An Idea That Would Forever Change An Industry... (Long, But Worth It, I Promise.)

You may remember, off in the distant past (or, at least, five years ago,) that I bitched and groaned about the fact that TV networks hate science fiction.

Specifically Fox, but this applies to all of them. They don't understand the demographic, the shows are expensive to make, the networks don't understand why they're always so low in the ratings despite apparently rabid fanbases, and the fans are hugely critical of the kinds of changes network execs like to make just because they like to make random changes.

I am going to explain these things, for the extremely unlikely chance that a network exec MIGHT read this does actually exist, and then I am going to follow it up with a design for a new kind of TV network - one which would forever change the landscape of television - and not one, but two interim plans, for those networks looking for a way to pick things up without totally redesigning their means of doing business.

And I will add to that with a recommendation for a specific company which should be following my plan for a new-model television network.

No spoiler: it's NOT a television - or Hollywood - company.

So, let's start with the reasons the TV networks tend to hate science fiction shows.

First, the demographic. As much as TV tries to portray themselves as knowing and loving the geeky side of the population, they don't. They're still trying to portray geeks as a sort of underground counterculture, with nifty inside jokes and weird lingo.

Here's a hint: when hundreds of millions of people "get" your Tarder Sauce reference - even if they call it "Grumpy Cat," - it's not counterculture anymore. It's mainstream. And this is one of the major things about Sci-Fi that's changed: it IS mainstream now. It needs more than "this is science fiction, people!" to make it edgy and entertaining.

Remember this bit in Cloverfield?

This is how a hell of a lot of people feel, now, when your gimmick is "and there's aliens in it!"

The reason Battlestar Galactica was the highest rated show in the history of the SciFi network was because there was more substance to it than just "robots...in....spaaaaaaace!" The show referenced mythology, current events, political theory, and had serious drama along with the special effects.

Which segues nicely into point two: The shows are expensive. And hell yeah they are. Because even though CGI and special effects in general have become far less expensive in the last decade, it's still not cheap to make things actually look GOOD. And it's not enough to make things look cheesy. Even Doctor Who - the BBC's perennial, iconic sci-fi show - got a lot prettier in a hurry once it started to get popular in America. (Which I understand annoyed the hell out of a lot of Brits, but it's a direct result of advertising dollars; Americans threw a lot more money at it than the BBC ever bothered with.)

Audiences want their shows to look realistic. Cool, yes, awesome, yes, but real. Obvious CGI work is as offputting on TV as it is in the theater, even if you're likely to be less picky about something you're seeing on cable than something you paid $20 to see in a theater. And thus, the expense of sci-fi shows is not only higher than, say, sitcoms or another Survivor clone, it's higher than the networks already think it is anyway, because one reason a lot of these shows don't get more audience attention is that their budgets aren't high enough.

Don't worry, this point will be relevant. I promise. But it will take me a minute to come back to it.

The next problem with sci-fi, for the networks, is that the shows they lavish money on and "give a shot" on the air always, always underperform. Always. They never, ever have the ratings their contemporaries in the timeslot have, and they cost a lot more.

So, what's up?

Well, we're back to not understanding the demographic again.

See, the Neilsen ratings rely on people who watch at the time the program originally airs, have a very limited sample size (25,000 families in the whole USA. That's 0.02%,) and don't track anything other than traditional TV viewing.

"But wait," you might be saying to yourself, "aren't all the cable and phone companies advertising how useful their products are for streaming video, like, say, TV shows? And doesn't all that streaming happen on devices that Neilsen doesn't track?"

Yes.

And that means those views don't count, from the point of view of the only data the networks are able to rely on to track viewership.

And which fans, which demographic, of all of the available ones, is most likely to watch TV shows on their phones, laptops, tablets, iPods, or God forbid desktops?

Geeks.

And what do geeks watch? Sci-fi, that's what.

So those shows get watched - and watched, and watched, and watched - and the networks know none of that. Those views don't count. Period, full stop.

As far as the networks know, those views didn't happen at all.

Which is why those awkward, high-budget shows so often get cancelled.

