Fans Attempting to Pay for Enterprise 847
An anonymous reader writes "What started of as a suggestion to pay for season 5 of Enterprise has actully snowballed into a project that no one has ever attempted before, that of getting fans to pay for the production costs of a tv series. It has brought on board a raft of people including lawyers. I wonder if the quoted $50 to $80 million is reachable." I gotta say that Enterprise has been better this season, but I feel like it's still only mediocre. Battlestar Galactica might be the best SciFi airing right now. And I woulda chipped in for more Firefly in a heartbeat.
Misapproriated Funds (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow, talk about fanaticism! I mean, I like Star Trek too, but when was the last time you saw a bunch of desperate couch potatos try to put $80 mil together for medical research, space exploration, or charitable distribution? Seriously, luxuries beyond beer seem like a major drain on mankind sometimes...
Let it die... (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's see... about 6 weeks ago? (Score:2, Insightful)
yeah, i believe it (Score:2, Insightful)
the only tv shows that ever have or ever will make me surrender money are on PBS.
Standard Setting (Score:3, Insightful)
I hope this never happens for a show just because of the standard it would set.
I look at it this way... (Score:5, Insightful)
PBS? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Proposal doesn't go far enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Misapproriated Funds (Score:3, Insightful)
No one (except maybe your wife/gf, but this is slashdot) tells you what you can and can't do with your money... it's not one person donating millions, each person is asked for a small amount.
They expect to raise 50-80 Million? (Score:5, Insightful)
Investors, ownership and a legal bunfight? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sad! Man this is Sad! (Score:2, Insightful)
Good god people, what's this world coming too? Way to let "The Man" know how much of our soles he ownes!
If they come up with the 50-80 million dollars. I'm gonna cry.
it's their money (Score:3, Insightful)
that 80 million dollars isnt gonna come in $20,000 donations, I'd bet. Just lots of fans donating what they can. They think this cause is worthy. If there are enough of them who think so to make it happen, who says they are wrong?
Re:Misapproriated Funds (Score:5, Insightful)
You've got to be kidding. Everyone tells me what I should do with my money. The governement is the worst. They have guns and prisons for me if I don't spend my money in ways they accept.
Lottery (Score:2, Insightful)
Now there is a "carrot" for those who want to donate and a way out if enough money isn't raised.
Re:already paying for cable... (Score:1, Insightful)
Unless you're a multi-millionaire, I think that you're vastly overestimating the value of the amount you're gonna be sending. $15.00 doesn't buy much.
Re:Let it die... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Let's see... about 6 weeks ago? (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:I look at it this way... (Score:3, Insightful)
Misdirected Vigor (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Let's see... about 6 weeks ago? (Score:3, Insightful)
The top level post said:
"but when was the last time you saw a bunch of desperate couch potatos try to put $80 mil together for medical research, space exploration, or charitable distribution?" (emphasis mine).
The anon coward pointed out the tsunami disaster for this.
Re:Proposal doesn't go far enough (Score:3, Insightful)
If they owned the right to it, maybe they would be allowed to ditribute it themselves independantly of the studio
I'm thinking legaly on bittorrent would be really cool
Re:Let it die... (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, do you accost people queueing at the office box and ask them to give their movie money to tsunami aid? If it is ok to pay $10 for a movie, why can't I donate $10 towards the next startrek without being attacked by do-gooders such as yourself?
Not really a true argument (Score:3, Insightful)
Such an argument has merit on it's face, but when you say this you are making a assumptive judgement on the part of the donors. Who's to say that the donors didn't already donate to tsunami relief? And who's to say what they already donated wasn't enough? And who's to say exactly how much per each person per amount of income is "the right amount" to donate?
The fact is you can't. Therefore the argument falls down because you can't apply it to each case uniformly. If you can prove that each and every single person in this campaign is a single white male earning $100,000+ a year and gave absolutely nothing top charity, then you can say it is a misappropriation.
I know I'm nitpicking but under the same argument, all money spent to produce Battlestar Galactica is also a misappropriation because it's for luxury and therefore should go to tsunami relief. Half of slashdot thinks trek should die but watch slashdot mobilize if Galactica suddenly dies an early death. How's that for a double standard?
Re:Misapproriated Funds (Score:4, Insightful)
Money doesn't work like that.
You remind me of the guy who said the Penny Arcade Christmas fund money should have gone to a more deserving cause. It's just a totally bizarre statement. Go out and raise money for whatever good cause you want; it's got absolutely nothing to do with this. (Money doesn't disappear when it's spent).
