Could a new Stargate announcement be on the horizon? What was the turn-out for the latest Stargate AI project? We are bringing fandom up to speed with GateWorld’s Darren Sumner and Film and Television marketing veteran, Jenny Stiven. Please be prepared to ask your questions in this LIVE episode!

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Timecodes
00:00 – Opening Credits
05:30 – Welcome and Episode Outline
08:22 – Welcoming Jenny and Darren
11:35 – Acquisition/Sale with MGM & Amazon and Implications
25:48 – Speculations – IMDB TV, Pluto, other digital distribution
34:48 – Movement of Personnel within the Companies
36:42 – Fandom Development Teams
42:16 – Stargate and social media – keeping the flame alive with sustaining the fans enthusiasm
51:19 – Streaming Services, Analytics, Fan Engagement
58:36 – Brad Wright’s relationship with MGM and Amazon
1:02:11 – Acquisition Timeline
1:09:25 – Where does Stargate fit, and what are fans willing to accept?
1:19:02 – Complete Reboot or Continuing Established Canon
1:23:32 – MGM’s priorities with its Intellectual Property
1:24:56 – Fan questions – winner of giveaway, How is fandom measured?
1:30:11 – Will fans be able to watch a new Stargate series for free?
1:32:32 – Shifting Storylines with Real-World Issues
1:36:34 – Darren’s kids and their experience with Stargate
1:39:38 – Original Stargate Cast Cameos in New Stargate
1:42:30 – Selling Stargate Merchandise, Short TV miniseries focused on one character?
1:44:52 – FreeVee and international viewing platforms
1:50:10 – James Cameron movies
1:51:23 – Global breakdown of Stargate analytics
1:54:24 – What can fans do to keep things moving forward? Any conventions?
1:58:34 – Fan campaigns?
1:59:35 – Jenny’s thoughts on letting fans know if things are in development with Stargate
2:03:48 – Closing thoughts, analytics, new TV shows being watched, books, misc quick topics
2:13:00 – Wrapping up with Darren and Jenny
2:13:45 – Post interview housekeeping
2:18:50 – End credits

***

“Stargate” and all related materials are owned by MGM Studios and MGM Television.

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read:
Hello everyone. My name is David Read and welcome to Dial the Gate. Thanks so much for joining us. If you’re live, really appreciate you being here. We have a great lineup today. Darren Sumner of GateWorld and TV and film marketing veteran Jenny Stiven of Clio Consulting and Kaleidoko. She’s gonna be joining us as well to discuss the state of the gate. It’s been six months since we did one of these. We have no real breaking news, I just wanna put that up there. This is not a bait and switch. It wasn’t like, “Is Stargate coming back? Let’s lower the boom and this is the announcement.” No, we’re discussing where things are in the industry right now; to give you a complete idea of where we’re at with this. If you like Stargate and you wanna see more content like this on YouTube, it would mean a great deal if you clicked the Like button. It really makes a difference with YouTube’s algorithm and will definitely help the show continue to grow. Please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend and if you wanna get notified about future episodes, click the Subscribe icon. Giving the Bell icon a click will notify you the moment a new video drops and you’ll get my notifications of any last-minute guest changes. Clips from this live stream will be released over the course of the next few days on the Dial the Gates channel. This is a live episode, so we’ve got Jenny and Darren standing by. The moderators will be taking your questions. I’m gonna pick a question from our audience that I believe stands out and if this person is still in the group with the same username, provides their email address in the chat near the end of the show, after we’ve announced them as the winner, they will win themselves this fan-made Daniel Jackson Pop action figure, created by Big J Customs and signed by Michael Shanks. This is a one-of-a-kind giveaway submitted by Big J over at Big J Customs. You can check his Facebook page out, I just displayed it a moment ago, at facebook.com/bigjcustoms, and we’ll be bringing that up near the end of this episode. Submit your questions and if I like your question, I’ll have Tracy call it out in the chat. Tracey will be looking for the email address of whoever has submitted the question that I think earns themselves this Pop figure for this episode. So, if you’re still in the group near the end of the show, I’ll invite you to submit your email address to the chat so we can confirm who you are if that’s something that you wanna do in order to earn this figure. OK, enough with me. Jenny Stiven of Clio Consulting and Kaleidoko, Darren Sumner of GateWorld and myself. Hello, everybody.

Darren Sumner:
Hey.

Jenny Stiven:
Hi.

David Read:
How are you guys?

Jenny Stiven:
Doing good, actually.

David Read:
How are you, Jenny?

Jenny Stiven:
Post-Covid times, doing good.

David Read:
Ugh.

Jenny Stiven:
I know. We have a joke now in the house that it’s so surreal that it doesn’t matter if it happened yesterday, during Covid, or before Covid, it’s all seven years. So, when you say, “When did that happen?” Seven years ago. That’s when it happened.

David Read:
It feels like that.

Jenny Stiven:
It does.

David Read:
It really does.

Jenny Stiven:
But we’re doing great. We’re doing great.

David Read:
Does it feel like it’s been six months since we had one of these discussions?

Jenny Stiven:
Yes and no.

David Read:
Yeah?

Jenny Stiven:
Yes and no. It’s a weird feeling. When I think about where I was, which was at home taking care of my dad, then yeah.

David Read:
That’s true.

Jenny Stiven:
It feels like six months. But then when I think about timeframe, it feels compressed and I think, “No, God, that feels like yesterday.”

David Read:
That’s right. Darren, how you doing, man?

Darren Sumner:
I’m feeling that. In my house, we call it “the before times.” Pre-Covid. Now we’re living in the post-apocalyptic landscape. We have 16 streaming services and I gotta pay for every one of them. It’s going well over here. We’re excited to be back and start ramping back up on some Stargate content, if I can get some other work done in my real life, ’cause there’s some fun stuff to do.

David Read:
What’s fun over at GateWorld? What do you wanna highlight?

Darren Sumner:
We’re trying to spend more time on our YouTube channel and do some original content as well as having weekly Dial the Gate clips over there. For folks to get the little nugget of these conversations and then come over here to Dial the Gate and subscribe and watch the full livestreams. I don’t know. We’re almost at the 25th anniversary of SG-1 and I’m trying to figure out what to do.

David Read:
Ooh.

Darren Sumner:
For about a year, I’ve been wanting to do a big ongoing video series that I won’t say anything more about ’cause it’s in the works, but I don’t think it’s gonna be here by the end of July. It might end up being a 26th anniversary celebration. I’ll figure out something else to do.

Jenny Stiven:
We’ve all been there.

Darren Sumner:
I’ll get closer to big two five.

Jenny Stiven:
We’ve all been there. Our 20th anniversary, David and I did it… It was in the 21st year, but cool, it worked.

David Read:
Yeah, it works. There are some things that you have to push around, especially now more than ever. I think people really get the fact that if we can do it, we’re at this point and in some cases, lucky to say that we can do it at all.

Jenny Stiven:
Gold star for us, man. Every time I complete something, I feel like I’m in third grade and I should have a chart of everything I’ve accomplished.

David Read:
Give yourself a gold star. Those gold stars at the grocery store.

Jenny Stiven:
Gonna have a Stargate sticker for myself.

Darren Sumner:
COVID, I gave myself lots of little rewards for making it through COVID day-by-day.

David Read:
I gave myself a few too many.

Darren Sumner:
I put on a few extra as a result.

David Read:
Since we met, the Amazon acquisition of MGM is complete, or at least the sale is complete. Is that correct? The money has exchanged hands.

Jenny Stiven:
Yes.

David Read:
Wow. So, is there any chance of any plugs being pulled at this point?

Jenny Stiven:
No, none. I think if anything happens from an FTC or an antitrust standpoint, California does have a buyer’s remorse. That’s passed. So, the FTC might come back and assign fines. The woman who runs it and the guy who runs the FCC are pretty hardcore on antitrust. I’ve got some updates on that and why it’s unlikely that that’s gonna be an issue for this acquisition or merger.

David Read:
Let’s get into it.

Jenny Stiven:
OK, cool. I wanted to make sure that we started everybody on the same playing field. There are a lot of different articles and numbers, so let’s just boil it down and I’m gonna quote a couple of things for people that are from a couple of different articles and also some background research that the three of us were able to get from our contacts.

David Read:
The three of us meaning you. For the most part.

Jenny Stiven:
We’ve all been talking about it. What happened in the 8.4 billion acquisition is Amazon assigned a value of 3.4 billion to MGM’s film and television library. Nothing coming up, no new productions to what already exists. We’ve talked about this before, but remember, that library was cut in half by Kirk Kerkorian in the ’80s when he sold it to Warner Brothers. Actually, he split it up with Criterion and Turner and a whole bunch of people.

Darren Sumner:
When people look at the sort of the golden age of Hollywood, MGM’s films like The Wizard of Oz, those are not part of this equation anymore.

Jenny Stiven:
No, they’re not. It’s 1984 forward. Now, there were some that he retained and that is included in here. For instance, we worked on a horror channel and there were quite a few 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s horror films that were not included in that turnover.

David Read:
They were earmarked beforehand?

Jenny Stiven:
Correct. It includes movies, but they’re all the B and C titles. All the A titles, to Darren’s point, are what we would all recognize as that classic MGM film. That is not part of this library. So again, that’s a 3.4 billion valuation and that was assigned by Amazon and approved by the SEC. So, that’s the library. Then separate from that, SEC approved and Amazon assigned a $4.9 billion goodwill value. What that means, for anybody who pays attention to this, is those are your non-liquidable assets. Those are your people, those are your deals, those are your North American, your worldwide distribution deals. Less tangible assets, customer relationships. They assigned a bigger number to that, which I think is fascinating because that speaks to why Amazon wanted to do that. That would be, for instance, Steve Stark, while he left the creative division, he opened his own shingle under MGM as a production company. He’s included in this. Those types of valuations are for the people, Mark Burnett.

David Read:
Potential. It’s the potential value of who that person is as a workforce.

Jenny Stiven:
It’s also proprietary brands. A little bit of that is, and this gets a little dicey. I don’t know if everybody knows, but while I was there, in the late 2010s, Orion was opened back up, Orion Pictures, and Annapurna and Epix Channel. Those three still exist. Epix is probably gonna be absorbed into its own stream, into either IMDb or Amazon Streaming. As a side note, IMDb has its own channel and that’s owned by Amazon. What now needs to be decided is how do you take those pieces and absorb them into this behemoth that’s Amazon. I just wanted to make sure everybody was on the same playing field about what we knew. When you think of MGM, MGM was its own studio, its own vertical silo that it owned everything and underneath it. It had people like Steve Stark, Mark Burnett, Roma Downey’s company, that’s the Faith Company. It had United Artists, it had Orion, it had Annapurna. All of these went over to Amazon. How are the TV and theatrical businesses gonna be handled? Here’s what I’ve found out. Again, I’m not gonna say anything right now that’s speculation. Everything that I’m saying right now has either already been published, so we’re just gathering all the information in one place for you guys, or we’ve confirmed it on background. This is the part where we’re guessing or extrapolating. MGM is gonna operate autonomously. I don’t know if the current audience is aware of this, but probably the best example in parallel is Searchlight Pictures, which was acquired by 20th Century Fox in the early ’90s and it was “absorbed” but it ran as its own vertical profit-and-loss studio. Think of it like Phantom Menace. It was a pod racer with the engine of 20th Century Fox behind it. Think of MGM, it’s gonna be the little studio that could. It’s gonna be a production studio. It’s gonna retain its autonomy, but it’s gonna have Amazon infrastructure for support. We don’t know how Amazon money is gonna work. This is where things get tricky, this is all fact. Amazon has what’s called “carriage and distribution deals,” and Darren, you’ve talked about this in a couple of really great articles. This is where things get messy. You’ve got United Artists, you’ve got Orion, you’ve got Annapurna. Annapurna is basically for domestic releases. You’ve got all of these, plus Epix, which we know is gonna go away. That was announced two years ago, prior to the merger. What’s gonna happen with all those deals? All of that library, remember, that was valued at the 3.4 billion, those have distribution deals. Stargate is the perfect example. There are massively complicated deals for Stargate worldwide, which David and I experienced firsthand, and Kyla, of which some are distributed through Amazon. There are ones that are still in play right now that didn’t get canceled, didn’t get absorbed by the merger.