And finally, the people who are sci-fi fans are GEEK FANS. Geek fans tend to be weirdly obsessive over their favorite material. Which doesn't mean much when the material is original for the TV, but it's very risky when it comes to material adapted for TV from existing material with existing fanbases.

I'll use The Dresden Files as an example, since it's a pet peeve of mine.

The book series is hugely popular, and for good reason. They're well-written, engaging, feature huge, earthshaking confrontations between good and evil within a full and rich internal mythos, they're gritty, sarcastic, and fun as hell. I am a huge fan.

I'm not alone. They've been popular enough to spawn a role-playing game, a series of graphic novels (including a new series!) and sell millions and millions of copies of the books. The fourteenth full volume is just out, by the way.

So, when they adapt it to TV, they make...

...random...

...changes...

...And this makes your ordinarily pretty calm sci-fi nerd explode with fury.

There's a character - Karrin Murphy - who is a petite blonde who looks like someone's kid sister.

This is relevant to her character, actually. Because her appearance is so harmless, she has to work much harder than normal to appear as competent as her competition in her job, which is a police officer. She's extra tough, hard as nails, and has tremendous reserves of intestinal fortitude, because she's always had to. She has to ALWAYS be better, just to keep up.

So for the TV show, they get a nearly six foot brunette, because...

...They couldn't find a short blonde girl in Hollywood? There wasn't any actual, relevant reason to make that change.

That's one; there were lots of other "minor" random changes to the source material.

So many that the author stated, when asked about it at a convention, that he thought of the TV show as existing in an alternate universe from the one he came up with.

Here's a clue, TV execs: that may fly with a Nicholas Sparks novel, but not so much with sci-fi. The fanbase won't stand for shameless, random debasement of the source material. They will accept changes for which there is a reason - as witness the changes that have been made to Game of Thrones, which the fans are fine with - but random jacking around with the source material annoys the fans, and that can doom your show in a heartbeat.

So. Having explained all these points... How does one compensate for them?

By changing the way you do your business, that's how.

Instead of relying on advertising dollars alone, relying on Neilsen data alone, relying on the same writers and the same budget limits and the same decisions that have doomed so many sci-fi shows before, try something new.

So, let's begin with the interim plans. First, the less-techy one, as pointed out by my lovely wife: make an On-Demand channel for viewer requested shows. They CAN track every time you select a show, and an episode, to watch, because they have to serve you the show, which means they have to know you're watching it. So, rate the shows that way.

Instant feedback on accurate audiences.

The more techy version: Crowdfunding.

Every series has a pretty fixed budget. Generally speaking, the producers of a new show know right away what they're looking at as far as expenses.

So, if the network wants to know if the fans are interested? Start a kickstarter. Hell, go whole-hog and... Wait, wait, no spoilers. I'll get to that.

Anyway, kickstarter: "This is how much we need to keep this show on the air!"

Hell, it took the fans of Veronica Mars - if you even remember that show, which is kind of the point - less than 12 hours to fully fund a theatrical movie, once the studio agreed to do a movie if they hit $2 million.

Read that again; the fans of that show - only three seasons, cancelled AGES ago (2007) and not that popular even when it was on - ponied up TWO MILLION DOLLARS IN TWELVE HOURS to get themselves more of what they loved.

For fuck's sake, why hasn't this been a thing before?

But there's a way to turn this into a new business model, in the exact spirit of venture capitalism that made this country great in the first place, if you're willing to shed the trappings of the traditional business model and start fresh.

See, you're used to thinking of a "TV station" or "network" as an always-on video stream, which plays whatever is on its schedule regardless of viewer interests.

Instead, look at Steam.

Steam does something very similar to what the networks should be doing, only they do it for games.

They start with Greenlight: instead of a game publisher looking at an indie game and going, "yeah, that seems ok, we'll throw money at it," they put up a demo, some media, information for the fans... And if it gets enough votes, they sell it on the Steam marketplace.

And anything you buy on Steam is available on any device capable of running the Steam client and the game.

For all the advertising, do you personally know anyone who actually watches new episodes of their favorite TV show on their mobile phone through "xfinity?" I don't, because most cellphone data plans don't get along as well with streaming video as they'd like you to think, and because xfinity in its current form openly sucks.

