Yeah, when Radiohead did well releasing a CD online, everyone said "see, it works for Radiohead, it can work for anyone." The problem is that anyone is not Radiohead, or Joss Whedon. Recouping $200k is neat as an experiment, but hardy the foundation of a replacement to television as we know it. One episode of your favorite TV drama alone likely costs much more than that. If your favorite TV drama is Lost, it's 50x that.
The entertainment industry already has a model very similar to what you just described, just instead of distributing it over the net, they do so to theaters and customers by way of DVD. See http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/movie-distribution.ht... . It explains why you see two or three production credits before the opening sequence of each movie, those are basically their equivalent of VCs.
The entertainment industry already has a model very similar to what you just described, just instead of distributing it over the net, they do so to theaters and customers by way of DVD. See http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/movie-distribution.ht... . It explains why you see two or three production credits before the opening sequence of each movie, those are basically their equivalent of VCs.