David Read:
They have to unwind and expire.

Jenny Stiven:
Or some of them, like Australia, was just renewed.

David Read:
They could do that?

Jenny Stiven:
Let me talk about this. We throw names out. Really quickly, you guys, the hierarchy. Amazon Prime and Amazon Creative Studios, collectively, is run by a man named Mike Hopkins. Mike Hopkins is SVP, but it’s kind of weird that he’s an SVP. He’s in charge of both of those. He’s in charge of the streaming and the studios, the creative and the distribution. Then the person that’s in charge of Amazon Studios overall production is Jennifer Salke. She’s very cool, very creative, young, super energetic. The head of the TV division is Vernon Sanders. I have not worked with him. I don’t know anything about him. If anybody knows anything about him, please feel free to put it in the comments. The friends that I talk to over at Amazon love working with him, certainly have super high marks for sci-fi fantasy geek that he is, but he’s also a businessman. I’m not sure how he lands on these things. On the MGM side, and we’ll talk a little bit about people who have left, Mike Hopkins basically offered to Chris Brearton, who’s the COO, who’s been around for a little bit, Mark Burnett, who’s chairman of all television, Chris Ottinger, who’s president of worldwide distribution of all MGM, and then Michael De Luca and [Pam Abdy], to come over. Let’s address the Michael De Luca/[Pam Abdy] thing. I was really taken aback by that. I was shocked because they just joined in 2020. I love Michael De Luca. He’s really easy to work with. He’s brilliant, he’s creative. He actually is responsible, ’cause he started working a little bit before 2020 for the resurgence of the really good films that we’ve seen recently that MGM came out with. He’s also responsible for working with Chris Brearton on the very measured way in which they’re releasing things, as opposed to the kind of hit and miss that was happening before. They were all offered to come over, and Michael De Luca and [Pam] decided to leave on their own accord. That I know for sure now. They were not pushed out, nothing like that. What happened was Michael came on board at MGM because of the autonomy that he got to have and MGM was great about really getting each of its divisions, “OK, here’s your P&L, your profit and loss. Here’s what you get to do. If you’re successful, go to town. We don’t care.” They got to work cross-functionally within MGM with very little oversight from the board. Frankly, if you went to the board and said, “Here’s what our plan is for the next two years,” and they liked it, at that point you were good to go. There was no harm, no foul. There were no bad feelings. I think Michael and [Pam] might end up over at Warner Brothers. They work together. They come as a pair. I was shocked by that and I was super disappointed, but I get it. He wants to go somewhere where he’s not gonna have to answer to three other people to do his business, creatively. That means that what’s left is a lot of decision-making. When you have a merger and acquisition like Searchlight was at Fox, and I was there working at Fox when it really moved in in the early 2000s, there are divisions that automatically get absorbed. That’s marketing, licensing and merchandising, operations. A lot of those get absorbed into the parent company or shared. Marketing, for instance, and digital marketing at the time, we got immediately absorbed into the international marketing and domestic global marketing at Fox. However, creative production, even PR, stayed autonomous at Searchlight. Within marketing and distribution, we stayed with Searchlight. We just had one more person to answer to. I was doing digital marketing international with Maya Cohen and then Graham Retzik eventually, but I answered to Searchlight and then to Fox. So, at the time, that was Rebecca Kearey at Searchlight and then Bettina Sherick at Fox. So, while those merged, it just meant I had one more person to answer to, but I stayed at Searchlight. From my understanding, that is how this is gonna work at MGM. For instance, they all moved back into the Beverly Hills offices three weeks ago at MGM. All of that is to say that the operations, the infrastructure, it’s pretty much movin’ along. Mike Hopkins, again, remember, he’s head of Amazon Prime and Studios, had a big town hall about a month ago and he was pretty hardcore about, “This is autonomous. The reason we wanted you is for this valuation of your library and this bigger valuation of your intangible assets,” meaning you. The creative production, the possibility, the potential, your distribution deals, the people that you’ve got. While you always see after two years that there are layoffs, ’cause that always happens after two years, what’s more likely to happen is you’re gonna see people at MGM really turning to take all of those projects that were on hold and go crazy. Now, the prioritization, that’s where we’re all gonna speculate at this point.

David Read:
Where does Stargate fall on that list?

Jenny Stiven:
Exactly. That’s as much as I know about the reality, the facts, the infrastructure. I wanna make sure I got all my news fit to print here. Just to repeat, here’s what I think is an interesting part of what we can speculate. IMDb TV that Amazon is pushing, they are pushing it pretty hard internally. I wanna red flag that. Or not red flag it, but flag that as we should watch and see if there isn’t something that happens there, because that is where the scuttlebutt, again, this is now into speculation, is where a lot of MGM’s library is gonna go, not necessarily just on Prime. Here’s why. Prime is for money, IMDb you can watch for free and ad supported. What they’re thinking about doing is they’ll offer it on both, but they’re gonna do a huge push on IMDb because it’s free. Now, that’s not speculation. That I do know for sure. What goes on there, I don’t know.

Darren Sumner:
That’s really interesting. Now, something that’s happened fairly recently since we all got together and chatted last, of course, was Stargate landed on Pluto. It’s on Pluto TV, ad supported, which is a similar sort of service to IMDb as I understand it. What do you think the relation of that… the fact that Stargate’s on Pluto now, does that potentially preclude it from ending up on another service also at the same time?

Jenny Stiven:
For right now, my understanding, it would exclude it, because shoot, I should have asked Kyla and I didn’t double check. I don’t know if that was an exclusive deal. I’ll check.

Darren Sumner:
That’s what I’m wondering.

Jenny Stiven:
I’ll get back to you guys so we can put it in the notes. Just remind me. I do know that that was a new deal since the sale. Again, this is fact. Chris Ottinger’s division of distribution is actively acting with no compunction, no holds, to move forward as digital distribution. That is, his division is still moving forward as MGM. So, I think what’s gonna get a little messy is, I don’t think Amazon cares in the first couple years. I think what they wanna see is, “OK, now you’re under our roof. What are you gonna prove? What are you gonna show us?” What I’m very curious about is I don’t see any interviews by Mark Burnett, who usually loves to go out and do interviews about this stuff. I don’t hear any scuttlebutt about what he wants to do, which I find fascinating. Now, a lot of his focus right now is on getting started after COVID of all of his reality programs, which were somewhat what was ever in the can was what went forward during COVID. I know that a lot of focus is on the bazillion reality programs he has, but I’m curious about that. I’m curious about what Vernon Sanders over at Amazon wants to do with the MGM new stuff, our new programs. There’s a guy called Matt Motschenbacher, who David you’ve met, he was on a panel with us. He’s a huge geek. His background is in sci-fi, fantasy. He now runs a part of that division for Amazon. He is fully focused on The Boys and Rings, but I know he likes Stargate. So, is that something that he would go up the ladder to Vernon Sanders and say, “Hey, we really should look at this.” I have no idea. That’s where I’m fascinated to find out, what is that process internally gonna be? It’s going to be different than anything they’ve ever done before. When they acquired IMDb, it wasn’t the same. MGM is its own creative studio with a lot of leaders, not a lot of followers. I’m gonna be super curious to see what do those meetings go like? How that gonna mash down, or mash up? How are they going to talk about this? Does everybody get to throw their ideas at the wall? Who’s gonna make those decisions? Is it Mark Burnett and then he reports to Vernon Sanders? I have no idea.

David Read:
It’s gonna be interesting to see how this unfolds. There are so many moving parts here and it’s one of the reasons why I wanted you, Jenny, to come in and say, “OK, here’s at least where we’re at.”

Jenny Stiven:
It’s still too many moving parts, honestly. I think it’s fascinating to have at least the structure that we know of right now. I am blown away that they valued the intangible at 4.9 billion. I did not know that that was the split. That was in an SEC filing, so if anybody wants to go look that up, it’s public. Amazon and MGM had to file that in April, so it’s a public SEC filing. I was curious and I was like, “Oh, isn’t that interesting.” This is even better, what they listed under their intangibles were mostly allocating to its North America segment, not international worldwide. So, of course I wanted to call Kyla and Chris, but they can’t tell me. It refers to their customer relationships and proprietary technology. So, it’s basically what enables Amazon to make streaming projects with the MGM brand. Does that make sense? It means Amazon gets to say, “Whatever you do next, we want to stream on our proprietary technology of Prime Video or IMDb.”

Darren Sumner:
So, in that regard, MGM’s valuation is potentially higher because of the engine that Amazon brings to distribute it?

Jenny Stiven:
Not just the library, which they are, I’m sure, having a blast divvying up and figuring how they’re gonna do it, but those potential productions. I think the biggest question mark is, one, we don’t have a new assigned head of the film division that Michael De Luca and [Pam] left, so that’ll be up to Mike Hopkins. So, who’s gonna do that? As far as Mike Hopkins is concerned, MGM is gonna operate on its own, reporting to him and Jennifer Salke and Vernon Sanders. So, what does that mean? That means you have a whole ‘nother layer of people you have to convince of what you wanna do. If they are splitting this catalog, who’s in charge of the catalog? At MGM, you didn’t have, like at Fox, we had an entire division that was devoted to the catalog. You didn’t have that division at MGM. It was under whatever film or television. Film or television was in charge of its own catalog.

David Read:
So do you have an idea of how these pieces are going to fall into place?

Jenny Stiven:
Not a clue. Mike Hopkins has actually used Searchlight as an example and then ironically used the Disney acquisition and merger of Fox as the example of what they are not going to do. They are not going to absorb it where it disappears. Or MGM’s own absorption of United Artists, where United Artists was supposed to stay as its own shingle and it didn’t. It just got absorbed and it just became a distribution/releasing arm. He was pretty clear in a lot of what I read over the past week that our example is that this is something brand new that nobody’s done. We want it as its own shingle. We do not want them to be absorbed. They have to answer to us at some level. For instance, MGM’s financial fiscal year ends June 30th. I’m pretty sure that stayed the same, from what I’m hearing. They’ll have to turn in a new budget to Amazon, as well as turn it into your MGM board and then to Amazon. I don’t know what that means and I sure as hell don’t know what marketing is gonna happen with Stephen Bruno as CMO. I cannot imagine that Amazon would get rid of Stephen. He’s brilliant and he’s great at this. Coming from Netflix, he’s got a very unique approach to being able to look at the creative as well as a massive behemoth streamer. He was at Netflix for years, so he’s got a very unique perspective and I can’t imagine that they’re gonna get rid of him. But how does he get absorbed into the existing market and…

David Read:
How does he fit? That’s a lot. People who we’re talking with there, it’s like, “Where do they go?” How do they fit into these things? Those things that are supposed to get absorbed and taken over, like you normally see in those typical departments. What happens to them? They’re kind of like, “it’s not boring around here.”

Jenny Stiven:
No, if you look at any of these, it takes about two years. Fox, when it was merged with Disney, and again, I don’t think it’s the right example but it’s just the one that’s happened the most recently. I’m gonna ignore the AT&T and Discovery mergers ’cause those are just weird. There were people who were offered packages right away, because they could be identified as redundant to multiple levels of Amazon, people that already exist.

Darren Sumner:
Offered packages, meaning retirement?

David Read:
Yes. “Thank you so much.”

Darren Sumner:
You’re out the door.

Jenny Stiven:
Not necessarily. So for instance, a couple of people were offered packages just as severance packages. So, David, somebody that you and I worked with directly in brand management, it’s not a retirement package, but she was able to live on it for a year.

Darren Sumner:
That’s what I mean. Severance, they’re leaving the company.

