There is (at least according to one episode of _Grey's Anatomy_) a big scary red button to shut down the machine in an emergency, resulting in expensive to restore operation:
Based on wikipedia original viewership numbers, the office UK saw about 63 million views during its original run, and the US show saw about 1,463 million, so it definitely was the more popular show by orders of magnitude.
It also seems to be on-again-off-again the most streamed TV show in a given year, competing with the likes of Friends, Suits, and Grey's anatomy. I can't find UK stream numbers to compare, but it doesn't seem like it's ever made one of the top 10/25/etc lists that netflix or neilson publishes.
It may depend on what TV shows you watch. It's been on Grey's Anatomy, the Good Doctor and House MD. I thought it was on Chicago Med once or twice too.
I noticed that the watchtime of `You` was split half-and-half between the new season 4 and the prior seasons 1-3. I was curious about the total results by show, including all seasons. Here's the top 25:
TITLE TOTAL HRS WATCHED
----- -----------------
Ginny & Georgia 967,200,000
The Night Agent 812,100,000
You 766,300,000
Outer Banks 740,400,000
The Walking Dead 738,600,000
The Glory 622,800,000
La Reina del Sur 616,800,000
CoComelon 601,200,000
Suits (2011) 599,100,000
The Blacklist 596,900,000
Manifest 581,900,000
Grey's Anatomy 560,300,000
Wednesday 507,700,000
Gilmore Girls 505,800,000
Breaking Bad 505,000,000
Queen Charlotte 503,000,000
Friends (1994) 448,500,000
Love Is Blind 439,300,000
Lucifer 434,300,000
The Big Bang Theory 420,400,000
Shameless (U.S.) 392,600,000
PAW Patrol 392,300,000
New Amsterdam (2018) 375,500,000
Brooklyn Nine-Nine 358,900,000
Firefly Lane 342,700,000
No, shows actually require more work today. For example, Wednesday, is only 8 episodes but required 8 months of actual production. In comparison, Grey's Anatomy averages over 20 episodes a season (in its heyday, 27 episodes/season) but only required 6 months of production each season. (Writers who are part of the "writing room" are contracted to the show until production ends. They can write film scripts in their free time but can't work in another show's writer's room.)
The problem is that everything these days is heavily serialized, and directors and studios are far more willing to demand last-minute script changes. Because of the nature and extent of serialization, this requires significant amounts of work--often more work than the original writing, because changes have to be propagated throughout the season.
Back when ER was a hit show, there was survey among medical professionals and hospital staff asking for their favorite medical drama series and the reasons for it. Grey's Anatomy, and similar series, constantly beat ER. The reason was that medical staff considered ER way too realistic. Makes sense, why would I entertain myself during my off hours with what is basically a documentary about my on-duty hours.
I make some exceptions but like you I just get bored. Even with the best TV series, I'm pretty much ready to check out after about five seasons even if it's still going strong. It's one reason I don't really have a problem with the relatively short durations of a lot of streaming shows so long as they wrap things up reasonably.
I also appreciate this isn't a universal opinion and that some people are just fine with endless genre series whether books/TV/film or a show like Grey's Anatomy which has been running for almost 20 years because they're likely just very comfortable with everything about it.
Bit of a tangent: I read the article to my wife and she mentioned that there is an episode of Grey's Anatomy where they wanted to perform a transplant of a pig's bowels but the Jewish (or Muslim?) lady refused. Interesting how one might choose to their faith over their life.
In the UK, Doctor Who is clearly an outlier. The other really long-running shows are soap operas like Eastenders or comedy panel shows.
But in the US, there seem to be an awful lot of outliers, and it's on the strength of those series that Netflix initially established their following: Friends, The Office, Park and Rec, Seinfeld, Community, The Walking Dead, The Blacklist, Gilmore Girls, Grey's Anatomy, West Wing, That 70's Show, Supernatural, Criminal Minds, and I could keep going, honestly, for quite a while.
