Henry Jenkins recently posted an interesting look at Joss Whedon’s Firefly and Serenity in the light of the Long Tail—a concept that highlights the web’s ability to make niche products or ideas accessible and viable in ways that are impossible in brick and mortar selling chains. (For a nice synopsis of the long tail and the entertainment industry read Chris Anderson’s Wired article.)

For Jenkins, the making of the feature film Serenity may have been a mistake following the cancelled show Firefly, and the development of the film moved the wrong direction of the long tail curve—toward broader appeal instead of toward the niche market.

Imagine, instead, that [Whedon] had moved in the other direction down the tail, towards the production of television style episodes directly for dvd…From the perspective of a producer like Whedon, who has a strong and existing fan base, this should be a very attractive proposition - make as many episodes as you want in whatever story structure you want with no risk that a network will stand between you and your audience, start making money as soon as the first product ships rather than waiting for syndication to turn a profit.

I like the idea of direct to DVD television series, but in the case of Firefly I wonder about the ability of such a move to generate the necessary funds for the show to continue with the same quality cast and high production value. Advertising pays for broadcast show production, a revenue stream that is not developed in direct to consumer DVD channels. You could plan to sell a large number of DVD’s but at this point we return to the start of the discussion of moving up or down the long tail.

I am a fan of Firefly, one who came to the series well after it ceased to be on network television. It seems to me that Serenity being made at all attests to the power of web networks to advance niche market concepts. From the ashes of a very brief canceled television show rose a really good feature film. Sure it didn’t have the mass appeal of your typical summer blockbuster, but it was also far more nuanced and interesting than your typical summer blockbuster. The film was made, the DVD can be purchased at your local retail outlet, and because of web organized fan support we have more of the series than we likely would have. Whether or not this was a good investment for Universal, I don’t know, but for the fans, I’d call it a win.