PAT SPEER SAID:
The interest in the [JFK Assassination] case is dwindling, and there is no reason to believe the number of viewers [for the proposed HBO 10-part miniseries based on Vincent Bugliosi's 2007 book "Reclaiming History"] in 2013 will be much greater than the number of viewers in 2010.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
I'm fairly confident in saying that Pat Speer is 100% wrong about the statement quoted above.
"Round Number Anniversaries" of major historical events almost always attract a goodly amount of interest from people. And I can prove that is true when using just my single YouTube channel as a mini-example.
I recently uploaded some videos to my YouTube channel that are of interest to me personally. But I really didn't know if they were going to be of any interest to other YouTube viewers.
But suddenly I noticed that these particular videos were getting a whole bunch of views and comments. And then I put 2 and 2 together and realized why I was getting so many views for those videos -- it was the "Anniversary" angle that was creating the spike in viewership.
The two videos I'm referring to are a documentary about the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant....and the first flight of the Boeing 747 jumbo jet in 1969.
The 30th anniversary of the Three Mile Island accident was last month (March 28th); and the 40th anniversary of the maiden flight of the 747 was on February 9th of this year.
And as of the writing of this post on 4/29/09, the top 3 "Most Viewed" videos on my channel (and 8 of the top 12) are videos that relate to those two "anniversary" events.
So, it's quite obvious to me that anniversaries spark interest. And the 50th Anniversary of JFK's assassination will definitely be a "biggie".
Therefore, it makes a whole lot of marketing sense for HBO to want to wait until November 2013 to debut the 10-part miniseries based on Vincent Bugliosi's book [which was later downsized to the theatrical motion picture "Parkland"].
David Von Pein
April 29, 2009