So yes, there's an extent to which 5 or 8 seasons is less common, but the goal for US shows has been 100 episodes for decades now, which is usually 5 seasons of 20+ episodes each.
If Netflix is adopting a more UK-like approach, that might result in better TV eventually, but it would be nice for creators to know they have to tell their story in 16 episodes rather than 100.
> forecasts a future where streaming companies slowly increase their prices as bad as the cable television companies of yore.
Seems like this all has to do with how fungible consumers' preference for media is. If the viewers have to see the newest Disney film or the most recent season of a hit sitcom, then those who own the content can extract their pound of flesh. When a media property is strong enough that consumers demand it by name, it's a monopoly product with monopoly pricing power.
But if consumers show even a little flexibility, that puts drastic downward pressure on media prices. "We don't have This is Us... but we do have a very cheap back catalog of Grey's Anatomy that we think you might like just as much..." Now content becomes a commodity, and margins become razor thin. The surplus gets re-allocated and divided between cheaper consumer prices and those who own the algorithm. Netflix became the biggest media company in the world based on the strength of its algorithm not its media property.
One reason that cable company prices got out of control is because there was no effective mechanism for content fungibility. Higher prices were driven by ever higher carrier fees. If Comcast gets in a standoff with Bravo, it will always lose. A large segment of consumers demand Bravo, and Comcast had no way to deliver then any sort of satisfactory alternative. So carriers fees marches higher, which then in turn meant that consumer prices marched higher, since the cable companies were a monopoly themselves.
In the near-term the specific countours of the landscape and machinations of the business may push prices up or down. But in the long-run, algorithms are only getting better. There's no countervailing force making media branding stronger over time. The end-result has to be that the cost of media content asymptotically approaches its marginal cost: zero. Or more likely content just become a subsidized subsidiary of the tech gatekeepers that own the algorithms.
I think something similar is going on with Netflix. I noticed on the AppleTV app, when you click on "More Episodes" it usually loads in a couple of seconds. But if it's with a show that has dozens of seasons (I noticed it when my spouse clicked on "Grey's Anatomy" which has 16 seasons), it takes much longer to load the episode poster frame and description. I think it's loading all of them at once, or something, because it definitely seems to change based on the number of available episodes. You'd think they could load the ones that are visible first, then load the rest in the background.
While reading this I thought it sounded familiar, and realized this is exactly what happens in the Grey's anatomy episode "Love Turns You Upside Down". Interesting that it was based on a real life situation, it seems like a lot of episodes are.
I have seen a few episodes but I feel very weird about taking anything from it other than entertainment. Problem is if you are already subject matter expert, you can distinguish the information from the entertainment but you already know the information so it might be a refresher at best. For example, doctors and other medical professionals watching House, MD or Grey's Anatomy might be able to relate with some of the things when the show has some basis on reality and laugh at things when they are off base. Similarly, people in marketing/advertising business might be able to tell what is what but from the outside, I can't tell the difference between information and entertainment.
Excuse my ignorance, but is there an atheist form of AA and similar 12-steps programs?
My knowledge of them is very limited to pop culture (like its depiction in TV shows such as The Wire, Breaking Bad and Grey's Anatomy), but their depictions always seemed annoying to me because they are all about god, submission to a "higher power", and "the original sin"/"flawed humans" in one way or the other. If you are actively atheist, you will find this approach off-putting and it won't help you.
A huge portion of the American TV-watching demographic doesn't pay very much attention to shows while they are watching it. So they prefer shows that have predictable rehashing of the same plot each season. Think Supernatural, Grey's Anatomy, Once Upon a Time. You don't really need to put effort into remembering previous episodes because you've seen them enough to get the gist without any background.
Shows like NCIS, Law & Order, and Criminal Minds will literally run the same plot each episode. These are some of the most popular TV shows in history.
Studio executives don't want to accept that they have a hit show that doesn't cater to this demographic. Once the main story wraps up, usually after 4-5 seasons, the original creator will get fed up or fired because they are unwilling to drag the story out any longer. Then the studio brings in a generic writing team to transform the show into one of those a predictable rehash shows.