But you could, in theory, and that's a step in the right direction.

Abandon the old business model.

Start with budget. Decide on a dollar amount for new shows, first. Say, at random and completely pulling the number out of my butt, $5 million.

Then put the pilots up for fan votes, the same way Steam does for games. If a pilot gets votes, it has enough audience interest to justify a new series.

So, awesome: new show! Let's call our new show "The Irony Chronicles Killer" just for the sake of discussion.

Now that TICK has gotten audience interest, it gets its initial budget: $5 mil. The producers know they need roughly $200,000 an episode. Thus, their initial budget automatically buys them 25 episodes, guaranteed - enough for a full first season. Because this "network" is strictly demand-based, instead of played whether or not the audience watches, the network doesn't have any worries about scheduling; the show is available whenever and however fans choose to watch.

Each episode airs with a short commercial break before and after, but uninterrupted during the episode.

But Season 2 is up in the air...

So, they start a crowdfund.

A fairly structured crowdfund, with two "goal" tiers, and an escrow function.

So, the crowdfund starts the day the first episode airs. If they hit the first goal tier (ten percent or so of the full Season 2 budget) before the end of Season One, TICK is renewed, but will air with standard commercial breaks. If they hit the second goal tier - that being the show's anticipated full Season 2 budget - TICK is renewed for Season Two and will air commercial-free, just like Season One.

This allows the level of audience interest to determine the show's budget, and allows people who watch in non-traditional ways to make their "votes" count.

And it allows us to vote with our wallets on whether or not we want commercial breaks.

Personally, I hate commercial breaks. I don't pay a lot of attention to the ads that run before a show, but they don't actually BOTHER me. After largely switching to watching TV on DVD / Bluray, though, I will never like standard broadcasting as much ever again. Commercials fuck up the flow of the narrative completely.

At any rate, the crowdfunds for each season have built-in escrow for donated funds. Donors' information remains confidential, but is required, because in the event that neither target is met, the show in question will be cancelled after its currently funded run, and all funds placed in escrow for the following season will either be refunded to the donor, or moved into the fund for a different show at the donor's discretion.

To give you an idea how reasonable this could really be, for Veronica Mars: The Big Screen Movie Thinger, 40,000 people averaged $50 each to produce a movie budget of $2 million.

Granted, that's 12 hours. If they would have given it a bit longer, I'd bet they could have come up with a lot more funds, because even that show had a lot more than 40,000 people watching it, or it never would have made it to a third season in the existing network system.

So, if TICK - at $5 million a season - wants to get renewed, it needs 250,000 people in - call a season 26 weeks - the whole season to donate $2 each; then it airs with ads, to make up the rest of the budget. Or, if those same people cough up $20 each, it airs ad-free. There's no mid-season cancellation, since each season is fully funded in advance.

Now, you may have noticed my earlier references to Steam.

That's because there's another factor in the "fully funded" crowdfund I think this idea needs, which is that if you help crowdfund a show that gets picked up, or renewed, the portion you helped pay for should be added to your permanent media library for keeps.

For example, if you crowdfund the pilot, you get Season One. The second season? It's yours. Not so hot on a Season Three? Don't add it. Season Three plays once free, and convinces you, so you fund Season Four? Four is yours, too, and you can go back and buy Three later on.

Gee, that sounds awfully similar to the way Steam already operates, doesn't it?

Especially since any media in your permanent library is available for instant viewing on any capable device, anywhere, anytime... Just like Steam. And purchased episodes / seasons are 100% ad-free.

This is because I think the company that needs to be doing this - the company with the greatest chances of launching this idea and making it into something great - is the company responsible for Steam: Valve Software.

Hey, Gabe Newell! If you ever read - or hear about - this article, at least think about it, dude. You'd make bank; fully funded seasons means every time someone watches the ads at the beginning, your profits therefrom are pure gravy; you already know going in that every episode is paid for, and every cent you make is pure profit. Once the show is made, every episode or season you sell on the store and add to someone's library is ALSO pure profit for you.

And you'd be making way, way better television than the television companies currently are.