Legend of the Seeker Fans Looking to Crowdsourcing for Their Show
Here’s how it works: They ask for 15,000 votes of support from interested fans. When they reach that goal they’ll put together a proposal to all the decision-makers that offers a crowd-funded financial plan for putting the show back into production.
Crowd-funding is a controversial prospect. For example, in April 2013 Veronica Mars fans pledged a record-breaking $5.7 million to finance a movie based on the cancelled TV show (this is a modest budget but clearly demonstrates audience support for the concept). On the other hand, Melissa Joan Hart cancelled her own Kickstarter project when it failed to approach the $2 million goal she had set for producing her own movie.
Crowdfunding only works when the crowd cares enough about a project to get behind it and support it. The problem with shows like Legend of the Seeker is that many fans spent their passion in 2010 trying to save the show. We raised money back then for prominent ads in industry trade journals, signed online petitions, created a popular crowd video project asking for the show to continue, mobilized fans to set up support tables at dozens of conventions (including major cons like Dragon*Con and Comic Con), and also organized massive letter-writing campaigns.
The show was always popular. The problem wasn’t with audience interest. The Tribune Company was forced into bankruptcy by a leveraged buyout gone wrong. As part of their struggle to survive the company cut all expensive programming from their network of American TV stations, and that included Legend of the Seeker. The show lost a third of its American viewing audience overnight and revenues dropped below a point where ABC Studios could keep the show on the air.
SyFy looked at the show but passed on picking it up after running a couple of marathons that produced lukewarm audience numbers (it’s not like SyFy has the same reach that ABC Television does) and concluding that fan-driven illegal downloads of episodes across the Internet would undercut the show’s financial viability.
Fans have lobbied companies like Hulu and Netflix — both of whom have recently begun investing in original programming for the Internet — to make an investment in the show. Maybe with help from SMGO.TV we can make that happen.
So it all comes down to how many of your friends and family you can motivate to go visit Legend of the Seeker on SMGO.TV. Spread the word, ask people to remember how much they loved the show. It only needs a few thousand more votes.
Make it happen.