It never works because the people who are into those shows won't get past the first four seasons, and the original fans of the show get tired and stop watching.
Glee and Grey's Anatomy are from the OP, not my examples. Netflix is hiring the creators of these shows to make more shows, presumably somewhat similar. Breaking Bad is not from Netflix, neither is GoT which was interesting for about 1½ seasons. Even worse, Black Mirror was IMHO better before it moved to Netflix (but to some extent this is true of every show, creators have more pent-up, fresh ideas in the beginning).
While the tidal wave of capeshit is unwatchable and depressing, this is not all the competition Netflix has to contend with. First, you have every movie and tv show ever made. Then you can watch them again. Most shows can't even beat a 7th rewatch of Seinfeld.
Second, you can do something else than watching TV, like hitting the gym, writing a blog, taking your dog for a surprise extra walk, playing with your kids, making a steak instead of having takeout, cleaning your room while listening to Jordan Peterson telling you to clean your room... anything really.
And, I would argue, all of these are a better use of time than anything on Netflix right now.
There's tons of great TV shows nowadays. Mentioning Grey's anatomy and Glee does a disservice to TV.
Besides the obvious Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad there's Stranger things, Black Mirror, Westworld, just to name a few. Hell, all of the above are much much better than 90% of the crappy Marvel/superhero/blockbuster movie Hollywood keeps spewing nowadays.
Trying to see it from a cultural perspective, how common is it that female character "dates up" in books, TV and movies (and in particular, those targeting a female audience)?
Thinking back at the show Grey's Anatomy, ABC's highest-rated drama show, got a female lead, and was among the top 10 shows in the US. A recent joke the character made was that all of them married their bosses. While fictional, culture impacts perception regarding behavior and in turns causes behavior.
I live in Los Angeles, specifically the west side; hardly a day goes by that I don't see a Ferrari pull out of the Sony Studios facility, a 50-person crew filming 2 actors talking next to a cafe, or an action scene that closes down part of a freeway, with 100s of police, security, helicopters, etc. around. Many scenes of Grey's Anatomy are filmed in what is almost my back yard, and they often involve a dozen camera-crew trucks, staff of 60+ people, etc. I just cringe when I think of the cost.
What most people want is a great story, and great dialog. I'm not talking about the audience for a Transformers movie, I don't watch them but some do; that is a different story, and the animation can be done, and is being done, more cheaply outside of Hollywood already. But what I'm saying is that if you can write a great script and have a great story with great dialog, there are plenty of hungry, often young (age isn't relevant BTW) people with RED 4K cameras who can film and edit and put together a great product for $3M, not $30M or $100M.
The days of Brad Pitt getting $30M for a movie, of Julia Roberts getting $25M, are coming to and end. It might take 5 years, or 10 years, or even a generation, but it will happen. Same thing to studio execs; the days of drinking champagne for breakfast and lighting Cuban cigars with $100 bills will end. IT JUST IS NOT SUSTAINABLE, NECESSARY, OR COMPETITIVE ANYMORE. (Sorry for shouting, but that is the crux of my point). 30 years ago, there was no internet to speak of, there were no RED (or Canon, etc.) cameras, there were no "prosumer" drones with HD cameras, non-western countries were isolated and not part of the global workforce, etc.
That has all changed. It is just very easy to put together a great product for less, and all must adjust. It happened to IT, computing and programming, and it's happening to entertainment.
I first installed Ubuntu either a few days before or a few days after the Hoary Hedgehog release. I recall using the Gnome version first and then adding in the Kubuntu packages a few days later.
At that point, I was fairly used to Debian and I'd used some of the other "shiny" distros at the time (like Linspire, shudder) but Ubuntu (and Kubuntu) was one of the first distros to work with my Atheros Wi-Fi dongle without significant amounts of pain. I mean, it was still a pain but I was able to get it done.
