Direct TV Marketing?

[straysweeper]

I've been wondering this for a while now. There are a lot of shows that garner small fan bases, but don't pull ratings for big networks. Dollhouse for example is needing a lot of support to stay on air. There have been others over the years, and I'm sure there are more to come. But I don't understand is why not market directly to customers?

I get shows get based on advertising, but then it becomes about the money and not the story or the customer. If it doesn't bring in a certain share of target audience, it doesn't stay on the air, little own for the millions of viewers that do enjoy the show. DVRs are slowly changing how people watch tv, so advertising will probably have change their style anyway.

So why don't shows go directly towards gaining an audience and selling it directly to the customers? My example is Defying Gravity, this is a unique show, and is in my niche. But it failed in ratings. Which I think the current economical climate coupled with the writers strike of 2 years ago has altered peoples viewing habits. but I digress.

Defying Gravity has a 13 episode season. Estimating that the scifi drama costs 2.5 million per episode. (Average per hour/drama from recent tvbythenumbers article, plus 500k) Means $32.5 million bucks. If you market that for say $8 per person, you only need just over 4 million fans to pay for the show. Say a few more for distribution and advertising costs, then licensing or dvd sales on top of it, with direct to client dvd sales....

What are your thoughts?

[Brutha]

If you market that for say $8 per person, you only need just over 4 million fans to pay for the show.

4 million fans is a lot.

[Trezker]

Defying Gravity seems quite crappy. So it'd probably sell quite well.
As far as I can tell, it's a directed reality show with expensive effects...

I think it's a very good idea to let the fans pay directtly for what they're watching instead of paying for it with ads which just pushes the actual cost of the show onto the customers of the companies who buy ad spots.

There already is a system for this, called DVD sales. Terribly inneficient, but that's easily fixed if they start selling downloads instead, cheaper and better for everyone.

The technology is already there, just hire some of the guys who are already running torrent and other filesharing sites. It's not like you have anything to loose.