Post by Skyroniter on May 5, 2007 10:23:02 GMT -5
Courtesy Satellite News
Ten years ago today, the following message went out:
------
Change.
We know: It sucks.
It is with that thought that we welcome you, with some trepidation, to the new Satellite News. Oh, and one more thought: Now we know how Bill Corbett feels.
The old Satellite News is dead, a victim of spiraling postage costs, increasing printing prices and a burgeoning fan base. The simple fact is that when a free newsletter was dreamed up at BBI almost a decade ago, nobody dreamed the mailing list would crash through the 81,000 mark with no sign of slowing down. Then it was manageable. Now, it simply is not.
But while it may upset some folks to learn that BBI is getting out of the newsletter business, what BBI is doing is not very different from the course many other business are chosing. (And, though we sometimes forget, Best Brains Inc. is and always has been a business.) It's a move usually described in CEO-talk as "focusing on core competencies and avoiding mission creep." In plain English: BBI does one thing really well -- they create a TV show called Mystery Science Theater 3000. Looked at that way, it makes all the sense in the world for BBI to focus its limited resources on that one task, and not sidetrack them with other activities.
Of course, that's our head talking. Our heart is a different matter. We loved the Satellite News: The pleasure of reading zany little articles from BBI writers, the excitement of getting to see inside the operation, the sheer thoughtfulness of the whole thing. Perhaps you may take some small consolation in the fact that there is a site on the web that still retains something like that feeling: BBI's Sci-Fi Dominion site.)
The Satellite News was great. We are painfully aware how much you loved it, and we are just as painfully aware that the "new" Satellite News is not going to give you the same delight. We can never be what it was. And we're not going to try.
What we ARE going to do is pretty much what we did with the old MSTieNews web site, only more so. We have been and continue to be totally dedicated to bringing you the most complete and up-to-date information about MST3K available anywhere. And with our added role as official Information Club site, we're going to knock ourselves out to do even more.
Our newest attraction is "Daddy-O's Drive-In Dirt," an exhaustive (and exhausting), obsessively researched and maniacally cross-referenced guide to EVERY SINGLE MOVIE EVER MSTed, featuring embarrassing little tidbits about the stars, appalling facts about their production and detail so compulsive it'll make you question you're own potty training.
DODID is part of a plot to take over the world devised by one Steve Finley, and we are proud to add it to our list of offerings. Look for it within the next week.
Coming soon: We're planning a series of in-depth one-on-one interviews with BBI staffers. We also hope to expand the site soon to include a place for contributions of all kinds from you, the fans. But as we begin, we felt it would be best to tell you about us.
First, you may be wondering: What's our relationship with BBI? It's a fair question and we feel strongly that full disclosure about this is important. So, here goes: Best Brains HAS done us the honor of sanctioning our site as the official Information Club web site. As such it has promised to give us access and information first and to make Satellite News the primary conduit for communicating with fans of the show on-line. It has also granted us permission to use certain copyrighted images, such as the "spaghetti ball."
But...
We're NOT BBI employees and this is not simply going to be an exercise in public relations. We consider this publication an independent one. Best Brains does not have and will not have editorial approval on what we publish. As far as money goes, the domain registration and the rest of the costs of the site are being paid by us, not by BBI. What will be our editorial approach? We told BBI that we think of our relationship to them as similar to the Wall Street Journal's relationship to Wall Street -- an intimate but objective observer and reporter (and, as the Journal would probably admit to a certain bias in favor of capitalism, we'll cop to a certain bias in favor of MST3K being a successful show).
We told them this relationship ought to continue when we took over the Satellite News. They agreed.
Finally, a personal note that we simply can't hold in any longer:
WOOHOO!! Best Brains thinks we're the right people for this job and, well, not to put too fine a point on it, we agree. We believe we earned this. To us, this recognition is the culmination of years of working our butts off, on a daily basis, to keep fans informed, to build lines of communication with BBI, Sci-Fi Channel and other sources of reliable information, and to separate fact from rumor about this show. We would have kept right on doing it without any sort of recognition, but we gotta admit it sure feels good to get noticed for all our hard work. That said, it's important to add that a lot of folks have supported MSTieNews with time, energy, information and enthusiasm. We'd like to thank all of them, and we hope they'll approach this new endeavor with the same spirit.
Welcome to the new Satellite News!
------
After I posted that on one of the forums ten years ago, a friend of mine replied: "Don't TELL us what you're gonna do, Sampo, just DO it!" I realized it was good advice, and I took it to heart. Ten years later, we think we've accomplished a lot of what we set out to do, but there's still a job ahead of us. We have lots of plans for new features and upgrades to old ones, but we won't TELL you about it, we'll just DO it.
Stay tuned.
But we want to take this opportunity thank everybody for ten years of goodwill and support for our efforts. It means a lot.
