Posted on 07/13/2008 11:55:53 AM PDT by pabianice
Sanctuary is the first Web-based (non-televised) science fiction series. Starring Amanda Tapping (who is also an executive producer) and Robin Dunne, the show is billed on the official website as "The first broadcast caliber sci-fi series developed specifically for the Internet. . . ." Sanctuary uses state-of-the-art computer-aided graphic design for the majority of its scenes.
The premise of the show is one of science meeting the supernatural, as Dr. Helen Magnus (Amanda Tapping), who is well over 150 years old yet appearing only 35, seeks out and gives protection for (or in some cases, from) various creatures whom have heretofore gone unnoticed and unrecognized in a somewhat Gotham–style city, with occasional flashbacks to Victorian London. She is aided in her quest by assistant Will Zimmerman (Robin Dunne) and daughter Ashley (Emilie Ullerup).
The series aims to create an interactive world where fans can contribute and communicate with the creative team as the show progresses. Amanda Tapping has recorded greetings to invite fans to watch, and Emilie Ullerup has posted in the official website's forums. Damian Kindler, creator and executive producer of the show, also reads the forums and updates his blog regularly.
Each webisode will be around 15 minutes long, with three webisodes comprising one 45-minute episode. High definition downloads are available for a fee on the official website.
I sure wish they would start debundling! I am paying $60/month for cable (so that I can get broadband as well) and all I ever watch is Fox, Food Network, EWTN, and local news when the weather is bad.
Now I’m never going to get any work done...
Who do you think makes these shows? Regardless of where they’re broadcast?
I doubt it’ll be that big. The subsection of the world that connect a PC to the TV is still fairly small, and with TVs getting bigger there’s not much reason to watch something on the PC. Maybe in another decade or so if non-tech people are doing media center PCs by then, but until then the automatic limitations of the audience is too significant.
Exactly the opposite, this is Hollyweird adapting and experimenting. Sci Fi channel is owned by NBC/ Universal, it is Hollyweird.
Internet TV Use Up 45% In Last Year
Internet TV is growing at an insane rate. According to comScore, U.S. Internet users viewed more than 12 billion online videos during the month, up 45 percent versus year ago.
Nearly 142 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 85 videos per viewer in May.
Google Sites (mainly YouTube) attracted the most viewers (83.8 million), who watched an average of 50 videos per person. Fox Interactive attracted the second most viewers (60.8 million), followed by Yahoo! Sites (40.2 million) and Microsoft Sites (29.5 million).
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Those numbers are garbage. Tracking stuff like that is nearly impossible on the internet, and there’s simply no mathematical way to get 1/2 the country’s population watching 85 videos each a month, even the 2 minute wonders that are YouTube. Which is another part of the problem, trying to extrapolate viewership of 2 minute clips into watchers of 1 hour shows.
Of course even if they aren’t junk it still doesn’t hold a candle to TV. Broadcast TV still gets 90 million viewers a night every night. That’s JUST the broadcast channels, no cable networks.
Not from watching this tripe.
The show "looks" great, but "...it was a dark and stormy night..." doesn't get any better by delivering it with a british accent.
Increasongly there are small upstarts making these things in places like New Zealand - at a fraction of the cost
Big media arose in the 19th century, when the cost of steam presses and teletype/wire squeezed the average person out.
Now the internet has changed the playing field by taking much of the cost out of information dissemination.
The rise of recording technology and radio advertising gave studio Music production companies control over music professions (to a large degree) for decades, due to the cost of studios and access to radio advertising.
Until recently, with plummeting mixing equipment costs, and digital distribution.
Video production is in a similar cost nose dive. At some point Hollyweird's loss of the production cost barrier will kill it's control completely. It is already a shadow of it's former self.
MGM and Warner Brothers today are in exactly the same place EMI and Sony BMG were in back in 1998. The twists and turns they make trying to maintain control are not going to matter. Ultimately their biggest problem is that their business model relied upon high costs to keep those little guys who had the actual talent from not needing them.
Might be small upstarts making some of them, but in general if they’re finding a large audience Hollywood is in the mix somewhere.
The expensive part of putting on a TV show isn’t the broadcast, it’s the making. And absolutely nothing about the internet is changing that. And this show proves that the studios are still what matters, some little upstart made the original, but that was just a pilot trying to get the attention of one of the bigs to get money to make a full series. They succeeded, now NBC/ Universal is giving them money, the bigs are still the bigs, and this show is a demonstration that the internet at best will give the bigs a new distribution media. It’s ain’t killing them, it ain’t even hurting them.
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