Re: Maybe the next space opera will be via a subscription service (in
The greedy Hollywood clowns are going to continue winning this contest for a while yet - never underestimate the power of inertia - but it's also obvious where the digital entertainment business overall is moving.
First off, the new environment is going to be as lucrative, maybe moreso, than what we currently are familiar with. The way that it's going to become more lucrative is that global audiences will now be easy for content creators to reach. No more picking your way country by country through middlemen. (That is, the business will be lucrative to some while destroying businesses for others.)
Counterbalancing that is the way in which it will be less lucrative: people don't like paying for content on the internet, where they have been trained to get things free free free. Audiences will resist subscriptions; online ads still have a long ways to go before they are in the same league as TV advertising; and while microtransactions (virtual goods) are a popular way of supporting online games, it's hard to envision how to make them work outside of gamelike environments.
So the key here is to use the global reach as a way of compensating for the cheapskate-internet phenomenon, by assembling niche audiences that cross borders, in effect, "niches" made up of millions of people. There's no reason why you couldn't have a space opera series that has more viewers than even
CSI does in America, you've just got to invent an efficient way of reaching all of them.
Going after niches also increases the odds that some will consider what you're selling worth subscribing to. People will spend money on something they absolutely love. To date, TV has been all about getting a mass audience to like something enough to spend some time on it. That's not going to work anymore.
A key point that often gets overlooked is that there's no reason why digital content needs to ape TV, or movies, or books, or anything currently in existence. Movies and TV both have been shaped by the needs of distribution, financing and technology. Once those factors have utterly changed, why stick with the old formats, as if they represent some sort of Platonic ideal?
For instance Amazon could invent some new format that serves as a video/audio companion to a popular book series they already sell. That would make perfect sense, since they've already got the audiences for those books right at their fingertips. Why not go after the most easily accessible audiences first?
I could see entertainment formats emerging that are hybrids between scripted entertainment and games. All digital entertainment is capable of being interactive. The problem with games is that interactivity can be a barrier if it looks like too much work and investment of time (that's why Facebook games are swamping the industry). So it's important here not to latch onto World of Warcraft as another Platonic idea.
You could construct a "game" with a light form of interactivity, where people view pilot episodes of space operas, submitted by anyone who wants to compete in the contest, and the winning entry gets developed into a full series. That's a way of marrying a game format with a scripted format pretty easily.
Amazon's Test Movies are sort of the right idea, but I'd construct it more as a public contest, with a place for people to vote and debate, and no barrier to people seeing the videos immediately. I'd show them wherever possible, on a YouTube channel, Facebook, etc. The point is to get as much awareness and participation as possible. Only after people are invested in their favorite series would I start charging for subscriptions.
And let's not forget cable TV is capable of doing space opera series. That's still perfectly viable even under the "old rules."
Would it be some major hybrid of scifi and another genre like medical or crime?
No, that's the kind of silly compromise that was forced by the needs of broadcast TV, which can't easily and efficiently reach a global niche audience for straight space opera and is trying to marry it with other audiences. The successful approach will now be the opposite - why not divide the medical-show genre into smaller subniches and serve all of them with individual content? This process won't stop with sci fi.
Would it be more of a long term mission where it could last for 3-5 seasons with long character and story arcs? Would it have a lot of flashbacks to Earth?
Flashbacks to Earth should be determined by the need of the story. "Seasons" are another archaic term that's no longer going to matter. TV seasons were created by the need to launch new shows in the fall, which is when the auto industry advertises its new models and demand for advertising is strong.
