The other day I was thinking what I'd like to do is come home to a house built about the time the one I grew up in was and have TV shows that were on when I was a kid already streaming to the TV. I could turn it on and have a little vacation for a while in a simpler time, when the world made more sense and America was still number one at things. That got me to thinking how cool it would be if there were resorts that were themed to certain time periods. All the buildings would be period correct. The TVs and radios would be period broadcasts. For instance, a 1940s resort, a 1960s one, a 1980s one etc. It would be a vacation while at the same time give modern folks a feeling of what it was like to live in some past era. I think it would provoke people to think about how we live now and all the things that are wrong in society. Imagine stepping back into a time when there were no drugs or gangs or drive-by shootings or continual stream of violence and profanity and obscenity. When people got back home, they would feel bombarded by our modern, negative culture. I bet wealthy, older people would want to live there year round.
So, that got me to thinking about the good TV shows that were on when I was a kid that people can't watch any more. Amazon is looking for content for its Prime video service. What if I could license an old show from the 80s or whenever and put it on Prime for cheap? I did some research. From what I've read it's entirely possible to do that. The catch is the studios that have the rights to old shows don't want to handle anything less than $25,000. That covers their lawyer fees and makes it worth their while. Even if I could afford something really cheap that only ran for one to three seasons, I'd be forced to add shows into a bundle until I hit the $25k mark. Bummer. That's part of why we don't see very many shows from the past, even if they were good. Another reason is that TV stations/channels don't want to license a show unless it had at least 100 episodes. That lets them do something called "stripping", which I infer is running a show five days a week at a set time of day. When I was little, a lot of shows never made it to 100 episodes. Bummer. Another problem is that some of the older shows played music in some episodes. To license a show like that, it would be necessary to negotiate with the music studio or studios, and stations/channels don't find it financially worthwhile to fight that kind of greed on top of the licensing greed. Bummer.
If you buy from Amazon, you've seen their ads for the shows they're producing. The year after Friends went off the air it was licensed to hundreds of TV stations for a total of $950,000,000 for that year alone. I'm guessing Amazon wants to make money running their shows first run and then license them out later for even more profit. They won't make Friends money, but I might keep an eye on that and see what they do. Assuming the Tribulation doesn't start before that, of course.
Book 2 rested for a month. I got back to work on it and finished going through it with "final" corrections. For test reading my process is to upload the manuscript to CreateSpace and order proof copies. It took hours of wrestling with OpenOffice last night, but I finally got the manuscript formatted for CreateSpace and uploaded. Today some time after they've checked it to make sure it fits their standards, they'll approve it for proof copies and email to let me know. They promise within 24 hours, so the clock is ticking. I expected to hear back already. Once I do, I'll get the order sent. Once the copies are here, it's test reader time. I'll go through it again, too. After that, assuming I've missed no major problem, it should be out this month. It's still on track for that. I'd like to allow a week for pre-orders at reduced price for faithful blog readers. So, that's where things stand on that.
Now that I'm not stressing as much over how late this book is, I'm thinking about doing a weekly Bible study and uploading it to YouTube. Maybe every two weeks. It's kind of what I've mentioned before. I'm trying to get more focused and precise with it and figure out how it would work. I don't know every single thing about the Bible. It would be things I've learned and things God has shown me and things denominational Christianity doesn't understand. Sunday isn't the Sabbath. Sprinkling isn't baptism. And so forth. Some of it would probably be humorous. As I've thought about topics, I've seen funny things. Satan wanted Moses's body. It says so in Jude. Phrasing it that way could be funny and interesting to an audience while teaching something real. I'm still working on it all. Every week wouldn't be like that, of course.
Have a great weekend.
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