Sometimes TV shows that are popular with niche audiences get cancelled. For example, Firefly was cancelled after only one season, despite its rave reviews from the "nerd" crowd. TV networks seem to only care about quantity: the number of viewers. Could there be something in the quality of the audience, i.e. the level of a viewer's personal involvement in TV? Are a few million mildly interested watchers better than a hundred thousand fanatics?
Henry Jenkins discusses this idea in an article on Flow. He proposes that networks move to a subscription model where each viewer could pay $2 for an episode. Apparently, the BBC is already using such a model.
I see the TV subscription model as part of the popular movement where media is controlled by the payers/viewers rather than corporations. Blogs, online reviews, online auctions are all part of this trend.
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