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30 September 2006

Popkultur commodification

MIT's Convergence Culture gang pays a visit to ComiCon and learns a lesson about the economic consequences of fan love.

he had been hesitant to invest in the development of Firefly-affiliated merchandise, until he saw that fans were willing to pay—and pay well—for anything connected to the show
....
a small, engaged audience can be far more lucrative, especially to niche marketers, than a massive casual audience. After all, as he pointed out to me, there's no market for CSI: Miami trading cards, even if it is the number one show in the world

Fourteen episodes, cancelled four years ago, and Firefly still sells cards.

Reminds me of a story I read about how Lucas had sold the merchandising rights for Episode I-III of Star Wars for a billion dollars. For that kind of money, he could have made the movies and shown them for free as a promotional cost. Think about that.

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