Watch this space...

This Slashdot post reports an effort to raise funds to cover the production costs for a Season 5 of the Star Trek: Enterprise TV series (scheduled to end after the current season 4).

The US$50-$80 million target is very ambitious, and I'm not sure how well organised (and committed to marketing and promotion) the effort is, but there certainly is no more rabidly loyal a fanbase than Trekkies.

Considering Trekkies have produced and distributed their own low-budget series online, I wouldn't put it past them.

However, this is much bigger than a few Star Trek fanatics. If something like this were to succeed it would change the face of media production -- putting the means of production directly in the hands of the audience and taking it away from the studios.

And franchises have done this in the past. Stephen King successfully sold chapters of a book in pay-per-download installments.

If such a movement took hold, it could even form the basis of the business model that will solve the illegal-downloading bugaboo which is keeping the music, film and television industries up at night.

Think about it -- if fans pay for production and marketing costs up-front, for a series or film they'd like to see -- it doesn't matter if it is freely distributed. In fact, free distribution could only help to promote popular franchises.

Well, we can dream, can't we? In the meantime -- think about donating a few dollars. It's worth a shot, innit.