Caprica premiere hits DVD this April (?!)

I'm thinking that NBCU is experimenting here... Sci Fi Wire reported today that the series premiere for Caprica will be available on DVD this April (the 21st to be exact), and it will be a feature-length "uncut and unrated" version as opposed to the broadcast presentation due to air in 2010.

Sounds a little... different, no? At first glance, it seems NBCU might be trying to put Caprica out there while people are still riding the BSG wave, which will see it's last episode air in March - the month before this DVD release. The BSG movie "The Plan" is scheduled to air in June, which makes Caprica seemingly staggered into the mix. Perhaps there will be some sort of correlation between The Plan and Caprica.

I think the BSG wave may be part of it, but you would think that perhaps they could have waited at least until the fall, since that's a big outlet for introducing a new series to it's audience. Even waiting until early summer or a little later (or after The Plan?) would stagger the time gap between the end of BSG and regular broadcast for Caprica. As it stands now, Caprica is tentatively set to air in January 2010, but we've all seen those kinds of dates get pushed and pushed. It's quite possible there could end up being a year or so wait between the two series, and sticking a Caprica DVD in there a third or half-way through that wait would ease the pain a little. That thought led me to remember one of the oldest tricks in the book: starvation. Take Nintendo as an example. The Wii gaming console has consistently been the highest selling console since it emerged onto the playing field (I believe it was the fall of 2006). It's been the top seller each holiday season since it's release. At first it was new and exciting... and different. The Wii appealed not just to gamers, but to everybody else. Now today, try going into any given retailer and see if the Wii is in stock, and chances are there are probably none to one or two available (as opposed to the 50 to 100 Xbox 360s and PS3s they have in stock), or people are standing in line early Sunday mornings to get one. Still. Three years after it's release. Or is it four? People still want the Wii, and they want it bad, perhaps simply because they can't get them.

So maybe there are some other genuine counterparts to the delays for both Nintendo production and in the Television industry. One company can only make so much of a product at a time to feed the world. But surely NBCU isn't blind to the fact that fans of BSG and other series go absolutely gaga if their series is delayed, or even threatened to be cancelled. Remember the peanuts. Always remember the peanuts. Since ratings have proven to be an almost obsolete resource with the advent of internet streaming and the PVR, one of the new ways the companies have been getting an inkling of whether there is an audience is when the audience is outraged with hunger and telling the company/studio/media all about it.

So, stock up fans. Eat up all the BSG you can, and have a nip of Caprica. There's another long, hungry winter coming, and when it's over (i.e. when Caprica comes to air in 2010) you're going to want it like you've never wanted anything before. Maybe.

Edited - io9 has some more details on the content of the DVD and some executive explainations from Mark Stern of the SciFi Channel.

Keep checking in at capricadvd.com

Alternate post title: "Let them eat frakking cake"