Jenny Stiven:
Severance, yes, exactly. What that did was it cleared out, I think, 850 people right away at Fox. Then about 200 went over to Disney, but by the end of this past year, they’re down to, I think, about 50 employees from Fox that have been retained. It takes about two years to go through that process and figure out where are the redundancies, where do they add value. I give Amazon a lot of credit because from everything I’m hearing, they’re really trying to be good about looking at, “We’re not presuming redundancy, we’re presuming credit. We’re presuming that you have something to contribute.”

David Read:
You’ve been previously hired. It makes sense that as other people get phased out, then those new people are going to be adjusted a little bit. Then from there, where do they go?

Jenny Stiven:
Matt Motschenbacher, who I just love, who’s doing the Rings and he’s in the sci-fi fantasy group, that was a brand-new job that they created two years ago. You never know. Bettina just got a promotion; she’s now head of all audience insights. That was a brand-new job, so you never know. Bettina Sherick was David and my boss at Fox for a long, long time, at Fox Home Entertainment and International Fox. She learned all of this on the job at Fox. Now, that’s a new job at Amazon, or newish. So, Amazon’s very willing to create new niches, new actual titles if they think that it serves the long-term purpose. I think the biggest fear, that I think is a legitimate fear, is that Amazon proper is a commerce monolith and it is an assembly line. Now, I have not seen from day one in Creative Studios that feeling or impression at all. However, as the consumer, I haven’t seen it. For friends of ours that work there, that is what it feels like. I think that’s the danger. I know last summer, they restructured. They created the sci-fi, I’ve told you guys before, the silo that was the sci-fi fantasy silo. That’s huge. That means they’ve got comedy silos. That is huge. That means it’s not just, “Oh, that’s TV,” or, “That’s film,” or, “That’s catalog,” which is where they were before. Now, they’re actually divvying it up into a niche, where they’re recognizing that those audiences have to be approached by people who are equally in the know as that audience about that content. They’re one of the few out there that are doing that. They literally have a fandom development team, which makes me giddy. I haven’t heard that. Fox did it, shout out to Bettina and Julie, but most companies don’t do that. They barely recognize it. It’s not an afterthought, but it’s shoved into social, it’s shoved into marketing, it’s shoved into PR, it’s shoved into events. It isn’t recognized as its own entity, as an evaluation in the equation of getting this film, getting this TV, getting this streaming series out. Amazon’s doing that, which bodes well for Stargate. I’m gonna say this. It all comes down to the people that are in charge of making the decision and if they like Stargate and if they’re big enough fans, or if they’re willing to look at it. There are certain people that will remain nameless that I just saw that got promoted upwards at a previous channel that I worked at that’s now been absorbed by Disney that is, blank X on Hulu, and should never have been promoted, does not get what sci-fi is, does not understand fandom and is in charge of all of that.

David Read:
Oh, terrific. That’s on Disney though?

Jenny Stiven:
No, I’m not gonna say it.

David Read:
No, I don’t want you to.

Jenny Stiven:
Not a bad person, honestly. Worked really well with me. But never got it, never truly understood the connection and the relationship that had to be made. I feel like 20 years later; I’m still beating this drum. Darren and David, you beat this drum. Joe Mallozzi beats this drum nonstop by himself like a voice in the wilderness half the time. I don’t understand, because there are so many success stories, so many success equations. If we’re gonna go bottom line business, there are so many equations where, let’s use Star Trek, for example. Good God, I can barely keep up with all of the things I wanna watch on Star Trek, and 100%, that is because fans asked for it. I give Paramount, the decision makers over there at Paramount, but here’s the deal. Vincent, Mary Daily, so David, all these people we worked with, huge Star Trek fans who made those decisions. Jim Gianopulos, ginormous Star Trek fans that made those decisions.

David Read:
You have to have people who believe in the property and if they don’t,,,

Jenny Stiven:
Unfortunately, it’s subjective. How many times have we all dealt with people that didn’t get it? Thank God for Simon Grady and Michael Brown and all those guys who love Stargate, but there were a lot of people at MGM, no ding on them, they just didn’t get it. They just didn’t understand why it was a cool project, an amazing series. That ultimately is, every time, and any businessperson will tell you, it’s that human factor. You could give all the black and white spreadsheets you want and prove, and this is where I’m gonna bring this in, ’cause I’m super excited about this. Sentiment right now in mentions of Stargate across all social and marketing channels is averaging, and when I say average, that means we have massive peaks, 660 mentions per day.

David Read:
The term “Stargate?”

Jenny Stiven:
Of the term “Stargate.” A product and project and piece that has nothing active except for Timekeepers, which is getting a bit, Wyvern Gaming, which is getting a bit, and then of course, Pluto TV. There’s absolutely nothing to prove why that’s happening. For everybody to get a context for that, when we were at our peak and we were getting really good PR, we were getting about 2000 to 5000 mentions a day. to be at 660 a day, individual unique mentions, across different platforms, and then all of a sentiment is between 4 to 1 and 10 to 0 positive. That’s nuts.

David Read:
Nothing’s happening for all intents and purposes.

Jenny Stiven:
Let’s do a comparison. So, Star Trek right now, to be fair, Star Trek is getting millions of mentions per day.

David Read:
Yeah, it’s got five shows running. I would hope so.

Jenny Stiven:
Exactly.

Darren Sumner:
Always on the air now. Paramount’s worked really hard to stop me from cancelling my subscription.

Jenny Stiven:
No kidding. Ooh, I didn’t swear. let’s go back.

Darren Sumner:
On the internet you can swear.

Jenny Stiven:
Prior to CBS streaming, which became Paramount+, right before they launched, they were getting 1,000 mentions a day. at one point they were getting less than Star Trek.

David Read:
Are you talking Star Trek was getting 1,000 mentions a day?

Jenny Stiven:
Yup.

David Read:
Wow.

Jenny Stiven:
At one point they were getting less and less sentiment, ’cause let’s be honest, somewhat negative Star Trek groups. So, what I want everybody to hear is we’re exhausted. I know we’re tired.

Darren Sumner:
Tell me about it.

Jenny Stiven:
it’s hard to, for you guys especially, hold that, what’s it called? The Olympic flame, to hold that flame going.

David Read:
The torch.

Jenny Stiven:
The torch. Thank you. It is exhausting. Again, we still have no idea what’s out the other end of this. the fact that we’re getting that kind of daily mention when not much is happening at all except what you guys are sustaining, is crazy to me. It’s not huge, but it’s the same pre-COVID, pre-Picard, pre-Discovery of Star Trek mentions, equal to or more than. I want everybody to hold onto that, because that was a huge selling point within Paramount to move forward.

Darren Sumner:
Good.

Jenny Stiven:
Was looking at, this is what’s going on in that fandom out there, so we’re talking, what was that? 2017, 2016.

David Read:
Correct.

Jenny Stiven:
We have much better analytics now and again, that’s an average. Remember, we have peaks. There are times it’s 10,000 mentions a day. That makes a huge difference for what Dial the Gate’s doing, for what GateWorld’s doing, for what The Companion’s doing, for what Wyvern’s trying to keep alive, for what our absolutely amazing people over at the 365 Days of Stargate have done, which good God. That was amazing and keeping that going is…

Darren Sumner:
Talk about the daily drumbeat. That fan campaign is amazing.

Jenny Stiven:
And commitment. It’s insane.

Darren Sumner:
Let me say, with respect to what you’re talking about here, 660, and 4 to 1 to 10 to 0 net positive. That’s a two-sided coin. On the positive side, I think what you’re getting at is it suggests that Stargate as a franchise, and as a franchise with a built-in fan base, is ripe and ready to explode.

David Read:
I think it’s more globally accessible too than Star Trek is.

Darren Sumner:
More accessible across streamers now. It’s global. It has the potential to explode right now. I would say the other side of that coin is, hey, if you’re at MGM or Amazon and you’re watching this stream, that fan positivity is a currency. You have to figure out how to spend it or it’s gonna go away.

Jenny Stiven:
Absolutely. Darren, I think that that’s something that you and David can speak to, because the drumbeat for both of you has been consistent. Obviously there have been ups and downs over the years.

David Read:
Of course. Fans, individual fans come and gone.

Jenny Stiven:
Absolutely. But I think if what we do is we look at 2015 on, which is when MGM came back to David and Darren and I and said, “Hey, we want to bring this back up,” and specifically it was Michael Brown and Simon and Chris Ottinger. From that point forward, as much as it’s been an up and down, there is a consistency to that currency. I think, Darren, what you guys should speak to is, what’s your gut feeling from doing and being really boots on the ground with fans, of the patience to sustain that.

Darren Sumner:
Darren, you want to go first?

Jenny Stiven:
I’d be curious to know what you think.

Darren Sumner:
I have too many thoughts for one podcast on this point. This is what I think about all day and it keeps me up at night.

David Read:
Here’s your chance.

Jenny Stiven:
Honey. I know.

Darren Sumner:
You guys know me. I tend to be an optimist.

David Read:
Cautious optimist.

Darren Sumner:
It’s not a matter of if, but when. Stargate’s coming back, et cetera, et cetera. We’re all gonna have a great time. It’s gonna be a great show. We’re gonna love it. But boy, on the other side, I’m getting worn out. I’m getting ground down. I’m exhausted. Amazon and MGM, I’m exhausted. If there’s not something that sort of punctuates our excitement, the new licensees, we’ve got not just Wyvern in the RPG, but now we’ve got Eaglemoss making ships.

Jenny Stiven:
I forgot about them.

Darren Sumner:
Now we’ve got Timekeepers. We’ve got a new PC game in the works and other sorts of things. That’s energizing to me as a fan. As a content creator, it’s energizing not just because it’s a sign that the studio sort of hasn’t sealed the box on Stargate and put it up on the top shelf for good, but also because it’s something interesting. It’s something new. It’s fun. I just got a box in the mail from Eaglemoss, so I got stuff that’s going up on my shelf.

Jenny Stiven:
Did you? Wait, which one is it? Which one? Is it the ship?

David Read:
Which figure did you get?

Darren Sumner:
I’ll do an unboxing on the channel. I got the Ha’tak and the Death Glider.

Jenny Stiven:
You got both?

Darren Sumner:
They didn’t have a Daedalus for me.

Jenny Stiven:
Ugh. I can’t wait. I had to wait financially, ’cause I’m not on that list to get stuff free.

David Read:
I’m not either.

Darren Sumner:
As much flack as Origins has taken from a segment of the fan base, it was something to coalesce around. I’m sure that the mentions on social went up.

Jenny Stiven:
By far. That whole span of time that we were on the platform between 2017 and March of 2020 when it completely closed out, we were on 300,000 to a million on a consistent basis.

Darren Sumner:
The search traffic reflects that. If you go to Google Trends and look at Stargate over the last decade, the search traffic reflects that. GateWorld’s traffic reflects that. My wife can attest to this. I’ve been doing this for over 20 years, and I will, like the search results, start to flag and get so tired and bummed out. “I don’t want to write another news story and let’s just not do anything for a month.” Then something hits. It’s not even a big announcement. It’s maybe just somebody has something to say that indicates there’s movement, there’s motion, there’s interest and it really does rejuvenate me. It really does.

