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Post by Audio Watchdog on May 31, 2018 12:12:57 GMT
They could also be looking at the demographic of the audience for Class, seeing how young it is and making the decision that the majority of that audience which would purchase audios based on the series would do so digitally. Limit the physical production to a smaller number so hardcore collectors have their shot at it and not get stuck with a huge backlog of copies sitting in the warehouse. Again, this is an unusual move for BF, so there are any number of possibilities at play here.
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lidar2
Castellan
You know, now that you mention it, I actually do rather like Attack of the Cybermen ...
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Post by lidar2 on May 31, 2018 12:13:39 GMT
500 is also interesting because it tells us a bit about the economies of scale and cost per unit in the CD production / distribution business that BF are in. I would have guessed that the minimum quantity of 3 CD boxsets that had to be sold at a selling price of £20 was higher than 500 to make it commercially viable, but this would imply that 500 is at or above the breakeven point.
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Post by Audio Watchdog on May 31, 2018 12:15:20 GMT
There's no reason to think they're planning to move away from CDs altogether. No but there is a reason to believe that as a business they are looking at different scenarios and collecting data in an effort to help position their company for the future. Whatever that future might be.
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Post by mark687 on May 31, 2018 12:19:12 GMT
Social media reaction seems quite positive surprisingly, so far the main complaint is that the stories are set in series 1 and won't resolve the TV Finale.
Regards
mark687
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2018 12:20:44 GMT
I don't have any real theories. I do have three children though - two of them under 25 - and none of them buy anything physical, bar an odd Blu-Ray if it's something really special; they stream music, TV box-sets and movies, read books and comics on tablets, as well as take loads of selfies and spend most of the day on social media... just in case they miss something. So it's possible that BF are expecting that to be their target demographic.
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2018 12:22:00 GMT
I'm still hoping for the magic of Big Finish to convince BBC that they should do series 2 and.... actually PROMOTE IT. But whether itt on Telly, Netflix, or August 2019 on pretty round discs We WILL get a second series. That CD pressing is roughly 25000 pounds in sales.(and then there's downloads) If there's any chance of Class returning to tely showin g the BBC people will pay 25000+ is a damn good start. Shows like this are important. I love audio but a show with this cast is important to be visible on Telly. It's sad but it's quite common for a show with no straight white men to be given less second chances then other shows. I'm not saying it was "Holy S£%& This is Damn Good!" like Sarah Jane but the promotion was horrible , nobody in America watched it when it aired in the states because of a fake rumour it was already cancelled, and Patrick Ness does not know how to write a Doctor Who spinoff. And then he abandoned his own show. I really enjoyed the show but Sarah Jane is very much it's own show and has tons of Doctor Who references monsters, ideas, technology, everything. Torchwood had a major character who went back to the parent show for 3 episodes and always had lots of little things to feel like it was the same worl d. I liked Class but it wasn't written like a spinoff. It had great ideas and great episodes but with it's crappy third rate promotion and advertising it didn't feel like a living breathing Doctor Who world. And it only needed some light script editing to make it such. I mean when Gwen does this crying video about the Doctor abandoning them.... That's powerful! These kids should be mad at the Doctor, and UNIT, and wonder if Torchwood still exists.... They're abandoned at Clara Oswald's school. At Susan's school. Ian Chesterton is the bleedin headmaster! BF can do all this justice but if BF is confident it can work Then it deserves to be on television.
I think Class NEEDED to stand out on it's own, though. It was important for it's audience that these characters weren't subsidary to The Doctor, that their tale had it's own weight, particularly for those wary of the Who connection. And Torchwood had been off the air for five years and I'd imagine Chibnall wanted to have Jack to potentially have in his deck. And to me, one of the dark thrills of Class was that it felt very much part of the Doctor Who universe - but it was WITHOUT The Doctor. Without a superman Sherlock Holmes agasint the random dark cruelty of the universe. The Shadow Kin would be seen as pitiful people in a Doctor Who story, blind to the light of the universe, of life, but in Class, there probably terrifying and horrific, regardless of circumstance, the knife at the throat to our kids These kids pressed agasint it by random concidience, these kids making do. A real sense that these kids aren't safe, the normal rules don't apply and anything can happen. (And oh God, did it.)
