Can Sci-Fi Fans Face the Future?

khendron writes "The Toronto Star has an article about sci-fi fans and their ongoing habit of protesting the cancellation of their beloved TV shows. From mailing bras to starting malicious Internet rumours, devoted viewers try all sorts of things to protect what they love. That's not always good news."

Can the fans be in control?

[MrAndrews]

This came up a few days ago with the "pay-per-view series" story [slashdot.org], and in a thread attached there some of us contemplated something of a plan to actually make a series based on fan interest... like a middleman-less version of broadcast TV.

Along those lines, I made a page outlining the "business plan" [dustrunners.com] and asked for input as to how much you personally would pay per episode of a particular show. I did it kind of late in the game, though, so only about 400 people saw it. I'd like to increase the sample if I could...

The idea related to TFA is this: if you have a block of fans that are fanatical enough to gather hundreds of thousands of signatures, to pull a sinking series out of the abyss... why not actually give them what they want? If you get subscriptions for a season of a show from enough people, you can easily produce a show, and you will make bigger profits than before while still giving the fans what they want. Especially in sci-fi, where the audience is more internet-aware and a lot more passionate, this seems like a great solution for all parties.

Anyway, if you'll at least take the time to vote at the bottom of that page, it would be very interesting to see how Enterprise's target audience actually feels about the idea.

Re:Not entirely true - COST matters

[olddotter]

Each of the 6 stars of freinds were paid $1,000,000 per episode the last season. Assuming all the 100's of other people worked for free, that would be 6 episodes of freinds.

Sure

[rsilvergun]

There's anime. Where do you think the fan base for all these shows went.

It's very simple

[gothzilla]

From the article:
"I mean, we started out with 13 million viewers on the pilot, and we somehow managed to drive 11 million of them away."

There's 11 million other trek fans that feel Enterprise sucked with 2 million that stayed. Sounds to me like an overwhelming majority feel Enterprise was a terrible show and it's obvious the remaining fans are simply fanatic activists. There's nothing wrong with being a die-hard fan, but the ratings pretty much prove how terrible a show it was. I could understand protesting the cancellation of a star trek series that was produced well, but why the worst of the series?

Watch Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis instead!

[mustangdavis]

Forget Star Trek - it has been over exposed!!

Instead of paying $36 million for one more season, those fans should use that money and buy all of the Stargate SG-1 seasons on DVD, watch tem, and then follow the current series on TV.

It is much cheaper - the plot line is MUCH more interesting, and the special effects are better as well.

In fact, the Stargate series now has all sorts of sweet ships, so they won't have to give up on the idea of flying around in space - they'd only have to give up on the concept of anti-matter and start believing in crystals and naquada!!!

Sci-Fi has advanced beyond Star Trek with series such as Stargate and BSG - it's time for everyone to move on!!!!

This isn't you're father's Sci-Fi!!!

Re:Fan Campaigns that worked

[Dionysus]

As well, MST has the distinct honor that it's feature film marks the only time in history that such a large group of fans wrote to a movie studio demanding that a movie be made that it actually worked.

Only time? What about Firefly [imdb.com]?

Re:Watch Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis inste

[ducomputergeek]

Not exactly sure where SG-1 is going too. Part of what made the show one of the better film to TV series, at the beginning at least on Showtime, was the fact the show came in DD souround sound, no commericals, and the fact that Michael Shanks looks and sounds way too much like James Spader.

It seems like at the end of this season a lot of things are going to get rapped up. **Spoiler Alert from here on**

Richard Dean Anderson will be gone next season, personal reasons, the whole Jaffa rebellion and war against the gauold apparently are going to be pretty well wrapped up along with the replicators, and if that's the case, its almost like asking what's left to do? They apparently are going to be going off into a new tanget with more about the acients, but they have Altantis to do that...

Still there is a couple good highlights, Ben Browder (Farscape) is joining the cast to replace the O'Neil smart-ass casting (good choice in my humble opinion). Also Amanda Tapping will be missing the first part of the season due to having a baby so they are bringing in Claudia Black (Farscape) for a 5 episode story arc. So for their first part of Season 9. Wise move of Sci-Fi parts. Number of Farscape fans also probably watch SG-1 now, if not it might bring a few over to the show.

Also the whole being lost in space thing gets resolved too by the end of season 1 of Atlantis. So it hopefully Atlantis won't get the stalness of say Voyager.