I would bet that Spurlock's show, being reality TV, is a whole lot cheaper to produce than
Star Trek would be.
There are also business model for online TV that operate more on the movie theater and DVD model - people purchase the content, advertisers are not in the picture or minor - and there's nothing stopping that from developing in parallel to the traditional ad-supported models. But getting people to pay for content in a medium where FREE FREE FREE has become the standard is a high hurdle.
One way to do that is to create cheap content. YouTube is as cheap as it gets, reality TV is a bit more pricey, but vaulting to premium productions like
Star Trek is another thing entirely.
Sean Aaron wrote:
AviTrek wrote:
Are you willing to pay $20/season for a 5 episode show?
|
I'm willing to pay £5 for a feature film on DVD. |
That's a business model that will support made-for-DVD quality, but not what we'd expect from
Star Trek. Remember, those feature films wouldn't exist on DVD if there weren't people buying movie theater tickets as the main financial model. Subtract the movie theaters and you're left with Asylum quality movies.
Personally, I wouldn't pay $4/episode for anything. I get episodes on Netflix for about $1.50/DVD, and that includes three or four episodes per disk. When people become used to paying $X for something, it's very hard to get them to pay $X+ anything, especially in this shitty economy.