JD Harding Comments on STC Crisis
JD Harding of The Sonic Corner posted his thoughts on the recent developments with Sonic the Comic late yesterday:
I suddenly remember the Sonic the Hedgehog SatAM cartoon and all the many petitions that happened. I bet all the petitions and signatures were an altogether total of 3,000. I’d hate to break this to everyone, but petitions don’t help anything unless there’s some 50,000 – 100,000 signatures on them. I remember Ben Hurst, writer of the Sonic SatAM, said that a letter sent to the companies is more powerful than a list of signatures. An actual letter, not an e-mail. He said that it’s more personal if it can be held in someone’s hands and read without squinting at a computer screen. No one likes to read long letters on a screen that glares bright white at them. …But like most businesses go, if it’s not selling like it used to, it gets pulled. If ratings go down, and stay down, chances are it will get pulled. I don’t know the status of STC, but it sounds like they’ve had a good run.
On the topic of petitions and letters, most executives don’t care if someone loves a show they made, or that there’s 50,000 signatures in some “Save the whatever” petition. All they care about is the sale of a product. They aren’t going to spend their money on something that’s dying. They’ll pull their money very quickly. Sponsors will do the same. So, here’s the scenario. Lets say Mike Meyers (that international man of mystery guy :P) executive produces his own television show, and he uses his own money for it. Well, that show would stay on the air till he runs out of money, whether it’s high rated or low rated. But if he uses an executive producer, once the ratings drop, that exec will pull the show off the air. If Ken Penders over at Archie started paying for the production of the StH comics, those would stay in production till he ran out of money, whether the ratings drop or not. But if they drop now, Archie’s execs will pull the plug, even though it’s Archie’s best selling comic.
Unfortunately, in today’s world of greedy money moguls, JD is absolutely right. Only signature-engulfed petitions containing tens of thousands of names stand a chance, and that chance is extremely small.
