A very interesting article from 11/21/05 - Turn On. Tune In. Take Over.. It details the (r)evolution of television and technology. A section from the article, which is absolutely fascinating.

All of which leads to an enticing possibility: Let’s say that Joss Whedon, creator of Firefly, wanted to bring the series back to air. (Though “back to air” is a TV phrase now as anachronistically quaint as “switching the dial.”) Let’s say he found a million Firefly fans online—and, trust me, they’re not hiding—who were willing to pay, say, $39.99 each for a sixteen-episode season of Firefly. (Not an unreasonable price, given how many people pay about that amount for full seasons on DVD.) Suddenly, Joss Whedon’s got roughly $40 million to play with—and he doesn’t need a network. Or a time slot. Or advertisers. He can beam the damn shows right to your computer if he wants to.

ETA: Slashdot release a comprehensive article on Livejournal's Newest Failure and PR Nightmare. It is nice to have someone else track the whole fiasco.

ETA: ( Blog entry copied below cut as the site seem to suffer from too much traffic )

Joss Whedon speaks out about the torture and murder of Dua Khalil.

I don't talk about the issue of gender equality much, mainly because I think I'm pretty damn lucky, and my guy friends tends to present a pretty convincing case of how feminism have gone too far. But you know - every time I hear about a woman being raped, every time I see a religion/culture punish a woman for being a woman, and every time I turn on the fucking television and it is about sexualising a woman and not returning her the dignity she deserves, I think feminism didn't go far enough.

I don’t understand how anyone would want to punish someone because of their gender, I don’t understand how anyone can think a girl deserves to be tortured and stoned to death, and I don’t understand how someone can have the fucking time to film it but the not the time to stop it.

This hurts - there are days that I honestly hate humanity, and the thought of us nuking ourselves out of existence because of our own stupidity doesn’t sound so bad.

Saw Serenity yesterday, and like my reaction to the Batman Beyond film I think it was overly hyped. However, it was a fun film and I suspect I would have liked it more if I had seen Firefly.

The extra disk on the DVD was really fun though. Joss Whedon is quite funny in person, and obviously very well read and intelligent. It gladdens my heart that when he made the D20 (well, 20-sider)comment (it was in relation to the question of; how do you decide to kill characters from your show?) The audience laughed. Ah, gamers, how you prevail despite society's pathological need to stump you down.
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