I am still waiting for the videos of Fox execs self-flagellating themselves in penance for completely horking up the series scheduling and then canceling it.
With more and more "on-demand" type services happening, there might be a chance that network executives will become obsolete.
With on-demand there is no need to schedule a show on a given night. No need to make a cetain amount of money from a particular timeslot. No worrying that a show is third or fifth or 17th in it's time. Therefore that whole aspect of programming a network disappears along with the execs that ran it.
If you know exactly how many downloads there are of a given show you will know, in real terms, how many people are watching and will be able to sell advertising based on hard numbers rather than this guesswork that goes on now. I've been a Neilson ratings drone twice and I can tell you that as hard as I tried to be accurate it was impossible to journal everything watched, the times, date etc. So I think that aplies to most other rating families out there as well.
So good-bye to the high-preists of the network temple and their crystal balls diving who is watching from what demos and what that means for advertisers.
With pay-per view on-demand a (with ads or not) you know exactly how much money a show is making, connect that to merchandise sales and you know how well the show is doing. So as long as it is making enough of a profit or looks like it will continue to increase viewership there would no reason to pull the plug.
With on-demand there would be no fiddling with air dates like what happened with Firefly. You could watch in whatever order you wanted, the official (or unofficial official) website would give the order they meant them to be seen in, but it would be totally up to you. Some nitwit netwank could claim to know that the audience would be confused by the proper order of eps and demand they be changed around but with all the eps existing on a server somewhere they could not make people watch in that order.
To sum-up: With no scarcity of viewing times there would be no reason to keep around the people who controlled those times. Decision making about which shows survive will be decentralized and taken out of the hands of a bunch of non-creative MBA types and put into the hands of producers and viewers.
Of course a show would have to look like a good investment to pull in the starting money but maybe instead of relying on a network to front the cash the producers could go to the public at large and ask for donations or sell "shares" and thus have 1000's to millions of folks pony up a small amount each. I would have paid, Hell, I WILL pay 5-10 bucks an ep for a season of Firefly if I had to. Contrast that to what I'd be willing to pay for a "reality" show. $0.
Mutant Enemy was paid one mil per ep for Firefly, that is 100,000 people at $10 apiece, and I think it had more viewers than that. Though I have no way of knowing how many would have paid for the show. Assume 250,000 would have and you have four dollars a person or $88 a year. I'd be willing to support one or two quality shows in a year at those rates even knowing I get nothing out of it except the show. Of course the more folks that get interested the less each has to pay. You get to 5 mil and that is $4.40 a year for a show like Firefly. That is a great deal. Or maybe advertising pays half or more, even better. Funders might even get exclusive swag and invites. The more "shares" you buy the more love you get back from the production company. It might even work like how the Stock Market works with dividends and such.
Networks would be reduced to...I don't know. Maybe just places that rent out soundstages and backlots and other production facilities.
This is how I hope TV evolves, anyway.