On to the next ten years...
Sampo
Ten years ago today, the following message went out:
------
Change.
We know: It sucks.
It is with that thought that we welcome you, with some trepidation, to the new Satellite News. Oh, and one more thought: Now we know how Bill Corbett feels.
The old Satellite News is dead, a victim of spiraling postage costs, increasing printing prices and a burgeoning fan base. The simple fact is that when a free newsletter was dreamed up at BBI almost a decade ago, nobody dreamed the mailing list would crash through the 81,000 mark with no sign of slowing down. Then it was manageable. Now, it simply is not.
But while it may upset some folks to learn that BBI is getting out of the newsletter business, what BBI is doing is not very different from the course many other business are chosing. (And, though we sometimes forget, Best Brains Inc. is and always has been a business.) It's a move usually described in CEO-talk as "focusing on core competencies and avoiding mission creep." In plain English: BBI does one thing really well -- they create a TV show called Mystery Science Theater 3000. Looked at that way, it makes all the sense in the world for BBI to focus its limited resources on that one task, and not sidetrack them with other activities.
Of course, that's our head talking. Our heart is a different matter. We loved the Satellite News: The pleasure of reading zany little articles from BBI writers, the excitement of getting to see inside the operation, the sheer thoughtfulness of the whole thing. Perhaps you may take some small consolation in the fact that there is a site on the web that still retains something like that feeling: BBI's Sci-Fi Dominion site.)
The Satellite News was great. We are painfully aware how much you loved it, and we are just as painfully aware that the "new" Satellite News is not going to give you the same delight. We can never be what it was. And we're not going to try.
What we ARE going to do is pretty much what we did with the old MSTieNews web site, only more so. We have been and continue to be totally dedicated to bringing you the most complete and up-to-date information about MST3K available anywhere. And with our added role as official Information Club site, we're going to knock ourselves out to do even more.
Our newest attraction is "Daddy-O's Drive-In Dirt," an exhaustive (and exhausting), obsessively researched and maniacally cross-referenced guide to EVERY SINGLE MOVIE EVER MSTed, featuring embarrassing little tidbits about the stars, appalling facts about their production and detail so compulsive it'll make you question you're own potty training.
DODID is part of a plot to take over the world devised by one Steve Finley, and we are proud to add it to our list of offerings. Look for it within the next week.
Coming soon: We're planning a series of in-depth one-on-one interviews with BBI staffers. We also hope to expand the site soon to include a place for contributions of all kinds from you, the fans. But as we begin, we felt it would be best to tell you about us.
First, you may be wondering: What's our relationship with BBI? It's a fair question and we feel strongly that full disclosure about this is important. So, here goes: Best Brains HAS done us the honor of sanctioning our site as the official Information Club web site. As such it has promised to give us access and information first and to make Satellite News the primary conduit for communicating with fans of the show on-line. It has also granted us permission to use certain copyrighted images, such as the "spaghetti ball."
But...
We're NOT BBI employees and this is not simply going to be an exercise in public relations. We consider this publication an independent one. Best Brains does not have and will not have editorial approval on what we publish. As far as money goes, the domain registration and the rest of the costs of the site are being paid by us, not by BBI. What will be our editorial approach? We told BBI that we think of our relationship to them as similar to the Wall Street Journal's relationship to Wall Street -- an intimate but objective observer and reporter (and, as the Journal would probably admit to a certain bias in favor of capitalism, we'll cop to a certain bias in favor of MST3K being a successful show).
We told them this relationship ought to continue when we took over the Satellite News. They agreed.
Finally, a personal note that we simply can't hold in any longer:
WOOHOO!! Best Brains thinks we're the right people for this job and, well, not to put too fine a point on it, we agree. We believe we earned this. To us, this recognition is the culmination of years of working our butts off, on a daily basis, to keep fans informed, to build lines of communication with BBI, Sci-Fi Channel and other sources of reliable information, and to separate fact from rumor about this show. We would have kept right on doing it without any sort of recognition, but we gotta admit it sure feels good to get noticed for all our hard work. That said, it's important to add that a lot of folks have supported MSTieNews with time, energy, information and enthusiasm. We'd like to thank all of them, and we hope they'll approach this new endeavor with the same spirit.
Welcome to the new Satellite News!
------
After I posted that on one of the forums ten years ago, a friend of mine replied: "Don't TELL us what you're gonna do, Sampo, just DO it!" I realized it was good advice, and I took it to heart. Ten years later, we think we've accomplished a lot of what we set out to do, but there's still a job ahead of us. We have lots of plans for new features and upgrades to old ones, but we won't TELL you about it, we'll just DO it.
Stay tuned.
But we want to take this opportunity thank everybody for ten years of goodwill and support for our efforts. It means a lot.
On to the next ten years...
Sampo