Jenny Stiven:
It should. I do want to mention, shoot. I didn’t get the numbers. Darn it. The licensing expo was just this past week. Sorry. Remind me of those two things. I want to check with Kaila to see what the distribution with Pluto TV was and I want to check on the licensing expo and what the numbers were. Here’s something that we really do have to remember. Every single IP franchise that I have worked on, so Predators, Aliens, Star Wars. When I did the Star Wars Blu-ray release and then worked on the beginning of the sequels, every single one of those was prompted to have a conversation internally because of the supplemental products. So, Aliens, Predators, Buffy, everything that came back up and bubbled up, Star Wars especially, was because of fans being engaged with those supplemental cross-functional pieces, which is anything in licensing and merchandising, anything in what used to be home entertainment, which is considered catalog now. Anything that would be streaming. Pluto TV’s numbers are good, they’re not great. I was looking at Parrot Analytics. For anybody who wants to check this stuff out who’s a nerd like I am, Parrot Analytics has some free reports and they focus on streaming. There’s another one called OTT and Tubefilter. All three of those are great research places to go to. I don’t know what the recent numbers are because it hasn’t been a full six months on Pluto. I don’t think it’s been a full six months yet so they didn’t have second quarter numbers when I looked, but they were better-than-expected numbers. They had wanted a certain percentage of the existing assessed Stargate audience, and they got better than half. Each of those pieces goes into that equation for a discussion internally. But again, it all comes back to you have to have that person internally who picks up that report and goes, “Oh my God, you guys. Look what happened at Pluto TV,” and throws that literally on the table and says, “These numbers are amazing. Look at what just happened with Eaglemoss. Look at Stargate RPG. It made 400% over what they expected to make.” Those are crazy numbers. I was at a meeting at Lucasfilm where the entire discussion was about the fact that fans were so engaged and excited on StarWars.com, the new blog that Bonnie Burton was writing at the time, so this was in 2009, 2010. They couldn’t believe that when they did a panel at San Diego Comic-Con that summer, they couldn’t get everybody in and there was a line. They know Star Wars is popular, but this was just to have a discussion about the potential of new content. Pablo Hidalgo, who under Kathleen Kennedy now runs the creative there, who came from Wikipedia, ran that panel. What he said was, “I think our number one job needs to be to bring all the canon under one roof.” That’s how he started the panel and everybody lost their ever-loving minds. I remember sitting at that table and these guys were, “Wow, that was really kind of…” It was Scott Clay and Mark Levine and me, and we’re sitting there half laughing going, “Yeah, of course.”

David Read:
This is not a brain wave, folks.

Jenny Stiven:
“Have you noticed the sales?”

David Read:
It shouldn’t be.

Jenny Stiven:
Here’s the kicker, no cross-functional meetings. So, license and merchandising for books was over here, licensing and merchandising for Funko was over here. StarWars.com, Bonnie Burton and Ivan Asquith were over here. So, Bonnie and Pablo and Doug Gates were some of the few who were actually talking to all of those different silos. By doing that, what they were able to do was say, “Hey guys, we should be combining these numbers to look at where the fans are.” That led to all of what’s happening now. Absolutely, that’s where those conversations started. Not that I was part of it, I’m just saying that’s where they started. I’m hoping that here’s the good part of Amazon, Amazon listens to those, they pay attention to that. They’re not sitting there thinking, “We’ve got e-commerce over here.” No, no, no. They’re bringing all those numbers. “How does Stargate do on our books, on Kindle, on all of Sally Malcolm’s books? How was it on Prime Video when we had it? OK then, how are the licensing and merchandising doing? Do we have any Amazon sellers? Is Sonia’s Oven Mitts on there?” They bring all of those numbers to the table. I think that that, Darren, is where we get excited, where Timekeepers, Stargate RPG, you guys, The Companion. Who am I missing? There’s five million.

David Read:
There are tons.

Jenny Stiven:
Eaglemoss.

David Read:
Fandemonium.

Jenny Stiven:
Exactly. Amazon’s willing to stitch all of those together to say, “OK, where’s this audience?” That’s where I feel positive about it. When you don’t have anything out there in licensing and merchandising, when there isn’t anything new, that’s when I get depressed. That’s when I’m like, “OK, nobody’s watching the store, nobody cares,” because there’s nothing, to your point, there’s nothing new there. But David, you’re not just sustaining, you’re over 20,000 subscribers. That is nuts. Darren, you’ve had an uptick. Companion wouldn’t exist without Stargate. I think that there’s more there that’s positive. I think the gap is we don’t know who’s internal at Amazon that’s gonna carry that torch.

David Read:
I think Darren and I can certainly speak to this, the reasons where we are positioned where we are at this point is, we love this property. Dollars to donuts, we want it to succeed more than anything else, more than us individually. Jenny, you and I have watched people come and go through MGM, through everything else saying, “Oh yeah, we love this property, we love this property. We’re gonna work on this. We need a paycheck.” When the paycheck is gone, not to say that this is a bad thing, but there are other interests that take precedence and they move on.

Jenny Stiven:
That’s right.

David Read:
I think the three of us are willing to sit here making no money, spouting our love of, other than ad revenue, and for Jenny, as a consultant, you did all this work for us for free ’cause you love the franchise. That’s why the three of us are here, ’cause we want this circle thing here to succeed. It has potential.

Jenny Stiven:
And do something new. Here’s something else that we do need to bring up. The 600-pound gorilla in the room is Brad.

David Read:
Brad Wright.

Jenny Stiven:
Brad was not really into doing anything. In 2018, he had a great interview with you, David, and Darren at Gatecon. Yay, Gatecon this year.

David Read:
Yes, thank God.

Jenny Stiven:
I know. I think the difference that I’ve seen in him is he’s not gonna hold onto it, obviously. He’s got 60 irons in the fire right now.

David Read:
As he should at this point.

Jenny Stiven:
The fact that he’s involved with The Companion and he wants to do the Stargate AI stuff and he wants to get it out there and he’s doing something so off-the-wall new with the AI with Laurence Moroney over at Google, which is so much fun, that’s huge. Now, again, the gap is at Amazon. Who cares? Who’s gonna carry that torch? The fact that you’ve got somebody that key, who is not standing on the sidelines but actively saying, “I’ve turned in a pilot to MGM and the guys over at MGM, and this I can say out loud, loved it, loved the pilot.” We don’t know where it is, we don’t know what kind of decision. It’s not in turnaround. OK, that I do know, so that’s great news. Turnaround being for everybody, which you probably all know, so please forgive me. David says sometimes I’m too much of a teacher, which is 100% true.

David Read:
No, this is why we have you on.

Jenny Stiven:
You can shut me up anytime.

David Read:
Look, we have sustained 170 viewers in the audience right now, so we’re just fine.

Jenny Stiven:
No way? Woo hoo! I love it.

David Read:
That’s more than a lot of our past shows.

Jenny Stiven:
Hi, guys. So, turnaround in this industry is getting better than it used to be. So, turnaround can be for a script, it can be for a completed pilot, it can be for an actual film that’s completed that somebody purchased. What it is is that Amazon or MGM says, “Brad, we would love to get a pilot from you.” He spends six months and he writes this and he goes through it and he turns it in from his production company. MGM says, “This is great. It is what we asked for, but we’re just not in a position to do anything, so we’re gonna put it in turnaround and if somebody else wants to buy it, great.” Now, number one, MGM’s never gonna do that with something like Stargate because it owns and operates that entire IP. It’s unlikely. What could have happened was that they said, “We’re gonna put it completely on a back burner because of this merger and we’re just not interested in rocking the boat.” That’s not what they said at all. There are people in the creative division over at MGM who are holding the flame. Rob Hochberg and a couple of others who love Stargate, who have literally spent more time and hours on Stargate than it probably deserved because it didn’t go anywhere and they are genuinely interested in doing something. So, that it isn’t on a back burner or put in turnaround is encouraging. The problem is it hasn’t gone anywhere either. It is still in limbo.

Darren Sumner:
Do we know the rationale behind that? Is it a sense that, “OK, Amazon is in charge now and we need to sort of defer and let Amazon make a decision?”

Jenny Stiven:
Yes, absolutely. There are a couple of things that I do wanna clear up. There are so many rumors about storyboards on other channels and scripts that were coming out and David and I and Darren wanna get this timeline. I should have put this in our notes, guys, let’s get this timeline straight. Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin were in talks when David and I were asked to come onboard at MGM in 2015. They were in talks to restart the trilogy, which Darren had run a poll for at the time, in 2016. We then worked with Darren as MGM employees to look and see what was going to be liked, what was really gonna be of interest.

David Read:
Or disliked the least. Depending on how cynical you are.

Jenny Stiven:
The poll was mixed. I gotta tell you, Darren, that had a lot of input internally about how those talks went forward. What became very clear was, when you asked the question, “Would you take any Stargate?” 70% said yes. When asked the difference between the film and their universe versus Brad’s, it was overwhelmingly Brad’s. Now, to be fair, I think a lot of fans on GateWorld are Brad universe people, not necessarily just the Stargate movie. When I talked to Lionsgate and they did a poll, the same thing happened. Roland and Dean were in talks through the end of 2017 and then they both exited the talks completely. That means that trilogy was dead in 2017 and that’s when we were really rolling on Stargate Command Platform, Origins. The reason we had to do Origins was we had to create our first piece of content within the IP that we owned 100%, which was the movie IP. MGM doesn’t own all of the IP. Brad and Joe and everybody, they’ve all got input on that.

David Read:
They own Catherine Langford. They own Kaliem Galaxy. They own Skaara and Kasuf… Which is what Origins was because MGM had that wholesale.

Jenny Stiven:
Originally, that was just to get us started. The ones that were on the table were a Jaffa one, a Goa’uld Ba’al one and something. There were origin stories that were gonna happen in that TV universe that we never got to because of everything that happened. So, 2017, trilogy is dead. Roland comes back in 2019 and Dean separately. Dean then leaves again. It just wasn’t his thing. He wasn’t gonna get into it with them. Roland continued talks and submitted a script in, David, was it 2018 or 2019?

David Read:
I don’t remember the exact year. It was around that.

Jenny Stiven:
The script that’s out there that people have seen that got leaked. Yeah, could have been. It got leaked.

Darren Sumner:
Origins came out in 2018.

Jenny Stiven:
Yeah. The script, that first scene that got leaked just recently by some other people, that’s Roland’s script about Daniel that would’ve taken place in that universe.

David Read:
So that’s nothing new. That’s old content.

Jenny Stiven:
Nothing, that not new. Roland has not suddenly come back and submitted a TV streaming script. That doesn’t mean that couldn’t happen and I don’t know the inner workings at that point. That’s as much as I know. I gotta be honest, Roland could be having secret meetings over there and I would know nothing about that. But that is not new. The storyboards that people were talking about don’t exist. That I know for a fact. Those don’t exist. So, I don’t know what that was.

Darren Sumner:
So those are vaporware.

Jenny Stiven:
The storyboards that were shown, one of them was a Companion storyboard. I don’t know if Joe’s in the audience, but Joe Mallozzi did the coolest thing for me and did a script for us for our 2019 Stargate Atlantis reading at San Diego Comic Con. The Companion guys made the coolest storyboards for David and I for the content and then we were gonna cut them all together. Unfortunately, I don’t think that footage will ever see the light of day. But that’s what the storyboards, one of them anyway, that was leaked, was from that. I called up Lars. I’m like, “Dude, did you know this got leaked?” He goes, “Yeah, I have no idea.” It’s under lock and key. Nobody has it. So, I don’t know what that is. A lot of stuff got leaked in the audit.

Darren Sumner:
I haven’t even seen this.

Jenny Stiven:
In the audit between 2020 and 2021, there was a lot of material that was floating around different hands and it obviously got leaked. The last thing is, there are two scripts that Brad wrote. From what I’ve seen, I don’t think any of those have been leaked other than what he allowed and Joe allowed to be shown. As far as I know, and I talked to the guys, there are no storyboards for that. There were storyboards for something that David and I were working on with Brad with MGM in 2018. I think there’s two storyboards.

David Read:
It was very different. It was like a condensed thing.

Jenny Stiven:
It was gonna be a thing. It was almost like a web series that we were gonna do.

David Read:
It was cool. It advanced the story. It wasn’t really gonna be a series, like a television series.

