Building a New SciFi4Me TV: An Indiegogo Campaign

Since I was a kid, I’ve been steeped in science fiction: The Adventures of Superman with George Reeves, Star Trek, Battle of the Planets, Star Blazers, Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, the Justice League, Dungeons & Dragons, Battlestar Galactica, Car Wars, Star Fleet Battles… and I had a hot streak playing Asteroids on the Atari 2600.

I’ve read Robert A. Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Issac Asimov, Anne McCaffrey, David Weber, Arthur C. Clarke, H.G. Wells, Spider Robinson, and a lot of franchise tie-in books from the likes of Greg Cox, Vonda N. McIntyre, Ann Crispin, Dayton Ward, David Mack, and more.

I saw Star Wars in the theater in 1977, and when it hit cable (back when cable was a new thing), I watched it so many times that I had the whole movie memorized. I still have my action figures and the original Kenner Millennium Falcon.

I’m sure you have your stories, too. Because some of you are like me — lifelong fans. And there are some of you just getting started, whether your entry point was the Marvel movies or the Arrowverse or someone handed you a comic book. That’s OK, too. The beauty of fandom is that anyone can belong. Sometimes people lose sight of that. Sometimes even the people making the thing to please fandom lose sight of that.

In 2009, the Sci Fi Channel changed their brand to Syfy, and a lot of people were not pleased. They wanted a channel dedicated to science fiction; no wrestling or reality shows. Just good old fashioned speculative fiction of every stripe. And I had the idea: why not put together a new “sci fi channel” on the internet? Kind of like a modern day local access cable channel. And SciFi4Me was born, mainly because I saw an opportunity.

While it didn’t go the way I wanted back then, the technology has caught up to what I originally wanted to do with all of this.

SciFi4Me TV has lived on YouTube for a few years now, and it’s been OK for what it is, but over the past couple of years, the platform has proven itself to be a bad actor when it comes to smaller independent creators. YouTube has shifted its focus to larger corporate interests, and the continuing changes in the rules (and the arbitrary application of same) has left us at the point where we really had to do some heavy thinking and examination of the overall landscape of YouTube.

After two Adpocalypses, the COPPA kerfuffle, the multiple fraudulent copyright claims thrown at us by AdRev, the DCMA and copyright abuse by Naughty Dog and Sony, we’ve decided it’s time for a change. So we’re going to build a new destination site for our video content, a new SciFi4Me TV, and we hope you have some interest in checking it out when it’s up and running.

In order to build it, we’re about to launch our own Indiegogo campaign, as it seems to be pretty successful for a number of independent creators. You can sign up for the latest updates here, and we’ll be launching the campaign on June 1st. It’s an opportunity for you to be a part of building something we think will have value to the genre community.

As always, I want to thank all of you for your continued support over the years. We appreciate everyone in our audience, and we hope to continue giving you reason to keep coming back for more.