As for the kids not being angry at The Doctor, well their kids. A classmate DIED and they could do nothing about it an and adult passes on the responsibility to them. Their still proccessing trauma, April is used to being a caretaker for her Mother and was there for her Mother when her life fell apart, despite her Mother pushing her out of it, Tayna finds it difficult to talk to her Mother generally and her Mother is still proccessing her Father's death and using Tayna as an outlet, Charlie has no-one, Marataz can barely talk to his parent's about being gay and cultural clashes and feels incredibly isolated from them, Ram's' GIRLFRIEND died right in front of him. I found it pretty realistic for these kids not to tell their parents given the circumstances. The series to me was VERY much building to that reuioun with The Doctor, where it clicks in place for the kids that The Doctor placed them in an impossible position.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2018 12:45:58 GMT
I'm still hoping for the magic of Big Finish to convince BBC that they should do series 2 and.... actually PROMOTE IT. But whether itt on Telly, Netflix, or August 2019 on pretty round discs We WILL get a second series. That CD pressing is roughly 25000 pounds in sales.(and then there's downloads) If there's any chance of Class returning to tely showin g the BBC people will pay 25000+ is a damn good start. Shows like this are important. I love audio but a show with this cast is important to be visible on Telly. It's sad but it's quite common for a show with no straight white men to be given less second chances then other shows. I'm not saying it was "Holy S£%& This is Damn Good!" like Sarah Jane but the promotion was horrible , nobody in America watched it when it aired in the states because of a fake rumour it was already cancelled, and Patrick Ness does not know how to write a Doctor Who spinoff. And then he abandoned his own show. I really enjoyed the show but Sarah Jane is very much it's own show and has tons of Doctor Who references monsters, ideas, technology, everything. Torchwood had a major character who went back to the parent show for 3 episodes and always had lots of little things to feel like it was the same worl d. I liked Class but it wasn't written like a spinoff. It had great ideas and great episodes but with it's crappy third rate promotion and advertising it didn't feel like a living breathing Doctor Who world. And it only needed some light script editing to make it such. I mean when Gwen does this crying video about the Doctor abandoning them.... That's powerful! These kids should be mad at the Doctor, and UNIT, and wonder if Torchwood still exists.... They're abandoned at Clara Oswald's school. At Susan's school. Ian Chesterton is the bleedin headmaster! BF can do all this justice but if BF is confident it can work Then it deserves to be on television.
I think Class NEEDED to stand out on it's own, though. It was important for it's audience that these characters weren't subsidary to The Doctor, that their tale had it's own weight, particularly for those wary of the Who connection. And Torchwood had been off the air for five years and I'd imagine Chibnall wanted to have Jack to potentially have in his deck. And to me, one of the dark thrills of Class was that it felt very much part of the Doctor Who universe - but it was WITHOUT The Doctor. Without a superman Sherlock Holmes agasint the random dark cruelty of the universe. The Shadow Kin would be seen as pitiful people in a Doctor Who story, blind to the light of the universe, of life, but in Class, there probably terrifying and horrific, regardless of circumstance, the knife at the throat to our kids These kids pressed agasint it by random concidience, these kids making do. A real sense that these kids aren't safe, the normal rules don't apply and anything can happen. (And oh God, did it.)
As for the kids not being angry at The Doctor, well their kids. A classmate DIED and they could do nothing about it an and adult passes on the responsibility to them. Their still proccessing trauma, April is used to being a caretaker for her Mother and was there for her Mother when her life fell apart, despite her Mother pushing her out of it, Tayna finds it difficult to talk to her Mother generally and her Mother is still proccessing her Father's death and using Tayna as an outlet, Charlie has no-one, Marataz can barely talk to his parent's about being gay and cultural clashes and feels incredibly isolated from them, Ram's' GIRLFRIEND died right in front of him. I found it pretty realistic for these kids not to tell their parents given the circumstances. The series to me was VERY much building to that reuioun with The Doctor, where it clicks in place for the kids that The Doctor placed them in an impossible position.
I don't think Ness abandoned the show. I think the writing was on the wall for it's future and he didn't want it's fans to continue to hold out, especially it's LGBT fans and broke the news as gently as he could, when he could. I do think Ness was inexperienced in writing for television - and he was mad to write it all, regardless of brilliance - and if series two had happened, I'd imagine there would have been other writers.
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2018 13:24:37 GMT
500 copies? Jesus.
Is this 500 copies being put on general release (i.e in Forbidden Planet etc) or 500 copies overall?
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2018 13:26:27 GMT
I can't recommend Class strongly enough. It's one of my favourite shows of all time, handling the whirlwind restless ungrounded feeling of adolsencence perfectly with maturity and subverting tropes. The kids are handled with incredible maturity by Ness - with the contradictions of adolsence and people in general - and the actors involved and it isn't afraid to challenge it's parent program. It's not perfect, Ness was mad to write it all, but it is brilliant.
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Post by coffeeaddict on May 31, 2018 15:27:18 GMT
As with Graceless, Iris, Vienna and Charlotte Pollard, I will be taking a pass. Given the show never had network support and never attracted much of an audience I'm shocked that BF has decided to pick up this property.
