV shows start paying attention? An article in today's Christian Science Monitor takes a look at how the production staff of recent shows has interacted with their fan base, and how the fans are having an increasing influence on not only the popularity, but also the plot and characters."
A lot of producers and show-runners will avoid fan boards and social media sites for their shows not because they don't value the fans, but because of legal issues. If some fan posts a story idea and a similar story shows up later on the show (whether by coincidence or not) without crediting the fan, you're looking at a lawsuit. Most such "They took yur ideas!" suits are laughable and end up going nowhere (unless you're Harlan Ellison, who seemed to make a career out of claiming everyone stole everything from him). But if the plaintiff can show that show execs and writers were active participants in the same fan board where he posted the idea, you've got a real problem.
I know this may go against the grain but, with a few exceptions, I really do think it's best to keep the fans and show-runners in their own separate cages, for the most part. A lot of fans will feel weird posting honestly if they know the people they're criticizing are right there. And show execs are setting themselves up for legal and PR headaches if they start getting accused of stealing story ideas from the fans.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
When Lost was about to end, the various forums were abuzz with lots of ending ideas that all were about a hundred times better than the actual ending. Kinda wish they'd listened to fans in that case.
Nothing is more dangerous than a programmer with a screwdriver.
We already had facebook the movie. Why do we need facebook the TV show?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
It doesn't have to be so negative as that, though.
For instance, I've wondered for the last 10 years or so what the fuck the people that cancelled Firefly were thinking. Ditto with the show Jericho from a few years ago. Both shows had massive outpourings of fan support but got cancelled anyway (Firefly was sabotaged from the outset, in my opinion).
I think you'd be hard-pressed to find someone that didn't wonder what the hell goes on in these meetings where TV and Movie execs come up with their shit. More and more it seems like the good shows get axed, the good movie concepts end up in development hell, and only the crap ends up on both the Big Screen and the small one. Probably why I barely watch TV these days and haven't been to a movie in years...
I don't wonder at all.
You are being yelled at to make money for your network, and you have two options on how to do it. You can pay a half dozen juggalos (or "real" housewives") a couple million dollars a year to act like idiots and make hundreds of millions profit. Or, you can spend hundreds of millions on a high-tech sci-fi scripted TV show that doesn't even break even.
If you don't make money for the network. You get fired.
What do you do?
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For instance, I've wondered for the last 10 years or so what the fuck the people that cancelled Firefly were thinking. Ditto with the show Jericho
I'm pretty sure they were thinking that they weren't a charity and thus did not have much interest in funding shows that were losing money. Just because a fanbase is extremely vocal doesn't make it large. This I think is the inherent problem with writers/directors/developers paying too much attention to social media and fan forums. The fact is, the few hundred or thousand people who post endlessly on forums simply are not a representative group of the several million people who watch the show or movie or play the game. Instead, they all represent the same hardcore group of fans, who's interests and desires likely do not reflect the interests or desires of the overall community. But, when the media covers a game/show/movie, they turn to the forums and act like it represents the community, which in turn puts pressure on the studio to put pressure on the creator to cow to the demands, regardless of how detrimental they are to the game/show/movie. It's especially tough with TV shows, since ultimately the viewer is watching an incomplete work. Viewers may think they disagree with a particular character, plot line or scene, but it's possible it's setting up for something they actually would like. But you get a meddling studio telling the writers that the fans hate X and it needs to be changed and you never get to the payoff. Worse, this kind of crap tends to lead to plot holes and dangling plot lines, and if it goes to far the whole show falls apart.
Maybe, but it's certainly not clear.
Serenity, for example, did not even break even based on worldwide box office receipts. (It was very, very close -- but still under.) It went into the black with the DVD sales, but that is still a lackluster performance.
Assuming that the TV series performed similarly--hovering around the break even mark--it's a pretty easy decision to cancel it. Ordinarily I am fine with things breaking even: For a business, as an example, breaking even means you paid all your vendors, all your employees and all your expenses; it's dangerous territory in that there is no room for expansion or regression, but a lot of good can be done by "only" breaking even.
But it's not quite the same with a TV show, because it's not just about the show itself. Rather, one has to factor in the opportunity cost of taking up the extremely finite set of (valuable) time slots that the show takes. Making $10MM on a show sounds good unless you're told you could be making $30MM by airing some other show instead.
Would it have done better? Yes. Would it have done better enough to avoid cancellation? It's an open question, certainly not "pretty obvious" one way or another. $39MM at the box office is a poor showing.
Before anybody has a fit, I actually liked Firefly and Serenity, I simply realize that my liking something doesn't mean large numbers of other people like it. In my fact liking a show typically serves as a death knell. (Sorry folks.)
Actually, now that I think about it, Star Trek almost suffered the same fate. They tried to cancel that show after every season, it wasn't the moneymaker that The Powers That Be wanted, and look at the franchise today. Four subsequent TV series, Eleven Feature Films (with a twelfth on the way), countless merchandise...it's a billion dollar franchise today.
I truly believe if they would have stuck with the show it would have been just as successful, but everything's instant gratification these days. If a show doesn't capture enormous ratings and millions of dollars in ad revenue from the start, it's doomed. They gave Firefly, what, 3 whole months? Star Trek: The Next Generation's first season was a flaming pile of shit and that show lasted 7 fucking years and spawned four feature films...I wonder how their early ratings compared to Firefly's?
Letting fans take control of tv shows is a bad idea, and will make tv scripts be written like so much bad fan fiction. The key issue for me is that the crowdsourcing of fans tends to favour the familiar and desirable. This discourages creativity, as you can't introduce new characters and situations without removing the familiar first, and fans will always agitate to maintain the familiar. What you get in the end is a melow saccharinne version of the show, with no unexpected twists that might shake the diehard fan's loyalty, but that ends up alienating those very same fans
" In my fact liking a show typically serves as a death knell."
Please tell me you like American Idol.
I think the problem with having fans write the shows is best summed up by a comment from a City Of Heroes developer on pleasing the players: "If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough."
Your lack of knowledge is for the best. I still rue the day someone told me about Jersey Shore.