Jenny Stiven:
No, it was literally to be a bridge between what had happened and also, which I thought was really cool, that if Roland had gone forward with what he was talking with him at the time, it would bridge between those worlds. It would bridge between our origins, between the TV universe and Roland’s. One of the coolest things I’ve ever seen and it would have been great. A lot of that happens. There was nothing permanent, there was nothing. I think maybe a treatment was written. I can’t even remember. These are all multiple discussions that happen at tables and there’s notes because everything’s digitized, they’re on these drives that got audited. So, in this timeline, I wanna be super, super clear with everybody, the only thing that’s out there that I know of right now, and again, there could be four scripts that were asked for by MGM that I don’t know about. But what I do know, is that Brad definitely has one. That got through a certain number of hoops at MGM. It was put on hold because of the merger, that’s it. As far as I know, I’ve double-checked, there’s no storyboards for that. I don’t think there’s anything. Have there been a lot of conversations? You bet. Have there been conversations with Amazon? You bet. But nothing new has happened for the past year on that, or six months, that I know of.

David Read:
OK. It’s gonna be interesting to see what happens next considering there’s this outgrowth of science fiction product that is just absolutely exploding. Obi-Wan, I’m really interested to see if there’s gonna be any types of information in terms of the numbers for Obi-Wan. Everyone’s talking about this thing. Strange New Worlds is starting to redefine a lot of the image of Trek for a lot of the classic fans like myself who are retained from the Berman and Roddenberry original days. It’s gonna be interesting to see, moving into this new space, where Stargate has its fit. I think that it has a place where it can fit.

Jenny Stiven:
I do. This is my question for you guys. So, this is the question we always wanna know, that of course we’d love to have something in the Brad universe, as is evidenced by the crazy numbers for your show, David, every time you have anybody on. Darren, for any article that you write or new content, and then what The Companion just did with AI. So, what, if anything, are we willing to be open and flexible about? Darren, to your point, we are tired of the drumbeat. I don’t wanna be worn down about this, but I’ve always been open to something new. Obviously, I worked on Origins. I don’t care.

David Read:
Which was full of TV callbacks if you’re looking for them.

Jenny Stiven:
Exactly. What would you guys be open to? Blue sky, and then, “OK, I would deal with it.”

David Read:
Darren? OK. He’s thinking.

Darren Sumner:
It’s two different questions. I’m processing two different questions ’cause you’ve asked blue sky, which is ideally what would we love to see? What would we be willing to put up with? David and I have talked about this for more than 10 years since we first started the GateWorld podcast that we both sort of think of ourselves as franchise fans. What I want is something in the established universe, the established canon. Whether or not it comes from Brad’s typewriter, I mean, I wanna see Brad’s show. It should be in the established universe that we all know and love, the TV canon. Now, what am I willing to tolerate as a franchise fan? I wanna see more stories that use the Stargate. That’s a lower bar; stories that use the Stargate. It could be movies, it could be TV shows, it could be whatever it is. Where I have preferences, I think that some of those things are in much better interest of the brand.

Jenny Stiven:
In today’s day and age too, that’s the thing that blows my mind. I loved The Expanse. I flipped out. I was one of those who bludgeoned to Amazon socially. In this day and age of exploration, of Hubble images we’ve never seen before, of Mars, of the things that we are seeing that NASA is getting finally, and JPL money for, wow could we do some cool stuff. The message, which was always subtle sometimes, we’re a human race, not a country here, a country there, a country here, could not be better timing. My bar’s pretty low. If you do something exploratory and it’s an adventure and it’s a team, I’m good. My preference is that it has to be in-universe, in canon.

David Read:
Yep, in TV canon. I agree. I’ve always been the same way.

Jenny Stiven:
In TV canon.

Darren Sumner:
There are so many opportunities.

Jenny Stiven:
It’s gotta have the humor because one of the things that kept it light is I don’t need one more … Oh my God, I almost swore. I don’t need one more fricking dystopian sci-fi show. I just don’t. I love them. I’ll watch anything sci-fi but…

David Read:
Except Westworld.

Jenny Stiven:
Oh my God, seriously. I cannot. I did it.

David Read:
I get it. I don’t need to see it. I get it.

Jenny Stiven:
Oh my God. I watch it and I’m blown away by the writing. I’m blown away by the production and I leave so depressed. It’s like, “OK, it’s just not for me.”

David Read:
It’s like a brick to the face.

Jenny Stiven:
Exactly! Tim and Timmy love it.

David Read:
I know. I love it.

Jenny Stiven:
They love it.

David Read:
But we can’t get you to watch it.

Jenny Stiven:
I’ve never liked anything that was cold like that, anything that’s a sterile … I’m a film and television major, so 2001 Space Odyssey was absolutely a must. But Stanley Kubrick, it’s too cold. It’s too sterile.

David Read:
But Contact, I think is one of those quintessential sci-fi films for me, where I look at … When I think of Stargate, I think of possibilities. If there’s an analog for me, it’s Contact.

Jenny Stiven:
I think that’s a great comparison, and Darren, to your point, here’s our preference. Here’s what we would love, but here’s what we would still love, it just wouldn’t be our blue sky.

Darren Sumner:
We’re not gonna get everybody to come along with it.

Jenny Stiven:
No, and that’s what I’m afraid of.

Darren Sumner:
If it’s a 2009 JJ reboot, I loved that movie. I thought it was a terrific representation of a different vision of Star Trek.

David Read:
It’s a Star Trek film from a Star Wars fan.

Darren Sumner:
Then it took another decade or so for it to come around full circle. The Kelvin universe has been sort of folded back into the larger Star Trek canon. There are possibilities. We could have a different kind of Stargate project that told a different kind of story from a different vantage point. It wouldn’t be our preference and Amazon MGM would lose some people in the process. It would create new factions in the fandom. There are possibilities if they stick with it and do more and maybe both of these universes can live at the same time.

David Read:
Look at Star Trek: The Next Generation. It squarely fit within Roddenberry’s earlier universe because it’s the same universe and it was also Roddenberry. Even the original cast, a number of the cast were like, “Nothing to do with it.” It proved itself and then it’s regarded as the greatest thing since sliced bread, The Next Generation. Widely and correctly, in most cases, is. I think that as long as it acknowledges Brad’s universe…

Jenny Stiven:
In canon and in-universe. I’m an easy audience. I am not a critical sci-fi fan. I’m not gonna get into huge arguments about The Last Jedi versus Rise of Skywalker. I am not gonna get into whether or not Next Generation or DS9 is better. I enjoy all of it for the reasons why it’s presented. I am not a good bellwether of how Stargate fans will accept something that is in canon or in-universe but not what they’re looking for, because I’ll enjoy whatever we do.

David Read:
You got a little of everybody.

Jenny Stiven:
Here’s something that I would say. Wyvern Gaming’s RPG is a great story. It talks about something that all of us as fans talked about for years, which is, “OK, so wait. What’s happening once they leave that planet?” “What’s going on once they’ve convinced them to join the “Federation,” which it’s not, but you know what I mean. That’s fascinating to me. Now, we all get to make those up as we go along. If you’re at San Diego Comic-Con, David and I and Linda will be running three games each night, so please sign up. You’ll see more information. I think that was so spot on, so fascinating, came from fans, and yet was perfect in-universe story that I think fans would accept as long as it was not the primary thing.

David Read:
Pretty darn well.

Jenny Stiven:
I think that there’s so many stories we can do. I think the only time you might find people really go off about it is if we go back to the film universe. I think that’s a problem. From what I’ve seen, while fans would stick it out, I don’t know that there’s enough to do there. Even having read Roland’s script, which was a phenomenal script, it’s a dead end at some point. You’re creating a whole new film universe when you have an existing in-canon TV universe that has multiple, if not hundreds, of stories that could be told.

David Read:
The fact of the matter is it depends on that board member going A, “It’s a property that I love. I want more of it, please.” Like Star Wars. Good luck rebooting Star Wars. No one will accept it. Or, B, “All of this past stuff is stuff that I have to monitor and keep track of. No, thank you. Let’s start fresh.”

Jenny Stiven:
It is overwhelming.

David Read:
That’s what it comes down to.

Jenny Stiven:
Darren, you brought this up, I think, in our last talk. 300 and some odd hours is a lot. Here’s where I think Amazon is the perfect partner, ’cause I was really worried when it was Disney there for a while. Nobody gets the catalog business, even Disney, like Amazon does. They are not overwhelmed by 300-some-odd hours; they are not intimidated by that. They are not intimidated by the universe. They are not in a position, the people that we know that work internally there, don’t look at that and go, “Oh my god, I’m exhausted.” They’re excited about it. The fact that they’re given that much content to work with makes them salivate. I hadn’t even thought about that until just now. When I talk to those guys, it’s like, Matt with the Lord of the Rings. The fact that they have massive amounts of hours, but they’re creating a whole new world, he loves that. It’s a challenge to him. They work cross-functional, so they work with licensing and merchandising, with books. That makes Amazon a partner that we’re really, really lucky to have, if it’s done right.

Darren Sumner:
I worry that there’s sometimes a perspective that that’s a liability bringing new people on board to a deep franchise with 350 plus episodes.

David Read:
Look at Doctor Who.

Darren Sumner:
I’ve seen just the opposite.

Jenny Stiven:
I agree.

Darren Sumner:
With new fans. Something really remarkable has happened in Stargate fandom over the last five to seven years, which is new viewers catching it on streaming and binging it. They come online and they ask questions like “Why can’t you walk the other way through an open wormhole?” and “How did Apophis redial the Stargate in ‘Children of the Gods?'” All the questions that we’ve been talking about for 20 years, everything is new again, because folks are coming on board and those 350 episodes are a massive asset for viewership.

David Read:
They’re a gold mine.

Darren Sumner:
People are looking now, in the streaming market, they’re looking around and saying, “What’s a show that I can get into that’s not gonna be done in 20 episodes that I can really sit and live with and be a part of this universe for a relatively long term?” Stargate is that in spades.

Jenny Stiven:
Absolutely. One of the things that I was blown away by, in March of 2020, I was closing out all of the analytics and social and everything and handing it over back to Kyla and those guys at MGM. One of the things that I kept coming back to, that I talked to her at length about to double check my numbers, was the growth in the 18 to 36 year olds in Stargate. I watched over five years, six years, it went from, if we did 18 to 25, and then we would do 26 to 42. In both of those, I watched a growth year over year of 106% in those demographics. Now, we don’t divvy it by Millennial, Gen X, Gen Z. It’s by those very specifics, because you’re talking about 18 to 26 is going to college, just getting out of college, so there’s a lot of binging, a lot of streaming. Then you’ve got 26 to 42, which is earners. They become independent earners. There’s a very definitive difference between those two. The college one, OK, you know what? I kind of get it. Sure. The new earners, it grew from 18% to 36% of the audience, was that 26 to 42 year old, or 44. I was blown away in those six years. That has continued to grow from what I’ve seen. I don’t have access to the numbers obviously anymore that MGM has, but looking at the sentiment and using my social tools, that has continued to increase. So, Darren, to your point, this should be something that Amazon is absolutely, “OK, we’re throwing our hat in the ring for this. We’re all over this.” I think one thing that I haven’t mentioned that is gonna be really important is for everybody to remember that there are a lot of priorities of IPs at MGM. It’s not just about unraveling and figuring out all of those contracts and carriage licenses. Carriage licenses basically just means licenses have been given to carry this product on a particular cable channel, or Pluto or whatever and distribution deals worldwide. It’s the fact that MGM owns an enormous amount of IPs that have to be prioritized and there are certain ones like Rocky and others that are prioritized right now over Stargate. What it comes back to is I really wanna know more about Vern Sanders, who’s in charge of TV, and I wanna know more about what Mark Burnett’s thinking, ’cause those are gonna be decision makers. Rob Hochberg and those guys can bang the drum all they want in creative, but those two are the decision makers.

David Read:
You ready for questions?

Jenny Stiven:
Yeah, for sure. Wait, did you wanna talk about the antitrust thing?

David Read:
At this point, I need to get to questions.

Jenny Stiven:
OK. Go for it.

David Read:
No, it’s good.

Jenny Stiven:
If anybody wants to know about the antitrust thing, David and I can answer those questions separately, ’cause we did research on why it is not an antitrust issue.

