Market Research

Hi all. I hope the forum admin will forgive me if I'm breaking any rules with this post. It is not my intention to harm or annoy this community as I am an active member of it. This idea is mostly about continuing series rather than one off movies but movies are something I do want to support. And if I could get the license for Secret of NiMH I would want to rerelease the orginal as well as make a proper sequel and prequel. And I have an idea for a Rats of Thorn Valley animated series but we'll see about that. Anyway, on to my post.

For those of you out there that are fans of Sci-Fi or Fantasy, what would be willing to do to support quality shows and stories? For a long time I've wanted to start a production and distribution company for quality Sci-Fi and Fantasy over the internet. There are so many quality shows, like Firefly, Farscape, Babylon 5, you name it, that have been cut off or cheapened when they were just starting to come into their own that there has to be a way to get that quality out continuously to those of us that really want to support it.

If I'm going to start this business I need some help. First of all, I need to get an idea of what people are willing to pay to support something like this. These kinds of show are not cheap to make but there are alot of Sci-Fi and Fantasy fans out there world wide to help absorb the costs. Additionally advertising and sponsorships will be a big part of the funding. But those sponsors are going to want to know how large an audience they're going to be paying for so I've got to set a pricing structure that's going to hit the biggest audience and still bring in enough income to make up any shortfall. I'm rambling but I just want the fans to understand where I'm coming from.

One of the prime tenants of this company would be to give the creative control to the licensee and their writers. I want to avoid censorship and creative meddling like you get with the network shows now so that what we get is the real vision of each show. I will have some rules but I plan on keeping them to a minimum.

I would be distributing primarily over the internet, probably in SVCD format for low quality and DVD format for high quality. I am still undecided if I should limit the downloading to purely streamed content or to have the actual files available for purchase. Both ways have their plusses and minuses but streaming content is harder to pirate.

I am thinking of structing things such that produces can choose either a 1 or 2 hour monthly format or a 1/2 to 1 hour weekly or biweekly format and charging $2/episode for the 1/2 hour shows, $5/episode for 1 hour shows and $10 for 2 hour shows and movies.

So anyway, if you'd like to see a company that produces top quality Sci-Fi and Fantasy help me out in my research by answering a few questions and please pass these on to your friends or anyone else who might be interested to answer as well.

What series or movies would you like to see? Why?
Would you rather see 1/2 hour shows, 1 hour shows or something else?
How often should new shows come out, weekly, monthly, something else?
How often should movies and special events/features come out, quarterly, annually, something else (These would include making ofs, fan generated content, cast and crew interviews and anything else people show an interest in supporting)?
How much would you be willing to pay per episode, $2, $5, $10? Would you pay more for longer length movies than for shorter regular shows?
Would you like to see multiple quality levels, SVCD, DVD, etc. with a layered price structure?
Would you be interested in buying series related merchandise? How much annually would you spend?
Would you be interested in buying season collections on DVD, including typical DVD special features that wouldn't be available for download?
Would you be interested in purchasing a monthly pass to multiple series? How much would you pay for it? How about annual passes to individual series?
Do you think a business like this could survive? With the ease of sharing files would enough people actually pay for the shows to keep them going?
What other web services would you like to see for the series such as individual web spaces, forums, fan site space, others?
What advice or suggestions do you have?
What information would you like to see from me and the proposed company?
Is it worth going forward with a crazy idea like this?

Anyway, anyone willing to look these questions over and answer them, please pass on the answers to AVT_SciFantasyTheater at hotmail.

Thanks for your time and your help,
--Mav