Legal Knightmare DVDs

[Mystara]

The short answer is: no news.
The longer answer is:

The rights holders didn't get back to me, which isn't a big surprise. When the new site gets launched, I'll phone them, clarify what is and isn't allowed, discuss the issue with the other participants of the project and get some solid numbers done. Then we'll make a full survey of fans and see how many people would be prepared to pay for it.

In general, I think the probability of it getting off the ground is small. In several months, we've only had interest from 100 - 200 people. This number is significantly smaller than the number needed to cover the costs to make the episodes downloadable. They certainly don't cover the costs of DVD distribution.

I'm probably still inclined to buy the rights to a single episode and see what happens. But I suspect it will involve lots of people getting cross when the money isn't raised to buy the next one.

There's also a time limit with respect to producing DVDs. The rights to the episodes last for five years. We need to purchase all the rights to a particular season before we can produce a DVD, and the logistics might require us to purchase all the rights to every episode before we can consider DVDs. That means if it takes 4.5 years to raise the money to buy all the episodes, the DVDs will only be available for sale for a month or two.

Again, this is a problem which is made worse by the lack of interest.

With respect to getting a company involved - it'll never happen. We're not looking at any kind of profit margin for producing these DVDs. Big companies do. The only people who could do it much cheaply would be the rights holders themselves.

[PKB]

Doesn't sound too good, does it ...

[Mystara]

The only way I see it happening is by reaching people outwith the current community.
That basically involves getting national media attention, or paying for advertising or something.

Some online media outlets such as theregister (www.theregister.co.uk) are a technology based UK company. Their demographic consist of 25-40 year old men. Exactly the sort of audience who will remember Knightmare. They're all very much into digital media rights. They're exactly the sort of people who might be interested in a bunch of fans buying the rights to a TV series. Particularly since it's never been done before.

Sadly, to my knowledge, nobody has tried to make these kind of groups aware of what we're doing. As another poster commented, the only people we're currently reaching are people who are already in the community.

If you REALLY, DESPERATELY, BADLY want this thing to happen - try writing to newspapers and news organisations. Write to media outlets, post on facebook, LJ and twitter (I can't believe I had to beg people to post this news to their facebook pages). If you're wealthy, or have a spare £5, consider advertising on facebook or google (£5 buys you in the region of 500 *clicks* on google).

We've already covered the core community very well. The trick is to get your friends to tell their friends. Do that, and we might be in with a shot.

[DJFairborne77]

Doesn't sound too good, does it ...

Yeah, I have to agree that the latest news on this from Mystara doesn't sound too promising, but then again I'm not that surprised, as it's just too much to expect the fan community to be able to do on their own, with the cost of the whole project being one of the major hurdles, without any help from a bigger company etc & as Mystara said no big company will want to get involved as it's a such as small project with no possibilities or any profit being made from it etc. So, I think in reality this idea is basically all but gone-for-a-burton. I salute the likes of Mystara for trying their best to try & get this idea off the ground, but as he said there was only interest from around 100 - 200 people, which was way below the desired amount to get things moving in the right direction. It's sad news of course, but at least it was a good idea to start-off with & a real shame that it looks like that it will never come to fruition. Although, Mystara's comments above about trying to get people outside the fan community is a good idea, so anything that is worthwhile doing is a good thing, so I am going to remain positive as long as I can, but as it stands at the moment, things aren't looking too good, which is a real shame! Oh well...

I still wonder what Tim Child thinks about this idea, as it's always been frowned upon to obtain bootleg copies of all the KM series, yet with still no 'official' DVD release, how are us fans meant to watch the show we have loved & cherish all these years? Thank heavens for Gary Garratt for sticking all the episodes onto ''YouTube'' & of course the Challenge repeats in '03/'04 were great, but I'm sure many fans like me would love to own the full 8 series of KM on proper 'official' shiny DVD discs. Maybe if Tim got involved this could have a better chance of possibly happening at some point? Maybe in-time for the 30th anniversary in 2017 perhaps?

Anyway, to sum-up, I hope one day there will be some good news regarding a proper DVD release of KM, but sadly it seems like it's a long-way off at the moment. But hey let's not totally give us hope as you never know what may happen in the future of course!...

[Mystara]

The best move any single person can make would be to go and stick a fiver in to Google adwords.
If 500 people click on the link, then 500 people know about it. If they all tell two people, then 1000 people know about it.

Even if only 20% of them sign up and post their support, that's 200 more names.

It's what I'll be doing when the new site launches. Though I'm of limited funds and money spent there is money that can't be spent on buying episode rights.

[PKB]

Well, I'm always living in hope, but I'm not willing to wait till 2017 to see IF official DVD's of Knightmare will appear. I don't have Challenge TV so the last time I saw Knightmare was when it was first on telly. I've been greatly tempted to get a copy of the show off Ebay but I've been holding out for word of an official release. I'm willing to wait a bit longer but I really do want to see Knightmare again and I think if the DVD release doesn't get the go ahead, I'll buy from Ebay.

Always living in hope!!

Paul.

[Drassil]

I take it from reading the posts here that this idea is not going to come to pass? If not, then I'm giving in and I'm going to invest in a DVD set from Ebay.

