Kent’s Official Blog

NBC Universal’s Sci-Fi Channel has picked up the indie series Sanctuary for their network:

The cult hit series Sanctuary will make the leap from the web to TV, as it was picked up by the Sci-Fi Channel today. The network greenlit the production of 13 episodes based on the award-winning drama, and will shoot a new two-hour premiere for the series. Stage 3 Media, which produces the series, will retain ownership of the intellectual property, with Sci-Fi just licensing and distributing the show.

The key phrase is that Sci-Fi is just licensing and distributing, which means the creators will have more power and control over their content than the studio.  Awesome.

The budget for the initial 135 minutes of Sanctuary content is reportedly $4 million.  Huge budget for web content, tiny when looking at producing a film (average films cost $25 million) or three hour long episodes of television (hour longs are $2-4 million per episode).

I had never heard of this show prior to this news, so I went to its site, www.sanctuaryforall.com/, and I tried to watch the show.  Yeah no such luck, you gots to buy them.  Peeps have put them on YouTube, and the first episode was fine, standard well-produced genre fare.

So now we have Quarterlife and Sanctuary, both licensed.  Quarterlife relied on the free with ads for distro, Sanctuary relied on paid downloads.

Both shows came from established TV writer/producers, and both shows follow TV conventions more than something more web-ish.

The next test will be how these show fare on TV.  Will the exclusivity of the paid download model of Sanctuary drive more viewers on TV, and the ready availability of Quarterlife make it a meh-see-tv moment?

Hopefully, both will succeed and make it easier for all of us to make the jump.