{"id":1590,"date":"2008-01-29T10:03:45","date_gmt":"2008-01-29T10:03:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/?p=1590"},"modified":"2008-01-29T10:03:45","modified_gmt":"2008-01-29T10:03:45","slug":"hensons-prove-value-of-niche-media-on-itunes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/archives\/1590","title":{"rendered":"Hensons prove value of niche media on iTunes."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Okay, this is a fantastic data point in my recent research into niche media groups &#150; specifically, the Jim Henson Company. As of today, <a title=\"Fraggles and Farscape come to iTunes! - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)\" href=\"http:\/\/www.tuaw.com\/2008\/01\/28\/fraggles-and-farscape-come-to-itunes\/\"><i>Fraggle Rock<\/i> and <i>Farscape<\/i> are available on iTunes<\/a>.<br \/>\nWhy is this big news?  Because <i>Farscape<\/i> is infamous for being a difficult show to collect.  First, because it&#8217;s been reissued in several different (and confusing) editions &#150; the Starburst collections, which split each season up into multiple discs, are often found sitting side-by-side on the shelves of Borders or Barnes and Noble with the complete season collections.  What the two editions have in common are  the fact that they&#8217;re both <i>excruciatingly<\/i> expensive: The Complete First Season is only available on Amazon used for a whopping $296.99, and the Complete Second Season is on sale for $79.49, marked down from a ludicrous $149.98.  Jesus!<br \/>\nUnfortunately, this makes sense for a niche product like <i>Farscape<\/i> or <i>Doctor Who<\/i> because they don&#8217;t have the same economy of scale as something like <i>LOST<\/i> &#150; similar overhead and smaller budgets and smaller markets all translate into higher price tags &#150; except when you start dealing with digital distribution, which chops out the costs of manufacturing, shipping and so on.  On iTunes, Season One is a <i>much<\/i> more palatable $39.99.  True, this wouldn&#8217;t include all the extras as the DVDs, but the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Farscape-Complete-Second-Tony-Tilse\/dp\/B0000C0F8Z\/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&#038;s=dvd&#038;qid=1201618367&#038;sr=8-1\">Amazon listing for Season Two<\/a> doesn&#8217;t seem to include <i>any<\/i> extras.  Now, if only the iTunes store delivered each episode in a higher resolution&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Okay, this is a fantastic data point in my recent research into niche media groups &#150; specifically, the Jim Henson Company. As of today, Fraggle Rock and Farscape are available on iTunes. Why is this big news? Because Farscape is infamous for being a difficult show to collect. First, because it&#8217;s been reissued in several [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4e5QR-pE","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1590\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}