I miss the show and really do want to see it again so if, from the looks of it, this project to get Knightmare to DVD has flopped, then finally I'm going to nab myself a DVD set from Ebay.

I really do want to see Knightmare again and I think if the DVD release doesn't get the go ahead, I'll buy from Ebay.

Perhaps this might be a good moment to remember that Tim Child made a point of giving KM fans a 'friendly warning' on the subject of piracy:

... Please be cautious and above all be discreet.

I'm not willing to wait till 2017

Have you seen the time at which you posted that?

[PKB]

I hear what you're saying, Drassel, but how long do I wait? The show has not been repeated on any of the television stations I have and I've held out a long time now for DVD's to appear. If it was available to buy I would invest and not go for a pirated copy, but if the pirated copy is the only way for me to see Knightmare again, then some lucky seller on Ebay can have my cash, I'll be happy to have it all on DVD R's.

[tiggy]

Ignoring DVDs for a second, how much money are we talking here to secure distribution rights to allow downloading of:

- One episode?
- A series?
- The lot?

Is the main cost paying off the actors that were involved? What other major costs are involved? Please excuse my ignorance here, I'm not too familiar with the industry.

Cheers,
Tiggy

[Mystara]

You're looking at between 400 - 600 pounds per episode depending on what level of distribution you want (UK or global).
Just multiply it up per series or for the lot. There's no discount for bulk buying.

Those care the costs for each episode. All of the royalties are dealt with by the rights holders.

The other major cost is in credit card processing. There's no real solution to micropayments. Most credit card sales cost 20p+ per transaction. So if you buy each episode one at a time, we lose 20% on each sale. Bulk buying is problematic if we only have the capital to buy one episode at a time.

Other costs include bandwidth (the files will be big), site operation, company registration and insurance (the rights holders won't deal with you unless you're protected from malpractice).

In total we've guesstimated at least 500 pounds per episode.

[DJFairborne77]

You're looking at between 400 - 600 pounds per episode depending on what level of distribution you want (UK or global).
Just multiply it up per series or for the lot. There's no discount for bulk buying.

Those care the costs for each episode. All of the royalties are dealt with by the rights holders.

The other major cost is in credit card processing. There's no real solution to micropayments. Most credit card sales cost 20p+ per transaction. So if you buy each episode one at a time, we lose 20% on each sale. Bulk buying is problematic if we only have the capital to buy one episode at a time.

Other costs include bandwidth (the files will be big), site operation, company registration and insurance (the rights holders won't deal with you unless you're protected from malpractice).

In total we've guesstimated at least 500 pounds per episode.

Thanks for letting us know this, Mystara, but I must say I'm shocked at the costs involved! £500 per episode does seem really expensive, but is this a normal sort-of price in the TV industry for an individual episode from the master tapes of a series etc? I thought it would be something like £50 per episode - but this shows how little I know about it all etc! I do salute you though, Mystara, for trying to get this idea off-the-ground btw. If only a lottery jackpot winner could get involved & help towards the financial woes hey? We can but dream I guess! Oh well...

[Mystara]

I suspect it's pretty cheap for the industry. Given the production costs of some TV shows, I wouldn't be surprised if the broadcast or DVD rights to one series of an American show went for several million pounds.

I forgot to add, you also need to buy a master copy of each episode which may cost up to another £100 (again, per episode).

If it cost £50 per episode, we'd probably have no problems raising the cash.

[PKB]

My God, I didn't think you were looking at those kinds of figures. £500 an episode, and what is it, 20 episodes a season? So that's £10,000 for a season!! Eight seasons... Works out at at about £75,000 (season 8 had a cut production run)... Now, let's say each season sold for £50 (which I feel is way too much but lets be optimistic) and we say everyone buys one copy of every season, that's £50 x 8 = £400. So do the maths and... You need 188 interested people, which is lower then I expected. Now we know not everyone is going to buy all eight seasons, and the boxsets probably won't be £50 each, but according to my maths, we have the numbers to cover the costs?!?! So...

[Mystara]

I think the flaw in your logic is that people will pay £50 per series.
I certainly wouldn't pay £400 for the complete set of Knightmare episodes.

Our assumption is that people will be prepared to pay between £1 and £2 per episode, which brings us to approximately 500 people.

Although obviously, the exact numbers depend on many factors such as distribution region, whether we can get the masters available as MPEGS rather than DVDs and how much the miscellaneous extras cost.

More importantly, none of us HAS £75,000. The only way we can make the process work is to invest in buying a couple of episodes of series 1 (costing us around £1000). We then wait to recover those costs and reinvest by buying the next episode and making it available for sale.
But if the required number of sales was never reached, we'd never regain enough money to buy the next episode and the buying process stalls. Either way it works out at 500 people wanting to buy the entire box set at about £75.

We're even debating whether this is a good thing to do, since we can only get our initial investment back if the process works right until the end and it doesn't look there's sufficient support for that to happen. As the figures currently stand, it seems dead certain that we'd lose our money.

And as was said before, this completely ignores the issues of DVDs which is what many people are after.

[PKB]

Aw, right, thanks for the clarification on the numbers.