The "people send in art work" idea reminded me of a Casey Lebow CSI NY episode (s5e07) where she (iirc) played someone who collected peoples secrets, sent to her in postcard sized, which she put on her walls (see pix)

Maybe one of the cast people collects photos of people holding watermelons - a simple thing that would be easy for anyone to put together (hence the simple tag) and email to you.

For more audience participation, I was reminded of an ep of The Norm show (starring Norm MacDonald) how at the end of one ep in the kinda form of those outtake bits some shows do. Well they showed him saying ~20 viewer suggested alternative punchlines to jokes in the show, with a "suggested by Bernie from California" & "suggested by Jane from Croydon" caption during each one.

btw: I tried imdbing to find the exact ep and found the following under ep 218 -
In this episode, viewers are encouraged to pick up on 50 references to classic movies.  - you CAN 'borrow' ideas done in other shows, right ?!

Those vanity cards the Big Bang Theory fellow does, to give people with a [pause] button the opportunity to use it get more stuff - if one of your actors is into online flash games and you were to tell people which one and provide a link to it, then people could aim for a top10 score placement and see their name pop up after the cast member finishes their game - I guess this idea would kinda suck if your programme was a Western.

Things that I've liked in other shows is the NCIS's Gibbs rules - I'm sure there's a web page that added each new rule as soon as it was broadcast - and the Charmed and Grimm thing of a book of knowledge thing which I'm sure there is a web page that allows you to print out each weeks spell/creature picture & description & killing method to collect over the series. <- but those are all not "things to happen before the show has even started to build up the #### <- can't think of the word.

One thing that would get me immediately interested in a show and want to mark its start date on me calendar would be finding out out Kristen Bell is starring in it - but methinks with this not being "a million dollar show" that a big named star is out of the question.

[edit] It was episode s3e16 of the Norm Show.

Last edited by Fido (2011-12-29 10:19:54)

Excuse my ignorance but FSM ???

[edit] thanx redxavier, TAMSN.

Last edited by Fido (2011-12-29 13:33:44)

Have you not been touched by His Noodly Appendage?

I honestly don't know if there's a good way to build an audience for a show before you actually make the show. The best you can hope for is to have a good teaser and a good website for people to get information from. I think this might be something that would be easier to figure out with more info about the show, rather than just generic ideas that might work for any sort of show.

What I'd like to see in a Website is pages for each character with a little back story, some behind-the-scenes videos, and production stills. Oh, and commentary tracks. Basically, the kind of stuff that will eventually appear on the DVD as extras.

For fans AFTER the show has built a following...

I do think that the Website SHOULD have spoilers of a minor sort. That's inside information about actual character and story that wouldn't be available any other way but which is optional to get. That's way better than what Doctor Who does with ending the ep with a teaser for next week, virtually cramming minor spoilers down your throat.

And I would say a poll on which minor character should get a big subplot or an episode of his or her own would be awesome.

/Trey's balls

Last edited by Zarban (2011-12-31 03:33:32)

To be fair, they have sometimes been sensible and either put the trailer after the end credits (so you have time to find your remote to change the channel after recovering from the cliff-hanger), or not even run a trailer where literally any frame of the next episode would break the mood. For example, when all the main characters were bumped off and the whole Universe exploded as well, even the 'To Be Continued' was kind of a spoiler.

Not any more. (Is that a spoiler?) They stopped making them at the end of season six -- the 2011 Christmas Special is the first episode not to have one.

They also used to do commentaries as podcasts that were released right after the episode first aired, and sometimes also did a Red Button broadcast where the commentary was the audio track. That's all stopped too; the only commentaries now are on the DVDs.

Last edited by fcw (2012-01-01 12:54:15)