David Read:
Yes, absolutely. Earlier, at the beginning of the show, I talked about a giveaway from Big J Customs. We have a custom-made Daniel Jackson pop figurine.

Jenny Stiven:
So cool.

David Read:
It’s so cool. That is going to Linda Franklin. Tracy, if you could reach out to Linda in the chat there and see if Linda would be willing to provide her email address to Tracy so that we can email her and get a physical address to send this little, signed by Michael Shanks, Daniel Jackson custom-made pop figurine over to her.

Jenny Stiven:
So cool.

David Read:
Linda asked, “Jenny, how is fandom for the Stargate franchise truly measured internally at MGM?” What are the component parts that come together to assess that?

Jenny Stiven:
That’s such a great question. All right, so for anybody who is a burgeoning social analyst or wants to get into data science or into marketing, that’s a great question. Over the past six years, there are several companies and several tools that have become extremely popular internally at marketing and social departments. At every studio, social departments have now been delineated, digital marketing, from the overarching marketing department. Every social department, regardless of what channels you own for your IP franchise, have tools and/or internal databases that they use to turn out reports that analyze data across anywhere between 11 to 12 channels. It will never just be Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok. It will include YouTube, it’ll include blogs, it’ll include sites like GateWorld. It will include YouTube chats. All of those are crunched and they do what’s called a scrape or a net. What they do is, quarterly usually, they look at what I just talked about, which is how many times is Stargate mentioned across the most popular channels, by our official channels in terms of responses? They look a lot at when they put something out on an official channel, how much response and engagement did they get? Engagement is a lot harder than it used to be to parse out. It used to be that we cared about impressions, which was just how many people saw it go by. Nobody gives a crap about that anymore. What they care about is, did you engage? For every fan here, which I think you know ’cause I talk about this all the time, sorry, ad nauseam, is that it’s when you engage across those channels, so talking in this chat, responding to anything that Darren publishes that’s an article, anything that David does. Not just as viewership, because viewership is important, but it is not important as the engagement. All of those reports are done quarterly. The last analytics I look at, they looked at not just social, but they also looked at worldwide distribution numbers based on viewership and subscriptions to Amazon viewership in the UK, for instance, or it was Germany, I think. The Australia deal that just happened, happened because they looked at the numbers of what was happening with engagement across social and what’s considered OTT, over-the-top, non-cable. It would be Roku, Amazon, Netflix, however you get your shows that’s not a cable or network television. They look at the numbers, old school Nielsen numbers. They combine all of those numbers into an engagement analytics and there’s a data science to it. You can actually get online degrees in data science for social and social analytics now and that includes streamers. I go back to Tubefilter, Parrot Analytics, if you guys wanna look at research. Some of them cost, but a lot of them you can get for free. I look at those on a weekly basis for whatever project I’m working on. So, you look at what are social mentions? What are social engagement? If it’s an IP or franchise that is theatrical, here’s the key that’s a little bit more nebulous, you look at licensing and merchandising and supplemental pieces. You look at books, you look at Funkos, you look at the Stargate RPG game. Those are its own functional piece where you look at what were those sales and did they peak during this quarter? When something was released, did people go out and buy it? Those become very important because there is no better way to be able to gauge a fan’s dedication and commitment than in the purchase for licensee and merchandising.

Darren Sumner:
Open their wallet.

Jenny Stiven:
I hate to say that because God knows I’m not asking people to spend money. I’m just saying that is a large part of that equation.

David Read:
This goes back to the next point here, Yuki at home – what are the odds of a broadcast release for a new show, or would it only be on streaming? Is there a chance for those who don’t wanna open their wallet to watch it?

Jenny Stiven:
What they’ll do is they’ll put it on IMDb for free, ad-supported. OK, I shouldn’t say anything. Amazon Creative Studios has not currently distributed, as far as I know, and correct me in the comments if I’m wrong. From all the shows that they’ve done, it’s a bit owned and operated, meaning they created it and then they distribute it. As far as I know, they haven’t sold it to any distributors like Hulu or FX or Syfy. They bought from those distributors.

David Read:
I think they’ve acquired some, but I don’t think they’ve handed any out.

Jenny Stiven:
I don’t think so. Any normal show, 20th Century Fox, would create at its own studios a TV series. It would shop it around to distributors, including its own people. 20th Century Fox Television Studios was not guaranteed a place on Fox or FX. It had to be sold to those people because those were independent, siloed profit-and-loss divisions. I don’t know of Amazon Creative Studios pitching or shopping any of its projects to any other distributors. My guess is I presumed it would go internally. MGM, if it stays its own division, could shop it to other distributors. It wouldn’t have to go on Amazon. If Amazon sticks to what they’re saying, which is it’s gonna be autonomous, because let’s be honest, Mark Burnett is not gonna suddenly have all of his reality programs on Amazon. That’s not gonna happen.

David Read:
OK, that makes sense. Sorry, I’m reshuffling a few things at once here. I apologize.

Jenny Stiven:
No, no, no.

David Read:
Jenny, Dan Ben wants to know, if they do new Stargate, would there be issues because of the real world situation in Russia?

Jenny Stiven:
No, because let’s be honest, when it first came out, there were a lot of civil wars that were happening in Eastern Europe because it was only, what, four years after the breakup, or five years after the breakup. One of the reasons they picked China and Russia as one of the major people is that what was happening in the world. I think that there will be people that are reluctant to do things if it in any manner, shape, or form references a pandemic. I think that would be really hard. I’m finding on three pitches that I’ve just done, they were put into turnaround because they were based on a pandemic. They that had nothing to do with COVID. Studios are super, super sensitive to that. I think that’s a great question, but I gotta be honest, not to be cynical, most studios love that because it means that it’s pertinent, people are paying attention, it’s got real world roots. While they are shy about pandemic references, they tend unfortunately not to be shy about world conflict and world war.

David Read:
There’s a matter of time and place. Look at Travelers. When Travelers gets into Season Two, you find out that September 11th was a key component to that and enough time has passed where the majority of people aren’t gonna look at it and go, “That’s inappropriate.” They’re gonna look at it and go, “That’s clever.”

Jenny Stiven:
No. Dean Devlin’s The Ark is a perfect example. That pitch was, “Hey, we’ve destroyed ourselves and we need to…” Or The 100, “We’ve destroyed ourselves and we need to get off…” Those are pertinent and make sense and have a connection for fans because they can see it, unfortunately, in real life. That’s what sci-fi is all about, obviously.

David Read:
But more allegory as far as I’m concerned. Less on the nose.

Jenny Stiven:
I think that’s a great question because what might happen is the focus might be China instead, frankly, unless China invades Taiwan in the next two months and then I don’t know.

David Read:
Look at the geopolitics of the world reflected in Stargate. In terms of internally what happened in the show, Russia was cooler about the Stargate program than, say, China would’ve been.

Jenny Stiven:
It had only been five years, or six years, that Eastern Europe had fallen. It’s not called “Watergate,” right?

David Read:
What specifically are you referring to?

Jenny Stiven:
The episode in Russia.

David Read:
Yes, “Watergate.” You’re right. Siberia.

Jenny Stiven:
I love when he says that, like, “Wow, Jen, congrats,” because I’m never good at that.

Darren Sumner:
“Hey, you did it.”

David Read:
That’s the thing that I’m acknowledging.

Jenny Stiven:
I’m never good at pulling that out. Those were pertinent and we’d have to ask…I don’t think that was Joe. I can’t remember who wrote those. Was that Rob? I remember there was a commentary that talked about the fact that they wrote that based on the fact that they thought the wall fell and all these countries fell, so what’s happening to all of these people and things that were still sitting there and these scientists that had nowhere to go? It turned out that they were all being exported to all of these other countries in the world. That was one of the reasons why they wrote it. I can’t remember. We’d have to ask to know.

David Read:
Rob Cooper did the episode.

Jenny Stiven:
Rob did it. He read about that and this was on an audio commentary. He was like, “Well, that’s interesting because that could be that there was a gate that they hid all these years and then all these scientists are sitting there going, ‘Well, now what do we do?'”

David Read:
We’re gonna actually bring that up with him in June. Rob’s gonna come back and we’re gonna discuss “Watergate.”

Jenny Stiven:
Cool. Yay.

David Read:
We’ll be sure to do that. Kirsty Green, “Darren, how are the kids getting on with watching Stargate? Are they enjoying it and what are you on now?”

Darren Sumner:
Oh, thank you for asking. This is one of the highlights of my Stargate fandom, is now watching the show with my kids. It’s been a long time since I did a full re-watch, but we started several months ago at the beginning and guys, we just finished Season Five. We watched “Meridian” about two days ago. I’ve been waiting for this episode to come along and my kids had the reaction that all of us had when it aired.

David Read:
OK, good. So they have souls. OK, good.

Darren Sumner:
They have souls. There was heartbreak. My nine-year-old got a little teary. My middle schooler was saying, “They can’t do this.” “They can’t do this.”

David Read:
They didn’t know?

Darren Sumner:
“I don’t like Jonas.” It was all the same stuff. All the conversations, all the reactions.

David Read:
You’re having them all over again.

Darren Sumner:
It was so pure and natural.

Jenny Stiven:
I love that.

Darren Sumner:
So, we’re excited about Season Six.

Jenny Stiven:
Wow. I’ve been meaning to ask you something, so I’m so glad that Christy asked, ’cause I think that’s so cool. We did it with Timmy, but he’s 20 now, so he’s been through them three times past. That was one of the coolest parts of, being a geek mom, is being able to do that and watching it through their eyes. They have different reactions to some things than I did, which was really cool. David was part of that with Timmy. Darren, I love that you’re doing that with your kids, that you’re getting to watch it through their eyes, and to your point, how pure it is. How cool it is.

Darren Sumner:
After five seasons, they’re all in now. Little kids have steel-trap minds. They’re just a sponge and then a steel trap around the sponge. A couple of days ago, my nine-year-old was spinning around next to the kitchen and he yelled, “In the middle of my back swing.”

Jenny Stiven:
Did not!

Darren Sumner:
He did. He’s seen “Window of Opportunity” one time.

Jenny Stiven:
That’s so cool.

David Read:
It’s glued in there. I hope you appreciate how much your kids get into what you get into, because it’s not always the case.

Jenny Stiven:
No, it’s not. I’m gonna be fascinated to see Season Seven to Eight when you bring in Atlantis. Wait, are you gonna go all the way through or are you gonna parallel?

Darren Sumner:
Once we get to Season Eight and Atlantis, I think I’m gonna try the optimized machete order where instead of alternating every single episode, we’ll do chunks so that we get full storylines, three-parters like “The Siege” come together before we swap back to the other show. That’s what I’m gonna try.

Jenny Stiven:
All right, I’ll be fascinated to see if they split and if one of them likes Atlantis better.

David Read:
Let’s try to condense our responses to some of these others. Marcia Middleton, “Do you guys realistically see a place for the original SG-1 cast in a new continuing series or has too much time passed? Has that starship sailed?” Me personally, I would prefer a new cast of characters, perhaps led by one of the originals and guest-starring roles for the casts of previous shows and guest stars. Me personally. Jenny?

Jenny Stiven:
Brad’s been very open about it with Amanda and Michael and RDA and Chris and a couple of others as well. There’s an overwhelming feeling that it would be guest star or kick-off, as opposed to a consistent character. They would be there because nobody’s stupid enough to say, “We’re not gonna use that original cast as a really good anchor to get this new show, whatever it is.”

David Read:
And it’s a small team of people.

Jenny Stiven:
Exactly. But again, this goes back to decision makers could decide something else, but those people are certainly up for it. I know that Brad wants to do it, but it would be a Commander situation or an Admiral…not Admiral.

David Read:
General.

Jenny Stiven:
That would be Navy. General.

David Read:
Correct.

Jenny Stiven:
My dad is horrified. Or it could be David Hewlett is head scientist somewhere. Who knows?

