Devious DVD Decisions

It has been said, and I will proudly parrot this, that if you had a cable channel that showed only shows that had been cancelled by Fox and the SciFi channel, you could have one of the best lineups on television ever. I wish I knew who to give credit for pointing this out, but it was a random forum or chatroom thing a while back, so I really have no idea at this point. Think it over. We'll come back to it in a moment.

Network television executives are concerned about technology and advertising. One is making it so the other isn't working so well anymore. People can easily Tivo away commercials from their favorite shows, so what's a money-hungry bastard going to do? One of the solutions is more product placement in the shows themselves. This seems to work best for cars, because plenty of shows heavily featured driving about in cool cars anyway. So you get some cash for using a particular brand of cool cars, whatever. There's a limit to what kinds of products this works for, but it's something. The executives have been looking for other ways to keep advertising more profitable, but they've have got to be thinking about other ways to get money out of tv shows as well. Hmmm... File that thought away for now, too.

Recently I was thinking about my obsessiveness pertaining to DVDs. I was watching a show on network tv and thought to myself "I want to get the boxed set of this! The show's smart, funny, sexy, and has consistently good writing. Only natural that I'd want to be able to watch all the old episodes I'd missed. No big deal, right?
That show was Grey's Anatomy. It's been on for less than a season and I've seen every episode! It's ridiculous, but I want to own it, not to watch it over and over, just to assimilate it into myself by including it in my DVD collection. This is a little sick. Everything's coming together in just a second here, folks.

What do most of the must-have TV-series DVD sets have in common? The shows were cancelled. Usually when they were on there was a diehard core audience who kept watching despite inconvenient airtimes, schedule changes, and a general lack of promotion or support from the network. There are plenty of examples I'd like to talk about, but let's focus for a moment on two of the most notable success stories: Family Guy and Firefly.

Family Guy was on the edge of cancellation during most of its original run, and if I remember correctly was rarely on at the same time for more than three episodes. After it was cancelled DVD sales were so good that Fox actually has recently brought the series back, a first in the history of TV.

If you know what Firefly is, you know this story. Aired out of order, advertised as something it's not, canceled just as it was getting going, Firefly is everybody's favorite show that they never watched on TV. A very dedicated fan base ensured that it's now orders of magnitude more popular on DVD than when it was actually on the air. There's a movie coming out now. They wouldn't even have to advertise this thing for it to be a success, they'd just have to post the opening date on the internet and we'd all go.

Those were both on Fox, and they're far from the only ones. How many times did Fox pre-empt Simpsons or Futurama for football? Something horrible occurred to me today. What if... What if Fox has got it all figured out? Advertising dollars are slowing down, cable and satellite tv are bigger competitors every day, but every decent show that Fox screws over and cancels does fantastic on DVD! By making themselves the badguy it turns fans in the most dedicated viral marketting machine ever, and it's all free. But wait...
What if it isn't intentional after all? What if Fox network executives haven't figured out this pattern of success in the new media age? What will television be like WHEN THEY DO?