Primetime TV is dying. But I have an idea that will singlehandedly save Television!!!!

If you haven't heard, primetime television is dying. Simply put, audiences demand a lot more from tv shows these days, more special effects and high production values, and yet so many shows that had a ton of money put into them end up with poor ratings and failing. And this is costing TV Studios an arm and a leg.

This is why everyone is going after reality tv, because the budgets aren't anywhere near as high. And if this keeps up, we can kiss high budget high production TV Shows (24, Terminator: TSCC etc) good bye. They'll be replaced with endless American Idol clones.

But I have an idea that will save television. Remember how AOL used to mail out those annoying CDs for free internet that no one wanted.

How would you like to get DVDs containing the first four-six episodes of tv shows? I think most people wouldn’t mind that. Tons of great shows got cancelled over the years, not because they were bad shows, but simply because not enough people had heard of them or watched the pilot episode. Examples include Firefly, Family Guy (it got cancelled initially), Arrested Development, Clone High, Freaks & Geeks and countless others.

This is what brought the idea on. I frequently pass by this show “Burn Notice” when channel surfing. But I never had any idea who anyone on the show was so I just surf past it. This is a problem with most serialized tv shows. If you didn’t watch the pilot and thus don’t know who the people on the show are, you’ll usually never wind up watching the show at all.

One day, my friend brought over a dvd of Burn Notice and showed me the first four episodes of it. That’s it, I was hooked to the show. Anytime the show was on USA, I tuned in, and I went onto to watch every show. The episode recaps actually make sense once you've seen the first few episodes.
For most people, if they don’t watch the pilot of a serialized tv show, they will never end up watching the show. The average person doesn’t watch stuff on hulu.com. (If you’re reading this on an internet forum, you’re not the average person). They like to sit in their sofa and watch shows on their HDTV. And if they stumble onto a show, they won’t stick around unless they atleast know who the main characters were and what they’re after.

But there is something amount watching multiple episodes of a good show in a short amount of time, that completely hooks you into the show. Try it out sometime. I went on to do this to many people for many of my favorite tv shows. I showed my GF the first four episodes of How I Met Your Mother and now she is more obsessed with the show than I am. I showed my brother the first four episodes of The Shield and he instantly became hooked. I showed my friend the first four episodes of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and later on Dexter, and he loved both. Hell I even showed my mom the first four episodes of Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars (my GF made me watch them), and now she watches both all the time.

Based on this, I think television studios should mail out a dvd containing the first four-six episodes of any good shows they are making, that are at the risk of getting cancelled due to lack of viewers.

The cost to manufacture a dvd is down to .12 cents now!! And the postage to mail a dvd costs about 50 cents (according to Netflix). The average prime time tv episode costs about $6 million dollars to produce. So for the cost of producing one episode, a studio could mail out dvds with the first four-six episodes of a tv show to 10 million people!!! From my personal experience, the majority of people that watch those first few episodes will be hooked. So even if a fifth of the people who get the dvds watch them, the show can bank on getting atleast a million new viewers for the price of producing just one episode. That million viewers is often the difference between a show getting cancelling, and it getting a second season.

So for these reasons, TV studios should give out dvds of the first 4-6 episodes of any good serialized tv show that is flailing in ratings (Firefly, Arrested Development, hell even Family Guy initially). They should encourage the person to pass on the dvd to family and friends if he enjoyed it. Ask them to watch subsequent episodes on hulu.com to catch up to the current season. Include a coupon that gives them $5 off the first season dvd boxset so they might purchase the whole season of the show. Tell them to buy old episodes on itunes. AOL did it, and they were selling a crappy product that no body wanted. So why don’t tv studios do it with good shows with a product that people actually do want (who doesn’t like free dvds).

This marketing method could make the difference between a great serialized tv show getting cancelled prematurely, or winding up as a huge hit.

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Get this idea out there to as many people as you can. Spread it around so that someone in marketing somewhere might stumble on to it. Keep this thread bumped. Television gets saved (reality tv doesn't take over primetime).

And we get a ton of great dvds of tv shows in the mail to add to our collections. They should totally package the dvds to look nice though, even if it's just a dvd sleeve, make it a well packaged nice looking dvd sleeve. Something that people wouldn't want to throw away. Something they would actually want to display on their entertainment centers and show to other people.

It's win win.