It’s not going so well.
Warning: The second half of this article contains spoilers for recent episodes ofThe 100andSleepy Hollow.
Were talking aboutThe Viewer vs. From where Im standing, Tumblr is one of the chief places where TV fandom really lives.
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Unfortunately (for networks), these viewers media savviness is a double-edged sword.
Thats the reason theyre watching it in the first place.
Tapping into the market value of fandom
Varietyrecently publishedan articlecalled Why Understanding Fans is the New Superpower.
Many of them have shifted their language, now targeting fans instead of viewers or audiences.
Marketing strategies are increasingly crafted to drive not just breadth but depth of engagement.
Networks are implementing this belief that viewer engagement can matter over audience size in tangible ways.
In an official press release, Starz explains:
Fandom is exploding as a cultural phenomenon.
Yep, fandom has market power, and major corporate entities are just starting to embrace that fact.
More than that, they are the ones who are talking about it the most within fandom circles.
It has been around as long as media has been, with H.P.
Unfortunately, many networks, studios, and showrunners arent so good at it.
Fandom thrives, in part, because it operates outside of the commercial system.
It has no allegiance to the market, only to the online community.
Is art about making up new things or about transforming the raw material thats out there?
However, in broadcast web link TV, for example, the TV show isnt the product.
The audience is the product, being sold to the advertisers.
The TV show is just the bait.
For TPTB, on the other hand, creative content is inextricably tied to copyright and ownership.
It needs to be.
It doesnt matter why or how satisfyingly viewers are watching the show.
Only that theyre watching it.
However, that if, then logic is outdated and I think TV networks are starting to realize that.
(This is more true for premium cable and online streaming services, then for broadcast networks.)
Fandom is choosing to value stories that dont make money as much as stories that do.
(Not, to be clear, that more diverse storiescouldntmake money.)
MGM is too cowardly to put a gay man in one of their multimillion-dollar blockbusters?
And somehow want me to be content with the occasional subtext crumb from the table?
Fans dont have to play by the same commercially-sanctioned rules of mainstream media.
By and large, they had no part in creating commercial canon.
They dont need it, past creating a sandbox to play in.
We all wrestle with feelings and we can recognise them in stories when we see them.
We dont need for them to be sanctioned.
It doesnt matter what the writer intended, or what the artists intended.
Every story is as real as every other story.
TPTB continue to shoot themselves in the foot by limiting, ignoring, and undermining diversity in canon storytelling.
It was a diamond in the rough: a genre TV show featuring multiple characters of color.
The word spread on Tumblr and Twitter and in meta analysis across the Internet.
John Cho and Nicholas Gonzalez left.
Season 3 especially all but eliminated most of these elements.
There are many factors that go into the construction of a TV narrative.
Many of them have nothing to do with what TPTB think would make a good story.
Sometimes, budget constraints or actors schedules force scriptwriters to make narrative decisions they would otherwise never make.
She also didnt choosethe insulting, culturally tone-dead mannerin which her character was written out.
Just the latest example of TPTB playing with fandom fire and getting burned.
But intense fan engagement is a double-edged sword.
With the events that occurred in the March 3 episode of the show, many thinkThe 100did just that.
Only time will tell if their treatment of the fandom will have any lasting effect on the shows success.
Thankfully, there will always be fandom.
Mimicking the products of fandom is missing the point.
The process is the point.
It gives them a community.
