117603
« on: May 28, 2007, 04:52:57 PM »
One supposes that financial reasoning could be why the Fest might say it's unable to pay West Coast actors' transportation. But one has a much harder time believing it was why, as I'd originally said, according to multiple and very reputable sources, some stars who inquired as to whether there was going to be an event this year were told that there wasn't - and this was despite the fact that, at the time of the stars' inquiries, negotiations for the Frid event had been in progress for months and were nearing completion, AND if the Frid event fell through, there was a backup plan to have an event in Brooklyn again. It wasn't until those same stars got wind that something was actually in the works (and after it was looking pretty good that this year was going to be the Frid event because it was gelling) that it was finally admitted that an event was indeed taking place - though they were then told that this year is simply a "fan event," not a Fest, and then politely told their services would not be needed. Regardless of whether or not an event was going to be Fridcentric or not, some sort of event was being planned, and the inquiring actors should have been told that from the outset - and if it was financial constraints that were going to prevent their participation, the inquiring West Coast actors should have been told that from the outset and that their services weren't going to be required no matter what shape the East Coast event took.
Though, as I also said, certain people may choose to deny all this - but one seriously doubts they would ever attempt to deny it in the presence of the actors who were given that story...
The idea that the Fests are losing money is an intriguing one. One thing that comes to mind, though, is that it's not at all like they were conceived as a moneymaking enterprise. The Festival entity is a not for profit organization that has donated its proceeds to charity throughout the years. Is it the case they are no longer able to continue making charitable donations?
Also, the New Jersey Network years took place in the mid-'80s, and even when the original DS was getting exposure on that channel, it wasn't like it was reaching a huge part of the country. It wasn't even cleared on a fraction of the cable systems that, say, a station like TBS was. Whether the original DS was on NJN or simply on a local station, its availablity for fans to watch it on TV was always very spotty at best until the Sci-Fi Channel gained fairly decent clearance. And that didn't happen for quite some time until after its debut in September '92. During Sci-Fi's entire first DS run (September '92 - March '95) the channel had extremely low clearance - and even for a bit of time beyond that first run. The fact is there have been huge stretches of time when the original DS was not available on TV (or even VHS) to most of its fans, yet the Fest presented large yearly events during that time - even going so far as to present large dual-coast events in the same year. Attendance was generally well under 2000- sometimes even only in the hundreds. So, it would seem that the unavailability of DS on TV and lower turnouts haven't generally been issues in the past...