I hope those who buy these sets enjoy them. What I saw of the show did nothing to make me want to see more.
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Post by mark687 on May 31, 2018 15:49:49 GMT
They could also be looking at the demographic of the audience for Class, seeing how young it is and making the decision that the majority of that audience which would purchase audios based on the series would do so digitally. Limit the physical production to a smaller number so hardcore collectors have their shot at it and not get stuck with a huge backlog of copies sitting in the warehouse. Again, this is an unusual move for BF, so there are any number of possibilities at play here. A rather open-ended response to whether this is long-term strategy going forward with other lines,
"Not Necessarily"
Regards
mark687
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ljwilson
Chancellery Guard
It's tangerine....not orange
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Post by ljwilson on May 31, 2018 15:56:05 GMT
500 copies? Jesus. Is this 500 copies being put on general release (i.e in Forbidden Planet etc) or 500 copies overall? I should imagine it is reflective of falling CD sales in general at BF, i reckon the 'CD sales graph' is only heading in 1 direction.
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lidar2
Castellan
You know, now that you mention it, I actually do rather like Attack of the Cybermen ...
Likes: 5,810
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Post by lidar2 on May 31, 2018 15:56:17 GMT
They could also be looking at the demographic of the audience for Class, seeing how young it is and making the decision that the majority of that audience which would purchase audios based on the series would do so digitally. Limit the physical production to a smaller number so hardcore collectors have their shot at it and not get stuck with a huge backlog of copies sitting in the warehouse. Again, this is an unusual move for BF, so there are any number of possibilities at play here. A rather open-ended response to whether this is long-term strategy going forward with other lines,
"Not Necessarily"
Regards
mark687
Very ambiguous.
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lidar2
Castellan
You know, now that you mention it, I actually do rather like Attack of the Cybermen ...
Likes: 5,810
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Post by lidar2 on May 31, 2018 16:18:52 GMT
500 copies? Jesus. Is this 500 copies being put on general release (i.e in Forbidden Planet etc) or 500 copies overall? I should imagine it is reflective of falling CD sales in general at BF, i reckon the 'CD sales graph' is only heading in 1 direction. What follows is speculative but I would imagine that you are right and regular BF purchasers are moving from CD to download. A lot already have and more will.
I'm not so sure about casual purchasers who buy from Amazon, Forbidden Planet, Waterstone's etc. If BF's sales continue to grow overall with more NuWho then possibly the casual purchasers will keep up the CD sales numbers.
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Post by number13 on May 31, 2018 16:37:37 GMT
No doubt BF will work their usual wizardry and they almost got me with the synopsis for that last episode, but no, not for me this time.
As to the CD/DL debate, no doubt the general trend is towards DL and away from CD but for UK buyers the extra cost of CDs is usually so low (with postage included for subs and pre-orders) that although I often listen to DLs for convenience, I still like having the CDs. And I'll always choose to play from CD when I'm able to sit down and enjoy a story without having to do something else at the same time.
'ATA Girl' and 'Cicero' have been two brilliant DL-only releases recently, but if I could get a boxset of either, I'd snap it up instantly.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2018 16:41:49 GMT
Although 'Class' will not be on my radar to buy this August (I watched the first episode, saw the potential but recognised that I am no longer in the show's target audience and haven't been for a long, long time..), it is great to see the enthusiasm generated by today's announcement both on social media and here on the forum.
It is that sort of enthusiasm that kept Star Trek alive when the show was cancelled in the sixties, that kept the Doctor travelling in time and space when Michael Grade and the BBC pulled the plug 29 years ago and certainly compels Big Finish to test the waters with popular old TV shows (Survivors comes instantly to mind).
If they believe they can replicate that sort of success with 'Class', then good luck to them I say. I hope they can.
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Post by Audio Watchdog on May 31, 2018 16:54:19 GMT
They could also be looking at the demographic of the audience for Class, seeing how young it is and making the decision that the majority of that audience which would purchase audios based on the series would do so digitally. Limit the physical production to a smaller number so hardcore collectors have their shot at it and not get stuck with a huge backlog of copies sitting in the warehouse. Again, this is an unusual move for BF, so there are any number of possibilities at play here. A rather open-ended response to whether this is long-term strategy going forward with other lines,
"Not Necessarily"
Regards
mark687
I did see a comment on the Big Finish Liseners FB feed by Scott Handcock that confirmed the limited CD run as thinking it would be more of a digital download range. Says to me BF is covering both bases while minimizing their risk. How much you want to bet a year from now there are still physical copies available?