Ubuntu -- and Kubuntu especially -- was my obsession for a few months in the spring of 2005. I still remember torrenting episodes of a brand new TV show called "Grey's Anatomy" (that had taken the time slot of my beloved "Boston Legal") that had just debuted and watching it in variations of Mplayer in Kubuntu. Funny. Grey's Anatomy is still around a decade later too.
These days, I only use Linux on the server and very, very rarely on a test VM, but I have an enormous amount of respect to the KDE team and the Kubuntu team for keeping on keeping on.
As a category, anime has some unique characteristics you don't (generally) find in other TV or film categories:
1) Strong user/viewer affinity for the category. Generally speaking, you don't find that your typical Grey's Anatomy viewer is a "medical drama fan," who seeks out other medical dramas at every opportunity. Likewise, a rabid Family Guy viewer is probably not an "animated comedy fan," barring a very tiny and borderline-insignificant segment who is. They might be fair-weather fans, but their consumption of those categories is ad-hoc and show-dependent. Anime fans may come to the category seeking a particular show -- Cowboy Bebop, Attack on Titan, or what have you -- but many of them stick around for anime as a category. Someone who likes Law & Order isn't going to seek out other legal procedurals, but someone who likes a mecha show is going to look for more mecha shows.
2) Anime is underrepresented on TV/movie services like Netflix, or in other "mainstream" TV/movie sites and aggregators. (That said, there are anime-specialist players in these markets, such as Crunchyroll and Anime Network.)
3) High fan engagement online, more so than with many other categories of film or TV. Thus, a more addressable user base.
Of course, these factors can also work against you. As another commenter has pointed out, the characteristics that make anime unlike other genres also makes bridging the gap between anime and other genres very challenging. Anime companies are usually in the business of addressing the TAM in the anime category; they seldom find success using anime as a beachhead to attack TV or movies in general. Not saying it can't happen, or that it's never happened. But it's difficult.
Real life is seldom like a tv show. I don't think this should be news to anyone. I bet physicians don't like Grey's Anatomy either.
While I'm sorry things didn't work out for you, I don't see this as anything to do with this area. Your story is one that is playing out all over America in this economy.
I think cost of influence is a more important metric for judging how serious advertisers are than the overall size of a market.
Take television, for example:
"during the 2007-08 season, Grey's Anatomy was able to charge $419,000 per advertisement"
Independently, I found the viewing figures were 17-18 million per episode for that season. So about $24.65 "CPM". And that was one of the best mainstream, regular ad returns on TV (CSI had a higher audience and far lower charges per ad). That's half of what I know even minor podcasts are making..
On the flip side, a TV show tends to have many ads packed in whereas a podcasts runs with a few at most but in terms of CPM, they seem to trump most TV.
I put up www.ibrokemypenis.com for a friend of a friend back in 2008.
On January 22, 2009, Grey's Anatomy aired an episode called Stairway to Heaven .." in which consultant Mark Sloan - otherwise known as McSteamy - suffered a fractured penis after indulging in sex in the on-call room with Lexie Grey."
Not directly related to the speed of news but interesting reading is "Don't believe it! How lies become news" by Kitty Alexander, who was also involved with the fantastic documentary "Outfoxed".
It's my impression that people lump news and doctors into the same bunch: they are somehow infallible. Somehow they are always doing the right thing.
Well "Grey's Anatomy" and "Scrubs" pretty much ruined the medical industry for me :) I guess maybe Season 5 of "The Wire" does the same for mass media?
Hacker Cinema
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There is (at least according to one episode of _Grey's Anatomy_) a big scary red button to shut down the machine in an emergency, resulting in expensive to restore operation:
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/m9algh/eli5_why_do_mri_machines_cost_so_much_to_shut_off/
According to the above post, it's a venting of the liquid helium, which requires ~$25,000 to replace).
Based on wikipedia original viewership numbers, the office UK saw about 63 million views during its original run, and the US show saw about 1,463 million, so it definitely was the more popular show by orders of magnitude.
It also seems to be on-again-off-again the most streamed TV show in a given year, competing with the likes of Friends, Suits, and Grey's anatomy. I can't find UK stream numbers to compare, but it doesn't seem like it's ever made one of the top 10/25/etc lists that netflix or neilson publishes.