Darren Sumner:
So, they’ve already done this. I think Stargate Universe gave us a great model of using SG-1 and SGA cast members. There are certain stories where you need to go and check in with General O’Neill at Homeworld Command. He has a sort of always-present supervisory role there, which in a show, I would love to see a General Carter. Come in as a guest star every now and then as someone who is over the new program. Then you pull in a McKay. One of the most interesting things that Brad has said publicly about sort of the content of his script, he didn’t actually say it. When David Hewlett was on his podcast, David Hewlett was kind of joking about McKay teaching the Stargate Academy. Brad kind of coyly said, “Well, you’re not too far off there.” That sort of role for right back gives us a chance to go back and visit McKay because there’s a context, some place in the universe where we know that character is and we can go and visit him or pull him in as an expert for whatever the need.

Jenny Stiven:
I think anybody who’s involved in it from a producing, writing standpoint from that universe, so Brad, Joe, all those guys, there’s no question that’s what they would do. Whether or not that’s ultimately what happens, I think from a fan’s standpoint, it would be key. We need it as that anchor, that kick-off.

David Read:
Ákos Tamás Nováki, “Could GateWorld and Dial the Gate step up to be the official Stargate merchandise shop for the franchise?” I don’t want that job. That would be a big job. I don’t wanna be selling the merchandise. Maybe if I was organizing the merchandise, but I don’t know. I don’t wanna be selling it.

Darren Sumner:
We are officially unofficial and love being unofficial. Look at all the official MGM Stargate entities over the last two decades that don’t exist anymore. We’d consult, and I’ve consulted with MGM Consumer Products, and would love to see some of the stuff that they wanna do actually realized.

Jenny Stiven:
Stay independent. I get it. I get why you asked the question, because you guys would have all the knowledge, but stay independent.

David Read:
Absolutely. Eva, “Would you like to see a short TV Stargate miniseries focused on a main character like Mandalorian, Hawkeye, WandaVision, et cetera?” That would be cool.

Jenny Stiven:
I would love it.

Darren Sumner:
The sort of thing that Star Trek and Star Wars are demonstrating work really well on a single streaming platform is you could have a sort of flagship show, like Discovery, and then explore these characters in shorter bits all around that time.

David Read:
MCU and Star Wars are really showing that miniseries work. My favorite thing about the ’90s was the Stephen King miniseries. My favorite thing in terms of ’90s media was the Stephen King miniseries and they were lightyears ahead of anything else.

Jenny Stiven:
Oh my god, yeah. Limited series, Amazon’s all up for. I think that’s our best bet, frankly.

Darren Sumner:
It helps the universe to grow because Brad is always saying one of the core elements of Stargate is that it’s us. It’s 21st century human beings. I see that for a flagship show, sure, but if there’s a flagship show up and running, then you could grow the universe by doing an eight-episode limited series on the Free Jaffa Nation or what are the Tok’ra doing now that they have a home world and a city?

Jenny Stiven:
We know they were interested in those because those were possibilities that were on the table in 2017, 2018 that we saw scripts for. I know they’re there, I know it’s possible.

Darren Sumner:
Brian Maiden, “Jenny, you talked about IMDb, but in the UK that service has been rebranded to Freevee?” Stargate the series and the movie are available via the Amazon MGM service. Is this the future model worldwide?”

Jenny Stiven:
Oh my god. Great, awesome question and I think probably a State of the Gate needs to be dedicated to international worldwide distribution and maybe we ask Kyla to come on. I think one of the most complicated parts of this deal is what’s called the carriage licenses in distribution deals. Darren, we should put in the chat your article that talked about this in detail. I think it was end of last year or beginning of this year after the sale, where you talked a lot about, “Guys, the unraveling of what’s gonna happen internationally is nuts.” To answer your question directly, the future is incredibly fractured when it comes to this. I think what you’re gonna find is that you’re going to have a peak of individual ways to access your content, which is what we’re seeing right now, where you’ve got subscription services, you’ve got Roku services, you’ve got combinations of that. Let’s be honest, penetration of streaming is only 65% worldwide, so you’ve got a lot of people who still rely on free television. “Free television,” which is cable and/or network broadcast airtime.

David Read:
They make up a percentage of our chat. “Where can I watch it on network?”

Jenny Stiven:
I think what is going to make the difference specifically for our purposes is that we have to look at who owns the IP now is Amazon. To go back to Freevee or IMDb, in each territory what’s going to happen is an assessment will be done by Amazon. Amazon’s in-territory offices are very hands-on, so they will come back to Amazon proper, studios, and say to MGM Distribution, “Hell no, that’s not gonna work. Here’s what you’re gonna have to do for our territory.” There are, I think, 22 main territories. One of our biggest regrets and problems, from our point of view, for Stargate Command Platform, is we can only get into six territories. The reason we could never get past that was because of those deals. Some deals take precedence over this deal. If there is an existing distribution deal in Germany that takes precedence with MGM and digital distribution over Amazon, then that means that’s how you’re gonna get started. All of those have to be unraveled. One of the good news is the European Commission, and again, this unfortunately means the UK is separate right now, the European Commission has come back and said, “We’re good. Whatever you wanna do, if you wanna try to do something across all of the EU, we’re okay with that. You have to run it past us. We have to approve it from a, what’s called an owned and operated sense, but we don’t wanna take out competition, but we’re okay if you wanna do a distribution across EU.” That was great news that just happened in April.

Darren Sumner:
That’s really good. I understand when there is cable availability, when there’s over-the-air broadcast availability, you can get a sense of where the show is on in your area. When people turn to streaming, and as people turn to streaming increasingly, it’s deeply confusing to the audience. How many times do we see comments online about, “Where can I watch this show? Where can I watch Stargate?” Folks will say, “SG-1’s on Netflix right now.” The response is, “No, it’s not.” “No, it’s not on Netflix.” “Wait. What country do you live in?”

David Read:
Virtual private network.

Jenny Stiven:
I hate to say it. Luckily, I’m not with MGM anymore, so I can say it. VPNs are your friend.

David Read:
Like with Stargate Command, those people outside of the six territories, they still have to pay for a subscription to Stargate Command. We could never talk about that.

Jenny Stiven:
No. It was always, “Pssst.” I always felt like we should have a trench coat, “Pssst. Here’s where you can get it.” I think that that’s gonna be, to answer, it was Dan, I think that was his name. To answer the question very specifically, what you’ve got right now is not necessarily the future. I think what we need to look at is where do you get started currently? We would have to know what of that, and this is where I think, David, we ask Kyla to come on.

David Read:
That’s not a bad idea.

Jenny Stiven:
What of that distribution deal and how long is that going to be in place? Then outside of that, let’s use the Rings, for instance. How are those gonna be distributed? Or how are The Boys distributed? I think we look at that as the bellwether, the standard of how Amazon’s going to try to move forward with MGM content. But MGM’s existing contracts are gonna be an issue.

David Read:
OK. Brian Maiden. Thank you, Brian, for the for the question. Real quick, your favorite James Cameron movie, according to… Who asked that? I apologize. Let me see. James.

Jenny Stiven:
Terminator.

David Read:
Yeah?

Jenny Stiven:
Or Terminator 2.

David Read:
Biehn. B-I-E-H-N, like Michael Biehn.

Jenny Stiven:
I like it. That’s cute.

David Read:
I would have to say Aliens. Darren?

Darren Sumner:
The Abyss.

David Read:
Good.

Jenny Stiven:
Good for you.

David Read:
God forbid you ever get a Blu-ray release.

Jenny Stiven:
Oh my God. OK, that’s another story. I got to work on that potential Blu-ray release. It never happened. Never got it.

David Read:
I think James Cameron has to sit down and take his time on doing it. He’s way too busy with Avatar.

Jenny Stiven:
Look, I love Avatar, but I consider Avatar to be its own separate island. I got to work on Avatar just for a little bit. That’s its own thing. While that is 100% a James Cameron movie, I don’t consider it, honestly, part of his pantheon. I consider that its own separate thing; its own separate world. Aliens is a close second, but I think Terminator was seminal.

David Read:
Absolutely. Brendan Gleaeson, “Jenny, how did the breakdown of the Stargate analytics go globally? I’m always curious to know how well it does outside of the United States.”

Jenny Stiven:
When it was active, when I was working on it, when it was on air, it was pretty phenomenal. It was US number one always, UK, Germany, France, and then ironically at the time, South America. Mexico and Brazil, I think, were two of the biggest. We didn’t have a huge Asian, but Japan was pretty strong about it at the time. I spent quite a bit of time with Japanese fans and we did some individual posters and things like that for them, digital posters. But it’s always US, UK, Germany, France. Unfortunately, then the rest of Europe, so it would be Italy, Spain, Portugal. Everybody would be combined. Eastern European and Russia, at the time, and during 2015, 2016, were very tough in terms of digital distribution and getting them the content. So, we tended to look at them as a bloc, frankly. In the 2015 version, China was huge, but they were getting it all illegally. I had one contact that we worked with for distribution in China that was legally distributed, and then, I don’t remember why, but it got shut down. That’s been pretty consistent. US, UK, Germany’s always third, France, Benelux, which is Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg combined. It’s unfortunate, but it’s always considered its own territory, which is weird.

David Read:
Had some interesting conversations about that territory too, I remember.

Jenny Stiven:
Oh my God. But it always fluctuates. It’s pretty interesting. As a combination of three countries, it has a tendency to then bump up its number. We were not, unfortunately, ever very big… sorry, Australia.

David Read:
Mm-hmm, and New Zealand.

Jenny Stiven:
So, it’d be US, UK, Australia, Germany, France, Southern Europe, Eastern Europe as its own bloc and then Benelux would be up and down the list. That stayed consistent when I worked on it from 2004 through the end and then when we picked up again in 2015. That was pretty consistent. Especially on Star Command, we found that to be very consistent.

Darren Sumner:
Those fan bases are still there. What you’re describing is consistent with GateWorld’s traffic for many years.

Jenny Stiven:
That’s good to know. Again, something we need to have Kyla come in and talk about because I’m wondering with the distribution deals that they’ve got right now… poor Canada is always considered part of domestic, which is really lame. When you’re in a distribution division, US and Canada are always considered the same, which is really sad. Sorry.

David Read:
It’s all good. Dan Zimmerli, “What’s our takeaway from today as fans? What can we do to keep things moving forward?”

Jenny Stiven:
Engagement, man. I hate to say it, I know that I am ad nauseam about it, but when we’re talking about those analytics…

David Read:
So, like and comment.

Jenny Stiven:
It is engagement. It’s not about impressions. It’s about watch it on Pluto, or wherever you have it in territory, put it on in the back while you’re at work. Leave it on.

David Read:
So, if I’m watching it on Pluto, are they recording that data?

Jenny Stiven:
Yeah.

David Read:
Or is it like satellite where it’s all coming down into my box and I have it on?

Jenny Stiven:
It depends on how you’re getting the distribution, but those distribution numbers are all of a piece. They’re doing monthly distribution numbers right now, not quarterly. So, each month, it’s a huge piece. You guys can’t do everything, and I said this last time. This is really important and I think I’ve always said this. Find what “you” can do. Sonia Melinkoff is on the con circuit all the time. What she does is she makes sure that she uses it in her social when she’s at a con. She can’t really do more than that because, my God, she’s got no extra time. But that’s what she does. So, find what you can do without killing yourself and then stick to that and engage it. So, if it’s, “My God, I am working 12 hours a day and I cannot get on social, but my God, I fall asleep watching it every night,” awesome. Do it, continue it. Make comments on that person or distributor’s site that that’s what you’re watching. ‘Cause it’s not that number, they wanna know that you are engaged with that content.

David Read:
Engaged with the material. Kristina DeLuise, “Is there a big convention coming up soon to give way for any announcement?”

Jenny Stiven:
Yes.

David Read:
So, Gatecon’s coming up in the fall, in September.

Jenny Stiven:
Gatecon.

David Read:
Over Memorial Day weekend, isn’t it?

Darren Sumner:
No, Labor Day.

David Read:
Labor Day.

