Why No More?
To take an example: the Doctor Who novels. With the BBC taking over the publishing of the novels from Virgin, their profit on them is greater. However, it is also true that sales are down on all Doctor Who related items, with the novels now regularly selling around the 8,000 mark. Even so, even with, say, £1.00 profit from each book, that makes around £192,000 profit on the books alone each year.
The independent Doctor Who drama Downtime cost £50,000 to make (it's a 50 minute direct to video film, directed by ex-Doctor Who director Christopher Barry and written by ex-Doctor Who writer Marc Platt and starring Nicholas Courtney as the Brigadier, Deborah Watling as Victoria and Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah) which was cheap by anyone's standards. However the final result was impressive and certainly good enough to show on television. If the BBC have a profitable annual income from the books alone just short of £200,000, why don't they commission an annual drama to continue the series and give it new life? With four times the budget, those independent filmmakers who were involved in Downtime could create something to equal any Doctor Who story currently available on video. As well as being shown on television, the BBC could release the film on video, plus a novel, plus a CD of the soundtrack. From these items alone, a proportion of the cost of the product could be recouped.
For example: If the video sells for £13.99, the book for £5.99 and the soundtrack for £10.99 and the BBC gets to make, say, £1.00 profit on all of these items. Assuming a sale of around 10,000 copies of each, that brings in £90,000 profit.
That's half of the entire budget made back immediately. Don't forget about foreign sales on top of that, plus overseas television rights ... Basically, even at this simplistic level, the figures are workable, and I've probably underestimated the profit to be made from them, as well as underestimating the sales figures. By way of comparison, the novelisation of the McGann TV movie sold in excess of 30,000 copies, and the video over 100,000 copies!
So why aren't the BBC making Doctor Who any more? The only rational answer is because they don't want to as all financial, popularity and marketability arguments show that it would be a success. Not only would the new product revitalise interest in Doctor Who, but it would also ensure the continuation of the profitable merchandise lines.
It's a shame that an organisation that purports to heed what the public wants, that is funded by public money through the payment of television licenses, so stoically ignores all arguments and thinks that a thirty-year old science fiction show is as dead as a dodo. Unfortunately, as long as the BBC thinks in this way, Doctor Who will be dead, and interest in the show will slowly wane as people forget about it and new generations come along who have never heard of it.
Doctor Who is being used by the BBC to spearhead their new digital BBC Choice network, they have two official websites devoted to it, new books, videos and audio projects continue to be released on a monthly basis, it's used during charity fundraisings to increase awareness and in 1998 alone there were around 200 separate items of Doctor Who merchandise released, twice as many as during the show's viewer peak in 1965 at the height of the Dalek's popularity ... not bad for a dead show.
It's a horrible, ignoble death for one of the BBC's greatest assets.
CODA: Rumour has reached me that at the time of writing (November 1998, the show's 35th anniversary) that there is an internal memo circulating around the various Heads of Drama at the BBC, stating that there is a scheduling gap on BBC1, on Saturday evenings at around 5.30pm. They are looking for ideas for a half-hour children's science fiction drama series that could fill that gap ... The mind simply boggles at either the BBC's ineptitude or lack of faith.
A version of this article appeared on the LineOne Science Fiction forum.