How was television profitable when there wasn't merch?

[GilaCutter]

I'm not a zoomer.

What, so did you just never watch TV growing up??

 

[stupid frog]

I forgot that part. That started off with individual tapes (often "best ofs") back in the early home video era, dating as far back as when the Format War was still raging. Box sets started popping up when VHS won that war, but it wasn't really until the DVD era when box sets really took off and viewers started binge watching TV shows.

This isn't entirely true.

You could buy VHS piecemeal via mail order, and it was very expensive. They usually came in hard cases (not clamshell).

 

[Gian-Luca Caluga]

This isn't entirely true.

You could buy VHS piecemeal via mail order, and it was very expensive. They usually came in hard cases (not clamshell).

Those wonderful days when anime was gatekept by single 25-minute episodes costing fifteen quid. You want to watch Guyver? You sure? It's nearly £200 for the whole series, and it's shit...

 

[stupid frog]

Those wonderful days when anime was gatekept by single 25-minute episodes costing fifteen quid. You want to watch Guyver? You sure? It's nearly £200 for the whole series, and it's shit...

The anime mail order (real, not fan release) was highway robbery. I never owned any, except from video stores who didn't want them anymore.

 

[GilaCutter]

Syndication and advertising

And international markets.

Often they'd also be sold in packaged deals; if you wanted this popular show, you also had to buy this another, less popular show. This was actually the approach taken with Star Trek TNG when it was new and unproven, they had no idea how it was going to go over, so the plan was that if it went down bad enough, they could just bundle the half a season they'd already made with the original series and sell them to syndication as a package deal in the future.

When I was a kid and Spider-Man TAS was on saturday mornings, I discovered that they had all these other Marvel cartoons as well but for some reason they were shown in the dead of the night, I'm talking like 2 in the fucking morning, which always baffled me. It's only in hindsight that I figured out the network must've gotten them as a package deal and instead of just not showing them (the weekday cartoon slot was at like 2 PM when kids were still in school so only toddlers would watch them, so they weren't going to go there), they shoved them into the early morning hours so maybe the fucking nerds would catch them.

 

[skykiii]

What, so did you just never watch TV growing up??

Watching TV does not magically grant you an understanding of how the business end works.

At best I could guess commercials had something to do with it, but I always thought it was the owners of the TV channel that got advertiser money, not the people who actually made the shows.

 

[Oliver Onions]

Do fast food joints even DO toy tie ins anymore?

Thanks to a fat manchild troon I can confidently state that they do, but due to the ravages of capitalism the toys aren't as good as they used to be.

(It was revealed in a later post by a Kiwi who bothered to look into it that even this isn't true.)

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

Don't forget product placement spots as well. Studios technically got paid and had to pay off things like a prominent display of a Coke can or eating out at McDonalds and stuff.

the old stuff like Burns and Allen they'd just derail the story and the characters would go off about how fucking great carnation instant milk is for like three minutes before going back to the plot

 

[teriyakiburns]

There's a reason soap operas were called soap operas.

 

[William Murderface]

There were also tie-in books and magazines for adult shows starting at least in the 1940s. Slap "Perry Mason" and "The Lone Ranger" on a cheaply made book or magazine and it was sure to sell. Somebody somewhere licensed that character and show.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

Syndication and especially sponsors.