It may depend on what TV shows you watch. It's been on Grey's Anatomy, the Good Doctor and House MD. I thought it was on Chicago Med once or twice too.
The quality of the IP that they sold off w/ eOne, both on the music side in their 2021 sale and the tv/movie side with this recent one, is staggering.
Notably, the entire Death Row Records catalog, Grey's Anatomy, Criminal Minds, international distribution for The Walking Dead, etc.
I noticed that the watchtime of `You` was split half-and-half between the new season 4 and the prior seasons 1-3. I was curious about the total results by show, including all seasons. Here's the top 25:
TITLE TOTAL HRS WATCHED ----- ----------------- Ginny & Georgia 967,200,000 The Night Agent 812,100,000 You 766,300,000 Outer Banks 740,400,000 The Walking Dead 738,600,000 The Glory 622,800,000 La Reina del Sur 616,800,000 CoComelon 601,200,000 Suits (2011) 599,100,000 The Blacklist 596,900,000 Manifest 581,900,000 Grey's Anatomy 560,300,000 Wednesday 507,700,000 Gilmore Girls 505,800,000 Breaking Bad 505,000,000 Queen Charlotte 503,000,000 Friends (1994) 448,500,000 Love Is Blind 439,300,000 Lucifer 434,300,000 The Big Bang Theory 420,400,000 Shameless (U.S.) 392,600,000 PAW Patrol 392,300,000 New Amsterdam (2018) 375,500,000 Brooklyn Nine-Nine 358,900,000 Firefly Lane 342,700,000
No, shows actually require more work today. For example, Wednesday, is only 8 episodes but required 8 months of actual production. In comparison, Grey's Anatomy averages over 20 episodes a season (in its heyday, 27 episodes/season) but only required 6 months of production each season. (Writers who are part of the "writing room" are contracted to the show until production ends. They can write film scripts in their free time but can't work in another show's writer's room.)
The problem is that everything these days is heavily serialized, and directors and studios are far more willing to demand last-minute script changes. Because of the nature and extent of serialization, this requires significant amounts of work--often more work than the original writing, because changes have to be propagated throughout the season.
Back when ER was a hit show, there was survey among medical professionals and hospital staff asking for their favorite medical drama series and the reasons for it. Grey's Anatomy, and similar series, constantly beat ER. The reason was that medical staff considered ER way too realistic. Makes sense, why would I entertain myself during my off hours with what is basically a documentary about my on-duty hours.
I make some exceptions but like you I just get bored. Even with the best TV series, I'm pretty much ready to check out after about five seasons even if it's still going strong. It's one reason I don't really have a problem with the relatively short durations of a lot of streaming shows so long as they wrap things up reasonably.
I also appreciate this isn't a universal opinion and that some people are just fine with endless genre series whether books/TV/film or a show like Grey's Anatomy which has been running for almost 20 years because they're likely just very comfortable with everything about it.
Bit of a tangent: I read the article to my wife and she mentioned that there is an episode of Grey's Anatomy where they wanted to perform a transplant of a pig's bowels but the Jewish (or Muslim?) lady refused. Interesting how one might choose to their faith over their life.
In the UK, Doctor Who is clearly an outlier. The other really long-running shows are soap operas like Eastenders or comedy panel shows.
But in the US, there seem to be an awful lot of outliers, and it's on the strength of those series that Netflix initially established their following: Friends, The Office, Park and Rec, Seinfeld, Community, The Walking Dead, The Blacklist, Gilmore Girls, Grey's Anatomy, West Wing, That 70's Show, Supernatural, Criminal Minds, and I could keep going, honestly, for quite a while.
So yes, there's an extent to which 5 or 8 seasons is less common, but the goal for US shows has been 100 episodes for decades now, which is usually 5 seasons of 20+ episodes each.
If Netflix is adopting a more UK-like approach, that might result in better TV eventually, but it would be nice for creators to know they have to tell their story in 16 episodes rather than 100.