So I guess people should abandon all entertainment (Score:3, Insightful)
So should all theater season ticket holders destroy theaters everywhere by not supporting the theater or ever buying passes?
And why should anyone ever go to a movie, or a concert? That money obvisouly is better spent on food for the poor.
I'm sure the dissolution of all entertainment everywhere so that you could provde a larger band-aid to problems that are primarily political in nature would make the world a happier place. Am I allowed to at least sketch drawings in the sand as long as the stick is free?
Why would they ever go for it? (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, in order to get them to go for this, you'd have to cover the lost advertisement revenue AS WELL AS the production costs. That's probably going to be over $150 million at least.
Re:Proposal doesn't go far enough (Score:3, Insightful)
Which isn't a bad idea. Why assume that the broadcast medium is the proper mechanism. If enough fans sign on for a subscription service to be able to 1) produce the show, 2) master the DVDs, and 3) distribute the DVDs to subscribers, especially if it could be done at a reasonable profit, then why not try a subscription-based model rather than old-fashioned broadcast TV?
Re:Not really a true argument (Score:5, Insightful)
If I can't spend any of my money on myself, and on things that I like, WHAT'S THE POINT?
Every good person has their own way of giving back to society and the planet. I volunteer at an animal sanctuary; others donate lots of money to charity, and so on.
But I still feel we should have the right to spend money on ourselves without being called "selfish". Sheesh.
-Z
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I look at it this way... (Score:2, Insightful)
"luxuries beyond beer" (Score:3, Insightful)
I think this was tried before.... (Score:2, Insightful)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/03/16/135
Re:yeah, i believe it (Score:5, Insightful)
But in fact, science fiction and other forms of speculation DO have an important role to play. If you watch PBS a lot (as do I) you know that they will frequently run documentaries on subjects such as the Apollo lunar program. While the documentaries will focus on the 'how it was done' aspect and interview scientists and researchers and other individuals who worked on those projects, they will also sometimes mention the inspiration for them. And it's important to pay attention to those things.
Take the case of Jules Verne, for instance. Verne was a prodigious science fiction writer who imagined Project Apollo to an amazing degree of accuracy -- his ship looked roughly like Apollo's command and service modules, was roughly the same size, carried a three-person crew, was named Columbia, and was launched from the coast of Florida. This is almost exactly how the Apollo program operated by the time the first actual manned lunar mission was launched in 1968 (Apollo 8; no landing actually occurred until 1969.)
Now, while it is true that many people did not believe such a thing was possible (Robert Goddard was laughed at for believing that a rocket would function in a vacuum, for instance) and Verne's stories were dismissed as fantasy (nuclear-powered submarines!? Are you crazy!?) they came true, in time.
Going back to Project Apollo, you may or may not remember that the first few crews to visit the Moon were quarantined upon their return to make sure that there were no dangerous organisms on them or their clothing or in their spacecraft. The fear of a possible contamination of Earth was raised, in part, by Michael Crichton's novel The Andromeda Strain, as well as by points raised by the scientific community. As a result, quarantines continued until we had enough experience with returning Apollo crews to believe that they were no longer necessary. (Apollo 12's recovery of Surveyor hardware, and the subsequent discovery of terrestrial bacteria surviving on some of that equipment, proved that organisms could survive for long periods of time in space.)
We have also been influenced by other major works of science fiction (War of the Worlds' radio broadcast, for instance, has long been held as an example of how we might react to the idea of hostile alien life, and ET is an example of how we could react to more friendly aliens.)
For something to happen, it has to be imagined first. Sometimes, that takes the form of science fiction stories. Not worth it? Far from it. We'll be forever stuck in the present and never stop to imagine what might come in the future without the ideas that come from those who dare to say "Hey, what if this was possible?"
RTFP (Score:3, Insightful)
"[...] compare [...] a natural disaster with [...] a failing television show?"
You popped off on a misunderstanding of the post, which replied to the original question asking about the "last time [...] couch potatos [...] $80 mil together for [..] or charitable distribution?" You're still harping about people putting money into a failing TV show, as has every other post you're bashing. You got it wrong when you flew off the handle - suck it up already, and show some integrity.
Re:Let's see... about 6 weeks ago? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Proposal doesn't go far enough (Score:3, Insightful)
The link of course, is dead so I can't RTFA, but the organization should be chartered so that if they don't get enough dough to extend the series, they could use it to do other things in the interest of the fan base, like obtain licensing rights to allow their favorite authors to publish trek fiction. Paramount might not want to get into the business of doing series to suit some fanbase group, but they'd be foolish not to take cash up front for a reasonable print licensing, since it would help keep the franchise's value while it is on hiatus.
