MickeyOff the Screen
As a kid I used to play-act various shows- usually Star Trek, my favorite, but a fair amount of Wild, Wild West and Mission: Impossible and Batman and others. Living deep in the woods, my playmates were usually cats, so they didn't particularly care which show we were playing. On the plus side, they almost never challenged my decision to play the main character.
You know you're a fan when your involvement with a particular show extends beyond simply watching it. You discuss it with your friends, you discuss it with perfect strangers who happen to have a modem and an interest in the show. You record or buy tapes or DVDs to watch over and over, you buy posters and novels and comic books and lunchboxes and bed sheets and stylized chess boards and play money and...
You get the idea. Hollywood is above all else a business, and if a show is making money the knee-jerk reaction is to try and squeeze even more green out of it. The idea has been around long before I was born: You like the show, you like the buy-products manufactured thereof.
The internet was created to spread information, and in between the various scams, porn and the kind, albeit somewhat forward folk who express a tender concern for the size of my penis there are the web sites devoted to various TV shows. For a show with any popularity at all, there are individual sites for particular characters. For very popular shows, sites abound for guest characters, individual episodes, and even catch phrases, quotes and photoshopped pics of the cast.
Now the creators of these shows are always very proud that they've inspired this level of loyalty and devotion in their fans- no matter how snippy the letter from their lawyers reads. It's not that they want to stamp out any bit of fun or excitement you might gain from using their ever-so-copyrighted images... they just want to make some money off of it in the process.
Long the domain of the devoted fans, many TV shows now are providing their own "additional material" on the internet. I haven't gotten deeply into this, even for my favorites (Financial and geographic factors leave me limited to dial-up, and video takes a long time to download). No doubt the studios are worried that fan sites might somehow take away traffic/revenue from The Official Actual Site for the show. And to be fair, they do have cause to worry how their characters are used/abused in fanfics. Ever read a Doctor Who/The Simpsons crossover slash fic? Do you know how to kill the remaining brain cells that have that data permanently seared into them? If so, send me a note!
So now the studios are competing with the fan sites for TV shows- and the studios do have the advantages of money, professional layout, unlimited access to the copyrighted images and videos... and all the fans have is their love for their favorite shows.
You know you're a fan when your involvement with a particular show extends beyond simply watching it. You discuss it with your friends, you discuss it with perfect strangers who happen to have a modem and an interest in the show. You record or buy tapes or DVDs to watch over and over, you buy posters and novels and comic books and lunchboxes and bed sheets and stylized chess boards and play money and...
You get the idea. Hollywood is above all else a business, and if a show is making money the knee-jerk reaction is to try and squeeze even more green out of it. The idea has been around long before I was born: You like the show, you like the buy-products manufactured thereof.
The internet was created to spread information, and in between the various scams, porn and the kind, albeit somewhat forward folk who express a tender concern for the size of my penis there are the web sites devoted to various TV shows. For a show with any popularity at all, there are individual sites for particular characters. For very popular shows, sites abound for guest characters, individual episodes, and even catch phrases, quotes and photoshopped pics of the cast.
Now the creators of these shows are always very proud that they've inspired this level of loyalty and devotion in their fans- no matter how snippy the letter from their lawyers reads. It's not that they want to stamp out any bit of fun or excitement you might gain from using their ever-so-copyrighted images... they just want to make some money off of it in the process.
Long the domain of the devoted fans, many TV shows now are providing their own "additional material" on the internet. I haven't gotten deeply into this, even for my favorites (Financial and geographic factors leave me limited to dial-up, and video takes a long time to download). No doubt the studios are worried that fan sites might somehow take away traffic/revenue from The Official Actual Site for the show. And to be fair, they do have cause to worry how their characters are used/abused in fanfics. Ever read a Doctor Who/The Simpsons crossover slash fic? Do you know how to kill the remaining brain cells that have that data permanently seared into them? If so, send me a note!
So now the studios are competing with the fan sites for TV shows- and the studios do have the advantages of money, professional layout, unlimited access to the copyrighted images and videos... and all the fans have is their love for their favorite shows.
