economics

TV "So, what would it take for a pay-per-view-only West Wing to be financially viable? I realize the economics of Hollywood involve more trickery than a Harry Potter movie -- as Edward J. Epstein points out regularly in Slate -- but here are some basic numbers: The West Wing has about 8 million viewers per week. It costs about $6 million per episode. In other words, if every person who now watches the show paid $1 a week, TWW would more than pay for itself." -- Slate writer, Andy Bowers wonders whether the show could go pay-per-view.

I've seen articles like this before and every time they miss (to be fair because they've never heard of them) that Doctor Who began doing this in the late eighties and are still doing it now. In the novels and audios, the franchise was effectively pay-per-view -- the fan had to shell out to find out what happened to The Doctor next. Although the Big Finish audio productions are generally done on a shoe-string and I've read mostly break even, this is all that Bowers is advocating.