Re:Well then (Score:2, Insightful)
Nonsense. We're talking about fans trying to pay for a product they want. I wouldn't pay into this, and I doubt they will be succesful, but there's no aspect of "charity" to it. They're not doing it to keep the cast from poverty, they're doing it because they want more episodes.
Re:I look at it this way... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I look at it this way... (Score:3, Insightful)
Aren't you saying the same thing in just slightly different ways? Come on when has Star Trek ever had that much quaility? Mythos yes, quaility, No.
I just had to do it:
Linux has been kept running on the popularity of the mythos, of the franchise. It has always been self-sustaining, through its own quality. If Linux is in such a bad state that it needs to rely on fan charity to survive... it isn't worth keeping.
Re:Misapproriated Funds (Score:2, Insightful)
Exactly. And whenever I see some fat boy trying to get me to donate some money for starving ethiopians, I know there's a few meals he could have skipped and saved more than $11 bucks.
I spend my money as I see fit, and I expect others to do the same. It pisses me off when people give me a sob story about how I'm supposed to donate money etc. The international criticism the US received early on in the Tsunami relief was pathetic too. "The rich US gave ONLY x million dollars..." I hear that junk in one ear, then the other I hear about the enormous deficits, and very rarely do I hear about some rich industrialized nation giving me money.
Think about this: hundreds of thousands need aid from the Tsunami and millions are poured into it. How many incidents have occurred between this and the last Tsunami, where a small few people needed aid and didn't get it. What's so special about multiple people need help at the same time that I'm supposed to give my money away?
Battlestar: Galactica comment (Score:4, Insightful)
I will however be the first to admit I was completely wrong about BS:G.
So far it has been nothing short of brilliant. What has especially impressed me is the overall tone of it. I think it was Ron Moore who said (paraphrasing) that the original series wasn't true to it's own premise... in the original, within a week or so of Caprica being devastated, they were in bars on other planets with other humans, having a blast, generally not acting like the future of the human species hung in the balance. I never thought of it before, but damn it if he wasn't right! I still love the original series, but I do view it in a different light now. The remake has really gotten this right, in the extreme. There is a truly palpabale sense of dread throughout it, and that is fantastic as far as I'm concerned.
But...
This is NOT the best sci-fi show on the air today. It's third, near as I can tell, behind Stargate SG1 and SG:Atlantis. SG1 has been the best for some years now, ever since Babylon 5 went off the air actually. Atlantis has come on unbelievably strong this first season, and I predict here and now we're going to be hailing it's greatness 10 years down the road when it's still chugging along. And it wouldn't surprise me it SG1 was still producing new episodes then too!
And if B5 is still airing in your market, than IT is the best show on TV today.
None of this takes away from how good BS:G has been though. It has completely proved me wrong. Hell, I'm even getting used to the new Starbuck, I think the actress playing her is doing an excellent job in the role. If they can keep this up, it's going to be a fantastic and long ride!
Re:I look at it this way... (Score:3, Insightful)
Funny, I was thinking the exact opposite. Clearly, if fans are willing to toss large sums of money at Paramount to have the show continued, I think it clearly demonstrates that people think it's worth keeping, to the tune of 80 million bucks.
Put another way, do you *really* trust the television industry to understand what is and isn't worth keeping? Why is Paramount to be trusted to make the right decision, but the fans aren't?
Re:Standard Setting (Score:2, Insightful)
Again, you're missing the picture here. That business model is based on generating revenue for share holders. Those who invest in the fan group are doing so for content, they want more episodes. If you merely create another for-profit group, it would be no different than the current business models and would look to sacrifice quality and content in the name of the bottom line.
Re:Misapproriated Funds (Score:3, Insightful)
If I wanted to make a a single hamburger for lunch, it costs me much more to buy the meat, the bun, the ketchup, the cheese, etc, not to mention my time in gathering the ingredients and making it.
By paying somebody else to make one for me, I can devote my skills to something which is more economically rewarding for me. Since I now have more productivity AND more money, I can spend more time and money donating to worthy causes that can help people.
So you see, by buying Mcdonalds, I'm helping save the world!
Re:Why would they ever go for it? (Score:3, Insightful)
$60million in commercials minus $50million paying everyone for a season, leaves $10million in the bank. But now the fans came in and add $30, 40, 50million to the pot and look how much money is left in the bank.
