It probably depends on the show. There’s a lot of Internet-driven TV fandom these days, which has helped make more complicated shows (such as “Game of Thrones”) successful.
Many shows that appear on advertising-supported TV stations have been making substantial amounts of money through DVD sales. (Cable networks also get to charge cable companies for merely carrying their programming—so if a channel is popular enough that people complain when it gets dropped, the channel ends up being subsidized by everyone who pays cable bills, even if the actual number of viewers is relatively small.)
In other words, it depends on the target demographic.
And then there’s surprises like My Little Pony. Wait, a committed artist assembled a dream team of writers, animators, designers, voice actors, musicians, and so on, and set them on a challenging task (“making a girls’ cartoon that is awesome”), with a body of executives that was supportive and friendly?
It would have been a surprise if they had failed.
Even the IDW comics are awesome, and are the best-selling IDW series in, like, ever! Does anyone here read those?
When you put it that way, it’s not surprising that the show turned out to be good. Merely being good certainly doesn’t guarantee that there will be a big enough audience to achieve financial success, though.
It’s a base factor that is correlated with popular success (financial success, to a creative type, is secondary, as long as they’re making a decent living; the important thing is to have “lots of people watching your shit”, as Trey Parker and Matt Stone put it). Increasing it is no guarantee, just like raising your child with excellent values and work ethic and a good school doesn’t mean he’ll get the Nobel or even do anything important with themself, but still, it’s what you do if you want them to succeed as much as possible.
However, for the record, I’d argue that a show must be “good” for a purpose. There’s no such thing as “good” in abstract. MLP;FIM was designed with the main purpose of attracting little girls and their parents, keeping their attention, and selling them toys. The authors made sure it was “good” for that purpose.
It probably depends on the show. There’s a lot of Internet-driven TV fandom these days, which has helped make more complicated shows (such as “Game of Thrones”) successful.
The other important thing about Game of Thrones is the model of payment: the people watching are the customers, not the product.
Many shows that appear on advertising-supported TV stations have been making substantial amounts of money through DVD sales. (Cable networks also get to charge cable companies for merely carrying their programming—so if a channel is popular enough that people complain when it gets dropped, the channel ends up being subsidized by everyone who pays cable bills, even if the actual number of viewers is relatively small.)
In other words, it depends on the target demographic.
And then there’s surprises like My Little Pony. Wait, a committed artist assembled a dream team of writers, animators, designers, voice actors, musicians, and so on, and set them on a challenging task (“making a girls’ cartoon that is awesome”), with a body of executives that was supportive and friendly?
It would have been a surprise if they had failed.
Even the IDW comics are awesome, and are the best-selling IDW series in, like, ever! Does anyone here read those?
When you put it that way, it’s not surprising that the show turned out to be good. Merely being good certainly doesn’t guarantee that there will be a big enough audience to achieve financial success, though.
It’s a base factor that is correlated with popular success (financial success, to a creative type, is secondary, as long as they’re making a decent living; the important thing is to have “lots of people watching your shit”, as Trey Parker and Matt Stone put it). Increasing it is no guarantee, just like raising your child with excellent values and work ethic and a good school doesn’t mean he’ll get the Nobel or even do anything important with themself, but still, it’s what you do if you want them to succeed as much as possible.
However, for the record, I’d argue that a show must be “good” for a purpose. There’s no such thing as “good” in abstract. MLP;FIM was designed with the main purpose of attracting little girls and their parents, keeping their attention, and selling them toys. The authors made sure it was “good” for that purpose.