> forecasts a future where streaming companies slowly increase their prices as bad as the cable television companies of yore.
Seems like this all has to do with how fungible consumers' preference for media is. If the viewers have to see the newest Disney film or the most recent season of a hit sitcom, then those who own the content can extract their pound of flesh. When a media property is strong enough that consumers demand it by name, it's a monopoly product with monopoly pricing power.
But if consumers show even a little flexibility, that puts drastic downward pressure on media prices. "We don't have This is Us... but we do have a very cheap back catalog of Grey's Anatomy that we think you might like just as much..." Now content becomes a commodity, and margins become razor thin. The surplus gets re-allocated and divided between cheaper consumer prices and those who own the algorithm. Netflix became the biggest media company in the world based on the strength of its algorithm not its media property.
One reason that cable company prices got out of control is because there was no effective mechanism for content fungibility. Higher prices were driven by ever higher carrier fees. If Comcast gets in a standoff with Bravo, it will always lose. A large segment of consumers demand Bravo, and Comcast had no way to deliver then any sort of satisfactory alternative. So carriers fees marches higher, which then in turn meant that consumer prices marched higher, since the cable companies were a monopoly themselves.
In the near-term the specific countours of the landscape and machinations of the business may push prices up or down. But in the long-run, algorithms are only getting better. There's no countervailing force making media branding stronger over time. The end-result has to be that the cost of media content asymptotically approaches its marginal cost: zero. Or more likely content just become a subsidized subsidiary of the tech gatekeepers that own the algorithms.
I think something similar is going on with Netflix. I noticed on the AppleTV app, when you click on "More Episodes" it usually loads in a couple of seconds. But if it's with a show that has dozens of seasons (I noticed it when my spouse clicked on "Grey's Anatomy" which has 16 seasons), it takes much longer to load the episode poster frame and description. I think it's loading all of them at once, or something, because it definitely seems to change based on the number of available episodes. You'd think they could load the ones that are visible first, then load the rest in the background.
While reading this I thought it sounded familiar, and realized this is exactly what happens in the Grey's anatomy episode "Love Turns You Upside Down". Interesting that it was based on a real life situation, it seems like a lot of episodes are.
> Nobody here watched Mad Men I guess.
I have seen a few episodes but I feel very weird about taking anything from it other than entertainment. Problem is if you are already subject matter expert, you can distinguish the information from the entertainment but you already know the information so it might be a refresher at best. For example, doctors and other medical professionals watching House, MD or Grey's Anatomy might be able to relate with some of the things when the show has some basis on reality and laugh at things when they are off base. Similarly, people in marketing/advertising business might be able to tell what is what but from the outside, I can't tell the difference between information and entertainment.
Excuse my ignorance, but is there an atheist form of AA and similar 12-steps programs?
My knowledge of them is very limited to pop culture (like its depiction in TV shows such as The Wire, Breaking Bad and Grey's Anatomy), but their depictions always seemed annoying to me because they are all about god, submission to a "higher power", and "the original sin"/"flawed humans" in one way or the other. If you are actively atheist, you will find this approach off-putting and it won't help you.
A huge portion of the American TV-watching demographic doesn't pay very much attention to shows while they are watching it. So they prefer shows that have predictable rehashing of the same plot each season. Think Supernatural, Grey's Anatomy, Once Upon a Time. You don't really need to put effort into remembering previous episodes because you've seen them enough to get the gist without any background.
Shows like NCIS, Law & Order, and Criminal Minds will literally run the same plot each episode. These are some of the most popular TV shows in history.
Studio executives don't want to accept that they have a hit show that doesn't cater to this demographic. Once the main story wraps up, usually after 4-5 seasons, the original creator will get fed up or fired because they are unwilling to drag the story out any longer. Then the studio brings in a generic writing team to transform the show into one of those a predictable rehash shows.
It never works because the people who are into those shows won't get past the first four seasons, and the original fans of the show get tired and stop watching.
