Hail to the Fanboys - Grass Roots & SciFi
Loren Javier, a fellow Sci Fi enthusiast over at Confessions of a (thirtysomething) drama queen, recently posted an article discussing grassroots organizing and how it relates to science fiction. As something of a "fanboy advocate," I find Fandom and the hidden power of a fanbase to be a seductive and compelling side of Sci Fi. Unfortunately, it's still the exception rather than the rule where a television series maker will take notice of their core fanbase and purposefully try to toss them a few bones every once in awhile . . .
One need only look at the debacle that was Star Trek: Enterprise to realize that it's much more common that a producer will try to press their own vision onto the audience rather than listen to the fans in any reasonable capacity. As they go about their arbitrary march toward their great "vision" that will doubtlessly "revitalize the franchise," they often quote misnomers to the naysayer like "it's what the mainstream wants" and that the hard-core fans are simply "a vocal minority" to be at best ignored and at worst ridiculed. I won't dispute that a producer, writer or director has the absolute right to screw up their series as much as they please, but fans also have the right to point it out when they do so. It's our job to criticize the media we love, and writers and producers ignore us at their own peril.
Contrary to what most studio press releases will tell you, the “hard-core” fanbase is actually one of a TV show's most valuable commodities, and should be taken seriously (but within reasonable limits, of course). The argument for this is simple enough, and can be looked at from a purely marketing perspective: Advertisers spend obscene amounts of money trying to pick apart, control, understand, predict and serve the needs and wants of a consumer base. The company that best serves a distinct need of a consumer segment is most likely to become successful and capture a significant amount of market share.
Similarly, the point of a television show is to serve the “needs” of a consumer segment—IE people who have a pre-existing inclination toward the show's subject matter or genre. Hard-core fans have the virtue of not being difficult to research—we're a very vocal group, who will spend inhuman amounts of time giving you our thoughts, opinions, considerations and ideas in chat rooms, on message boards, on Blogs and on Usenet. We will write fanfiction about how we think characters should grow; we will mercilessly point out technical inconsistencies and lapses in continuity; we will naval-gaze and speculate on upcoming episodes and every bit of “leaked” info we can get our hands on, and we will tell our less-geeky friends about the episodes that they just absolutely have to tune in to.
Clue:
Sci Fi Producers: We Are Your Word of Mouth.
Resisting what we say is Futile . . . and Just Plain Dumb.
There's no lack of feedback and researchable information available for sci fi producers to glean through . . . and it's not like it's hard to find; a simple Google search will easily yield more qualitative information than one person can reasonably deal with. It's not a matter of it being hard to hear us; it's a matter of “The Powers That Be" often being hard-eared.
The idea that fanboy opinions are irrelevant because “hard core" fans make up a minority of the folks who watch a TV show is fallacious. This would be like saying that the direction in which a bullet flies has nothing to do with where you point the gun. “Hard core" views, though they may be skewed in intensity, have a direct effect on the views and opinions of more casual fans. For those of you with a Marketing background (like myself), this is just another application of the Bass Model: innovators and early adopters set the stage for the later majority.
If that's too technical for you, then ask yourself this question: If your geeky friend who's been able to quote every line of every episode of Star Trek since he was 7 suddenly starts telling you that “Enterprise Sucks" – what are you going to think? Now take that answer and multiply it by about 4 million.
Like it or not, hard core science fiction nerds are the “early adopters" and stage-setters for majority opinion. However, just because a fanbase ardently admires a show does not mean that a majority will form—but once it has, the “fanboys" have an extremely powerful effect on how that majority behaves. They're considered experts on the subjects by casual viewers, and the “nay" of a hardcore fan could easily prevent a whole slew of more casual viewers from watching the next episode, video or movie.
There's a lot of disenfranchised Trekkies out there who are now clinging onto the coat-tails of Battlestar Galactica, because BSG serves a common “need" for quality science fiction that Paramount forfeited when they cancelled Enterprise. Star Trek, however, is not the only series in danger of this kind of popularity seppuku, nor is Science Fiction the only genre that these arguments apply to. SF fans, however, tend to be “early adopters" of electronic communication technology on the Internet . . . and if the dismal demise of Enterprise is any indication, other drama producers, writers and directors should take careful notice of their “hard core" fans opinions in the future.