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Post by Digi on May 31, 2018 23:11:33 GMT
Uhh....sure, I'll give it a whirl. I've only seen the pilot episode of the TV series, but Big Finish's win:loss ratio is ridiculously good
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Post by fantasticalice on Jun 1, 2018 2:32:07 GMT
I'm still hoping for the magic of Big Finish to convince BBC that they should do series 2 and.... actually PROMOTE IT. But whether itt on Telly, Netflix, or August 2019 on pretty round discs We WILL get a second series. That CD pressing is roughly 25000 pounds in sales.(and then there's downloads) If there's any chance of Class returning to tely showin g the BBC people will pay 25000+ is a damn good start. Shows like this are important. I love audio but a show with this cast is important to be visible on Telly. It's sad but it's quite common for a show with no straight white men to be given less second chances then other shows. I'm not saying it was "Holy S£%& This is Damn Good!" like Sarah Jane but the promotion was horrible , nobody in America watched it when it aired in the states because of a fake rumour it was already cancelled, and Patrick Ness does not know how to write a Doctor Who spinoff. And then he abandoned his own show. I really enjoyed the show but Sarah Jane is very much it's own show and has tons of Doctor Who references monsters, ideas, technology, everything. Torchwood had a major character who went back to the parent show for 3 episodes and always had lots of little things to feel like it was the same worl d. I liked Class but it wasn't written like a spinoff. It had great ideas and great episodes but with it's crappy third rate promotion and advertising it didn't feel like a living breathing Doctor Who world. And it only needed some light script editing to make it such. I mean when Gwen does this crying video about the Doctor abandoning them.... That's powerful! These kids should be mad at the Doctor, and UNIT, and wonder if Torchwood still exists.... They're abandoned at Clara Oswald's school. At Susan's school. Ian Chesterton is the bleedin headmaster! BF can do all this justice but if BF is confident it can work Then it deserves to be on television.
I think Class NEEDED to stand out on it's own, though. It was important for it's audience that these characters weren't subsidary to The Doctor, that their tale had it's own weight, particularly for those wary of the Who connection. And Torchwood had been off the air for five years and I'd imagine Chibnall wanted to have Jack to potentially have in his deck. And to me, one of the dark thrills of Class was that it felt very much part of the Doctor Who universe - but it was WITHOUT The Doctor. Without a superman Sherlock Holmes agasint the random dark cruelty of the universe. The Shadow Kin would be seen as pitiful people in a Doctor Who story, blind to the light of the universe, of life, but in Class, there probably terrifying and horrific, regardless of circumstance, the knife at the throat to our kids These kids pressed agasint it by random concidience, these kids making do. A real sense that these kids aren't safe, the normal rules don't apply and anything can happen. (And oh God, did it.)
As for the kids not being angry at The Doctor, well their kids. A classmate DIED and they could do nothing about it an and adult passes on the responsibility to them. Their still proccessing trauma, April is used to being a caretaker for her Mother and was there for her Mother when her life fell apart, despite her Mother pushing her out of it, Tayna finds it difficult to talk to her Mother generally and her Mother is still proccessing her Father's death and using Tayna as an outlet, Charlie has no-one, Marataz can barely talk to his parent's about being gay and cultural clashes and feels incredibly isolated from them, Ram's' GIRLFRIEND died right in front of him. I found it pretty realistic for these kids not to tell their parents given the circumstances. The series to me was VERY much building to that reuioun with The Doctor, where it clicks in place for the kids that The Doctor placed them in an impossible position.
Great Perspective! Thank you. Excellent points all. And the thing I liked the most about it is it did trauma processing way better than Buffy ever did. Ram is really messed up in the head from what happened to him. And they never properly forget that. I think it was halfway through the series and he just suddenly blurts out what happened to him and... I think that's why I relate to him because I have had the experience he had in the premiere. Mine was less aliens and more cruel people and body wise it was abuse that led to violent invasive surgery.... but that stuff sticks with you. I think a lot of people also weren't prepared for how dark it is. It's an important spin off to have though. Doctor Who can go dark but another show can seethe in that Darkness like this one did. I never liked Ashildr but I didn't like her because she deflate the Doctor a bit. He occasionally deals with consequences on earth but if you look at the Silence, the Daemons, the freaking Jaggaroth... this is not only not our world but it's terrifying. Class owns that. I hate to reference Buffy because 15 years on it's glaring in its issues. But it's best moments were when Willow saw a classroom full of dead students and crying, says "this isn't our world anymore" Class has student students who are repeatedly hit with that same visceral reality.
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Post by mark687 on Jun 1, 2018 11:22:26 GMT
500 copies? Jesus. Is this 500 copies being put on general release (i.e in Forbidden Planet etc) or 500 copies overall? its 500 copies for each Volume (Sent as 2 items if you bought in Bundle) and they're are only available if you buy them through Big Finish
Regards
mark687
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