Glee and Grey's Anatomy are from the OP, not my examples. Netflix is hiring the creators of these shows to make more shows, presumably somewhat similar. Breaking Bad is not from Netflix, neither is GoT which was interesting for about 1½ seasons. Even worse, Black Mirror was IMHO better before it moved to Netflix (but to some extent this is true of every show, creators have more pent-up, fresh ideas in the beginning).
While the tidal wave of capeshit is unwatchable and depressing, this is not all the competition Netflix has to contend with. First, you have every movie and tv show ever made. Then you can watch them again. Most shows can't even beat a 7th rewatch of Seinfeld.
Second, you can do something else than watching TV, like hitting the gym, writing a blog, taking your dog for a surprise extra walk, playing with your kids, making a steak instead of having takeout, cleaning your room while listening to Jordan Peterson telling you to clean your room... anything really.
And, I would argue, all of these are a better use of time than anything on Netflix right now.
There's tons of great TV shows nowadays. Mentioning Grey's anatomy and Glee does a disservice to TV.
Besides the obvious Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad there's Stranger things, Black Mirror, Westworld, just to name a few. Hell, all of the above are much much better than 90% of the crappy Marvel/superhero/blockbuster movie Hollywood keeps spewing nowadays.
Pulled right out of a Grey's Anatomy episode (or vice versa is more likely):
http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/wilmer-valderrama-says-good-day-greys-anatomy-234986
Trying to see it from a cultural perspective, how common is it that female character "dates up" in books, TV and movies (and in particular, those targeting a female audience)?
Thinking back at the show Grey's Anatomy, ABC's highest-rated drama show, got a female lead, and was among the top 10 shows in the US. A recent joke the character made was that all of them married their bosses. While fictional, culture impacts perception regarding behavior and in turns causes behavior.
I live in Los Angeles, specifically the west side; hardly a day goes by that I don't see a Ferrari pull out of the Sony Studios facility, a 50-person crew filming 2 actors talking next to a cafe, or an action scene that closes down part of a freeway, with 100s of police, security, helicopters, etc. around. Many scenes of Grey's Anatomy are filmed in what is almost my back yard, and they often involve a dozen camera-crew trucks, staff of 60+ people, etc. I just cringe when I think of the cost.
What most people want is a great story, and great dialog. I'm not talking about the audience for a Transformers movie, I don't watch them but some do; that is a different story, and the animation can be done, and is being done, more cheaply outside of Hollywood already. But what I'm saying is that if you can write a great script and have a great story with great dialog, there are plenty of hungry, often young (age isn't relevant BTW) people with RED 4K cameras who can film and edit and put together a great product for $3M, not $30M or $100M.
The days of Brad Pitt getting $30M for a movie, of Julia Roberts getting $25M, are coming to and end. It might take 5 years, or 10 years, or even a generation, but it will happen. Same thing to studio execs; the days of drinking champagne for breakfast and lighting Cuban cigars with $100 bills will end. IT JUST IS NOT SUSTAINABLE, NECESSARY, OR COMPETITIVE ANYMORE. (Sorry for shouting, but that is the crux of my point). 30 years ago, there was no internet to speak of, there were no RED (or Canon, etc.) cameras, there were no "prosumer" drones with HD cameras, non-western countries were isolated and not part of the global workforce, etc.
That has all changed. It is just very easy to put together a great product for less, and all must adjust. It happened to IT, computing and programming, and it's happening to entertainment.
I first installed Ubuntu either a few days before or a few days after the Hoary Hedgehog release. I recall using the Gnome version first and then adding in the Kubuntu packages a few days later.
At that point, I was fairly used to Debian and I'd used some of the other "shiny" distros at the time (like Linspire, shudder) but Ubuntu (and Kubuntu) was one of the first distros to work with my Atheros Wi-Fi dongle without significant amounts of pain. I mean, it was still a pain but I was able to get it done.
Ubuntu -- and Kubuntu especially -- was my obsession for a few months in the spring of 2005. I still remember torrenting episodes of a brand new TV show called "Grey's Anatomy" (that had taken the time slot of my beloved "Boston Legal") that had just debuted and watching it in variations of Mplayer in Kubuntu. Funny. Grey's Anatomy is still around a decade later too.
