Textual Poachers by Henry Jenkins is a look at fanatic communities that follow certain popular cultural objects like film, books, and television. Jenkins argument is that the stereotype of the nerdy Star Trek “trekkie” fan is not an accurate description of this cultural movement. Jenkins tries to view these communities from an insider’s view being a cultural fanatic himself and an academic view point from the research he has done on these communities in an almost anthropological sense. These fan communities have grown in visibility with the widespread use of the internet. When this book was published in 1999 Henry Jenkins probably couldn’t understand how influential the internet would be on these fan communities. Because of the larger visibility of these communities their influence on the creators of cultural objects has increased. As a marketing major I have noticed the influence of these fan communities on product lines in my classes. Also, in my summer internship in the Marketing department of Kings Island, a local amusement park, we used fan communities surrounding our park to influence important decisions we made throughout the year.
One example where a fan community has really influenced the creators of the actual object is with the Fox cancellation of the television show Family Guy. In 2000 Fox cancelled the television show Family Guy, as a result many of the fan communities following the show were very upset. These fan communities created multiple petitions and attempts to get Fox to put Family Guy back into their lineup. Two strategies of these fan communities were to increase viewers of the reruns on Cartoon Network to show a growing interest in the show and to increase DVD sales of Family Guy to show Fox that it was a profitable show. Because of high viewership of Family Guy on reruns and unprecedented DVD sales of Family Guy, Fox decided to bring back Family Guy in 2005. Because of the grassroots campaign on these Family Guy fan communities they were able to convince the network and the creators of the show that the show should continue.
Another example of the influence of these fan communities comes from my personal work experience. As a marketing intern with Kings Island, a large amusement and water park located in Mason, OH I witnessed how a business actually responds to a fan community. A fan community called KICentral has grown tremendously over the last few years to be one of the largest unofficial website communities devoted to an amusement park. When the company Cedar Fair took over the Kings Island amusement park they decided to use this fan community to help determine what needed to be changed about the park. One of the most popular answers we got from this fan community was that they wanted a new exciting steel coaster at the amusement park. So, listening to the fan community Kings Island and Cedar Fair decided to work on developing a new state of the art steel coaster for Kings Island. Because of the responses from the large fan community Kings Island will have a new steel coaster in 2009.
Because of the internet more fan communities are growing in size and importance. Fan communities are riding the wave of interactive media and putting a personal touch on everything. Society is becoming less reliant on mass communication and putting more of an emphasis on segmentation and customization. Some televisions shows are even scanning fan fiction writings to gauge where their audience would like the show to head towards and for plot ideas. With it becoming cheaper to create video we may even see more and more people creating their own shows from their fan fiction writings. I feel that fan communities will continue to grow and continue to become more influential to creators of media.
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