23 July 2008 Not So Horrible Television
During the Writer’s Guild of America Strike, writer and director Joss Whedon developed this mini series. It was to be low budget and circumvent the issues of the strike but professionally done.
Three weeks ago the first fifteen minutes were uploaded. A week later the next fifteen and last week the concluding fifteen were aired. It was free to view with no advertising or sponsorship on the website what so ever.
On Sunday night it was taken down where it is now exclusively on iTunes (for a price) and soon to be on DVD.
The buzz it generated was amazing. There are no statistics on the website hits, but the Facebook fan page has more than 43,000 fans. And in under a month, that is more than remarkable.
I know I’ll be buying it on DVD (apparently the Audio Commentary will be a musical in itself). You should too.
Much like the music industry and soon to be the publishing industry, the middle man was cut out. And while they haven’t made a cent yet, I expect the profits will be high.
Is this the future of television?
Julian Cole
Posted at July 26, 2008 2:43pm, 26 JulyI will be interested to see the profits on this little bad boy. I think it is a great model of giving it to the early adpoters/influencers for free and then making the mass pay.
The only thing is that we are so used to selling the product for a premium to the early adopters and covering costs at this stage. Can we reverse this model? Time will tell!