These days, I only use Linux on the server and very, very rarely on a test VM, but I have an enormous amount of respect to the KDE team and the Kubuntu team for keeping on keeping on.
As a category, anime has some unique characteristics you don't (generally) find in other TV or film categories:
1) Strong user/viewer affinity for the category. Generally speaking, you don't find that your typical Grey's Anatomy viewer is a "medical drama fan," who seeks out other medical dramas at every opportunity. Likewise, a rabid Family Guy viewer is probably not an "animated comedy fan," barring a very tiny and borderline-insignificant segment who is. They might be fair-weather fans, but their consumption of those categories is ad-hoc and show-dependent. Anime fans may come to the category seeking a particular show -- Cowboy Bebop, Attack on Titan, or what have you -- but many of them stick around for anime as a category. Someone who likes Law & Order isn't going to seek out other legal procedurals, but someone who likes a mecha show is going to look for more mecha shows.
2) Anime is underrepresented on TV/movie services like Netflix, or in other "mainstream" TV/movie sites and aggregators. (That said, there are anime-specialist players in these markets, such as Crunchyroll and Anime Network.)
3) High fan engagement online, more so than with many other categories of film or TV. Thus, a more addressable user base.
Of course, these factors can also work against you. As another commenter has pointed out, the characteristics that make anime unlike other genres also makes bridging the gap between anime and other genres very challenging. Anime companies are usually in the business of addressing the TAM in the anime category; they seldom find success using anime as a beachhead to attack TV or movies in general. Not saying it can't happen, or that it's never happened. But it's difficult.
Real life is seldom like a tv show. I don't think this should be news to anyone. I bet physicians don't like Grey's Anatomy either.
While I'm sorry things didn't work out for you, I don't see this as anything to do with this area. Your story is one that is playing out all over America in this economy.
I think cost of influence is a more important metric for judging how serious advertisers are than the overall size of a market.
Take television, for example:
"during the 2007-08 season, Grey's Anatomy was able to charge $419,000 per advertisement"
Independently, I found the viewing figures were 17-18 million per episode for that season. So about $24.65 "CPM". And that was one of the best mainstream, regular ad returns on TV (CSI had a higher audience and far lower charges per ad). That's half of what I know even minor podcasts are making..
On the flip side, a TV show tends to have many ads packed in whereas a podcasts runs with a few at most but in terms of CPM, they seem to trump most TV.
I put up www.ibrokemypenis.com for a friend of a friend back in 2008.
On January 22, 2009, Grey's Anatomy aired an episode called Stairway to Heaven .." in which consultant Mark Sloan - otherwise known as McSteamy - suffered a fractured penis after indulging in sex in the on-call room with Lexie Grey."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/4322523/Broken-penis-episode-in-Greys-Anatomy-sparks-frantic-internet-search-among-men.html
Initially the resulting traffic brought down our Apache server and we had no idea why so many people were searching for "penile fracture" on Google.
Here's the Google Analytics report for January 2009: http://www.ibrokemypenis.com/Analytics_ibrokemypenis.com_200901_(TrafficSourcesReport).pdf
- Jan 22: 3269 visits
- Jan 23: 4520 visits
- Jan 24: 2523 visits
- Jan 25: 1540 visits
- Jan 26: 933 visits
- Jan 27: 909 visits
Not directly related to the speed of news but interesting reading is "Don't believe it! How lies become news" by Kitty Alexander, who was also involved with the fantastic documentary "Outfoxed".
It's my impression that people lump news and doctors into the same bunch: they are somehow infallible. Somehow they are always doing the right thing.
Well "Grey's Anatomy" and "Scrubs" pretty much ruined the medical industry for me :) I guess maybe Season 5 of "The Wire" does the same for mass media?
There's a much easier market than those:
#93 - Watch Grey's Anatomy
- An online Grey's Anatomy episode streamer and forum. This is the road to millions.