The world will change in TV, and the geeks are going to do it wether they like it or not. Again, we're trying to throw money at them, they would be fools not to take it, especially since it goes out over their precious airwaves not the evil internet. Soon we will all buy shares of the shows we watch and love instead of buying cable. Only we won't get any profit sharing or dividends, because why should they bother?
Re:it's their money (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well then (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if your premises were true, what the hell makes the oligopoly of TV station owners the only valid market? Aren't these people acting freely as part of your beloved Invisible Hand, mr. free-market laissez-faire "liberal"?
Re:We can save money (Score:2, Insightful)
Enterprise, unfortunately, requires a larger budget, both because of the sets and special effects and because of the salaries for the actors and actresses.
I think if the fans can really pull it off, it would show that advertising revenue, and thus annoying adverts, aren't really necessary. We are stuck in this business model purely because of past momentum and the obsessive absurdity of the advertising industry. If we could make them obselete through ploys like this, they would lobby Congress to make it illegal.
I guess it is like the old joke about, if pro- is the opposite of con-, what is the opposite of progress...
Re:Why isn't more TV like this? (Score:4, Insightful)
David Lynch and a few others not withstandaing, it's very unviable to run a production company on a download or subscription model.
Take for instance, thousands and thousands of hours of decent content which is produced regardless if anybody watches it or not. Yes, I'm talking about independant film. Hundreds of films get made around the world every year, some end up at film festivals, some stay highly regional, some make it to Sundance in the USA and other prestigious film fests for indy films.
Very few of these films are torrent-able. A tiny, tiny margin - maybe 1%, probably less. There isn't enough bandwidth or storage space to encode them all, even though the filmmakers are looking at nothing but profit if they participate in the process instead of letting the canisters rot in their attic. Still, it doesn't happen.
Now, cut out the distribution methods in your model. These networks greenlight projects, review them for quality, and decide if they will bankroll them. Take that away, and you have anarchy.
Seriously, what would happen over time is an insane S/N ratio. Hundreds of small production companies would vie for your dollars. Here! Bankroll this, we'll sign Shatner! Seriously, we'll put his fat ass in a rubber suit and make him recite King Lear! Pay here!
A few companies would eventually emerge, just as in the game industry, where the barriers to entry used to be low, and an EA or Microsoft would try and step in as the content "management" provider, and you'd just substitute the bogeyman you hate, with a new and more manevolent one.
It all seems very democratic or populist, but it doesn't play out that way. The market abhors a vacuum.
Why not GPL the thing? (Score:4, Insightful)
You start with a plot outline, create a shooting schedule, line up some actors, start filming, put the thing out there.
The quality of the visuals will NOT be up to Star Trek vehicles to date but the writing could be much better, the acting could be better.
Even the set could be a digital one to allow 'transportation' at no cost (think of the techniques used for the "Polar Express".)
Re:Proposal doesn't go far enough (Score:3, Insightful)
James T aside, are you at all familiar with the 60's? Have you seen any other TV shows that came out at that time? This is a show that had to come up with the transporter, because they didn't have the budget to do the shuttlecraft models yet!
Don't take it too seriously, just enjoy the cheese!
It not as expensive as you might think (Score:2, Insightful)
You'd get what you pay for... (Score:3, Insightful)
Farscape
BG
Stargate
Programs that advertising alone struggles to pay for.
Escrow account would do it - and a modest proposal (Score:3, Insightful)
They key would be to set up an escrow account with, say, Paypal? that would accumulate real money. If they can achieve the target amount, they have some real POWER. If they cannot achieve target, then the money should be paid back from escrow.
Here's a cute thought: how much interest can 88 million earn in a couple of months? I don't think escrow accounts can be invested, but... jeez. At the end of the money raising period, if the project went bust, everyone would get their cash back, minus admin fees for the escrow holder, plus interest earned. Yipes.
Why didn't anyone think of this for Whedon's Buffyverse? I hearby propose sending someone to JW's house with a proposal.
The power of this kind of project is unlimited, if you think about it. Building Rutan's SpaceShipOne cost about 20-30 million. An escrow fund could build spaceships. Space stations. How much to go to the moon, if you wanted to do it cheap and practical? A billion? That's a few hundred dollars for each star trek fan. A small investment in a club, and you not only could finance SF, you could finance instead the reality.
Commmericially viable witout commercials (Score:1, Insightful)
Anime has done this and these series are called OVA (original video animations). The series are not broadcast and people buy these series straight to tape. The thing is, you can't just produce schlock and sell it as an OVA and expect to make money on it. It needs to be just as engaging as any movie or series. The money then made goes straight into the production company's pocket. If revenues are substantial enough, these series sometimes make it to the small or big screen.