Jenny Stiven:
No, Labor Day.

David Read:
Labor Day.

Jenny Stiven:
Labor Day. We’re gonna be there, we’re helping produce content for it. We’ve got partnerships, we’ve got vendors that are coming that we haven’t been able to talk to and see in years. We’re gonna have interviews. Allan, of course, I’m sure has some huge entry kick-off thing that’s gonna be original and I can’t wait to see the set. The Companion’s gonna be involved as well, besides Dial the Gate and GateWorld. So, that’s gonna be a big deal. Now, Creation…

David Read:
Creation!

Jenny Stiven:
They’re just putting their toe back in the pool. I know we all have our opinions about Creation, but Aaron Ferris and Adam are diehard Stargate fans. They are committed to bringing it back.

Darren Sumner:
This is the Chicago event in June?

Jenny Stiven:
The Chicago one in June. Cameo has just come out and said that they would like to reach out to more Stargate fans. I think Michael Shanks just tweeted about it yesterday.

David Read:
Cameo, the video clip?

Jenny Stiven:
Video.

David Read:
That’s cool. OK.

Jenny Stiven:
Again, I’m not asking anybody to spend money, not when we’re looking at the economy that we’re looking at and the struggles that everybody’s going through post-COVID. But if you’re looking to engage, you can engage with those socials and retweet or repost or regram when they’ve come out and said, “Hey, we’re gonna have these people at our con,” or, “Cameo’s gonna do it.” Again, licensing and merchandising, don’t buy it if you can’t, please. That’s not what we’re saying. Retweet or repost what Wyvern Gaming is talking about, they’re gonna release new episodes this year. Linda, our favorite producer, is gonna be doing an episode at San Diego Comic Con. If you guys can retweet that, get that out to your friends, that’s helpful.

David Read:
Absolutely.

Darren Sumner:
Signal boosting does huge. If you don’t have time to stop and watch a video or to read an article, retweeting something, it’s massively helpful.

David Read:
General Maximus, “Would it help to do a fan campaign like they did with The Expanse and fly a plane over Amazon headquarters?” Really drive the message home.

Jenny Stiven:
You know what? I don’t know. I said the same thing on the last State of the Gate. Irena and Kirstie’s 365 Days of Stargate has been phenomenal. I wasn’t sure, I’ll be honest, I thought maybe it was too early. I was 100% wrong. They were spot on, it was the right thing to do, it kept those mentions that you’re getting. I was a little bit more conservative about what I thought and when we should do it. My feeling is, go for it. If you’ve got the energy to put a campaign together, not to pay for a plane going over Amazon, I don’t think it’s lost. I don’t think it’s a waste of time and I don’t think it’s a waste of energy if you have the energy to do that. The more creative it is, the more likely you’ll get eyeballs on it.

David Read:
Agreed. Any final thoughts, folks?

Darren Sumner:
Jenny, I have a question for you, which is, we look at the announcements that are coming out from MGM, upcoming projects, film and television, and from other studios, and we get a long lead time on a lot of these. You understand how with something like Lord of the Rings there’s gonna be a long lead time in the news because it’s gonna get out there that they acquired the rights from the Tolkien estate. It’s gonna get out there that they’re spending this money. Of course we’re gonna know about that show for many years. With something like Stargate, is there a reason why they wouldn’t let us know that something was in development? We’re used to, with these other outlets and other shows and other films, they announce that something’s in development. We recognize it might not ever become a show. The Starfleet Academy show might not happen but it’s being talked about. Is there a reason why an MGM or an Amazon would not feel like they can talk freely about what they want to do with Stargate?

Jenny Stiven:
Quite frankly, it’s because the IP is owned by essentially three different entities. You have Lionsgate who’s involved with the Stargate movie, you have Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin. You’ve got Brad Wright and his universe and the executive producers who do own part of that IP distribution as part of their deals. Then you’ve got MGM. They’re gonna be very careful as they have been in the past, and David and I were involved in a lot of legal meetings about this between 2015 and 2020. There was a point in time where they weren’t careful about it, where they would just like, “Oh, we’re thinking about this.” You saw some of those in 2015 and 2016. What they learned was, “no, this is a complicated piece.” As much as we know that the Tolkien estate is complicated, it was very straightforward, and the minute that Peter Jackson said, “Hey, I want to executive produce something and I want to do it on Amazon,” you had two parties that were involved and that was it. So, you could make that announcement. You’ll see with Disney, they are very loathing at Star Wars Celebration this weekend, to make any announcements for anything that isn’t already in production.

David Read:
Other than the Skeleton Crew, I didn’t see anything that was unannounced.

Jenny Stiven:
No. But it was already in production.

David Read:
I see.

Jenny Stiven:
They were fully comfortable to talk about Jude Law, about Watts coming to direct it, that he left Fantastic Four. Wait, I think he’s doing Skeleton Crew. They even announced The Young Jedi because they’ve now spent the past six months already doing concept art and casting. So, you’re not gonna see any of those announced unless it’s in production of some sort. I think MGM and Amazon are taking a bit of a leaf from that. So, for instance, The Boys teaser trailer wasn’t released until they had finished principal photography. You wanna make sure nowadays that you are locked and loaded, because fandom can be toxic. What you don’t wanna do is get a backlash. I think MGM learned that the hard way in 2015/2016 with the Roland Emmerich, Dean Devlin nuts news. Every day there was some rumor that was coming out that was wrong. So, Darren, to your point, I think what they’re gonna do is they’re gonna be very, very careful to not make any official announcements and keep a lid on leaks. I know, I’m talking to a lot of people at Amazon, they’re not not talking to me, they don’t know what’s going on. They’re in positions where you think they would and they don’t; they don’t have that information. This is being kept very close to the chest by Chris Brearton and Chris Ottinger and Mark Burnett on the MGM side and by Vernon Sanders and Mike Hopkins and Jennifer Salke on the Amazon side. I think they don’t know what they wanna do yet and I don’t think that they would say anything until they had something absolutely concretely ready to go.

David Read:
That’s cool.

Darren Sumner:
Good. Thank you.

Jenny Stiven:
Wait, we have to go? It’s been two hours!

David Read:
I know.

Jenny Stiven:
Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I talked like crazy.

David Read:
No, this has been terrific to bring everyone up to speed in terms of what’s going on, at least who the players are. In terms of having Kyla on, I didn’t even think that was possible. I wouldn’t even think that she would wanna do it.

Jenny Stiven:
I don’t know, it may not be something, but we should ask her. She’s gonna kill me that I said it without asking her first.

David Read:
All she can say is, “Not right now. Thanks so much.” I’d love to have her on before the end of Season Two.

Jenny Stiven:
She’s great. She also could really talk about the analytics of it. She is phenomenally smart when it comes to the social and marketing analytics of the entertainment industry. That would be really fun. OK, again, I’m a nerd for this stuff.

David Read:
Exactly. So are half the people in the audience. They’re here to see how the bread is buttered.

Jenny Stiven:
She’s very knowledgeable now about digital distribution and the YouTube of it all that they’re doing. So, it’d be cool. All right, remind me. Man, I got three things I gotta remember to do.

Darren Sumner:
It’s encouraging to me to know as a fan and somebody who makes content online that folks are paying attention inside MGM and Amazon. They have all these new analytic tools in the 21st century that when we go online and make a ruckus on Twitter or when we publish an article that does really well and gets ranked in Google, that stuff matters; that people paying attention and participating matters and we’re not all sort of shouting into the void.

David Read:
The shouting into the void part, like Jenny was saying, a year ago we were having that conversation of, we can’t do this right now, but now we’re in a position of, now that the sale is complete, new opportunities are opening up here if you’re willing to be creative about your thought process in terms of launching something.

Jenny Stiven:
That infrastructure is now in place in and of itself, and again, I think it probably will only last for two to five years, but we know for a fact that those are in place. Again, we don’t have a replacement for Michael De Luca and [Pam], but Mark Burnett’s not going anywhere from what I hear. Anybody who can do the research and find out what’s going on with Vernon Sanders, I know nothing about him. I’d be fascinated to see who is he? What’s he interested in? Has he done any articles about what he likes? The Rings had to come alive under him, and Jennifer Salke, and she is a drum beater for The Boys as well. They’re obviously willing to try new things, for sure. I think the more that we can know about the people that are on that side that we think are gonna make the decisions, the better we can target something creative campaigns or to get out there or to be engaged and say, “Hey, OK, we’re not monoliths. We’re not black and white about this as a fandom. We feel flexible. Are you willing to talk to us about these things?”

David Read:
What is your impression of The Boys, Jenny and Darren? Do you guys see it?

Jenny Stiven:
I love it, but the violence is a bit hard for me.

David Read:
It’s gruesome.

Jenny Stiven:
It’s gruesome, but it’s a phenomenally written storyline. I just can’t do it in chunks.

David Read:
I look at it like I look at Starship Troopers. Very subversive. But the gruesome is kinda like, I watched Starship Troopers for the first time when it came out, but I was like 13 or something like that. I didn’t get the subtext. I got the violence and the bugs and the ships. But it’s subversive.

Jenny Stiven:
B-level acting. C-level acting. My God. I love that movie, because it is a popcorn movie. It is so much fun. But you’re right. As a woman I find The Boys to be phenomenal writing. It’s hard to watch for me, though, sometimes.

David Read:
It’s intense.

Jenny Stiven:
The misogyny that they write on purpose, it’s hard to watch if you’ve been through any of those situations. Obviously, not with a superhero, but if you’ve been with any of those situations before it can be hard to watch.

David Read:
Darren, have you seen it?

Darren Sumner:
I haven’t seen The Boys, and part of the reason why I haven’t is because of its reputation. It hasn’t helped.

David Read:
That’s the thing. I would wait until the kids are… It’s a good show in terms of the things that it’s talking about. I think it’s very topical. Guys, thank you.

Jenny Stiven:
I have a question for you two. So, what are you guys binging that is not Star Trek? What are you watching?

David Read:
I just re-watched Breaking Bad. If you guys watched the Stargate science with David and Mika, and then last week with Rob Murray Duncan, I’ve been dealing with a major sinus infection that I’ve been trying to hide. I just finished El Camino a couple of nights ago and then started on Better Call Saul. But Darren?

Darren Sumner:
I don’t know. I’ve been playing catch-up on a lot of stuff. David and I, our watching habits are totally different. He’ll binge an entire series at a time. I pick up an episode here, an episode there. I haven’t binged anything lately, although I am trying to catch up on The Walking Dead. I finally made it into Season 11. I think they’re airing the final episodes in the fall, so maybe I’ll be caught up in time to finish off the show. I feel kind of pot committed right now after 10+ seasons to see it through.

Jenny Stiven:
I gave up. I feel bad.

David Read:
I stopped at Season Five. I was like, “You know what? When the show finishes, I will mow it down.” Like The Expanse. The Expanse is sitting on the shelf for me now. I need to sit down and watch it. I should have done that in these last two weeks.

Jenny Stiven:
Dude, come on!

David Read:
I fully intend to.

Darren Sumner:
I’ve been riding you about The Expanse.

David Read:
It’s not going anywhere.

Darren Sumner:
That’s my favorite show of the last decade. I’ve been riding you about that.

Jenny Stiven:
It wasn’t subversive issues. They’re right out there on the front burner. I just love it. We could have massive philosophical conversations about it.

Darren Sumner:
That’s one of the few shows that will make me go and read the novel. That good. I have to live in that world more.

David Read:
I just sat down and watched The Gunslinger for the first time.

Jenny Stiven:
Did you? Wow.

David Read:
The film. Dean Newbury always really heavily poo-pooed this thing. I was like, “I love Idris Elba.”

Jenny Stiven:
Did he?

David Read:
He poo-pooed it because it wasn’t the books.

Jenny Stiven:
You mean The Harder They Fall or The Gunslinger?

David Read:
I’m sorry. I apologize. The Dark Tower. I just recently watched The Dark Tower film. My apologies. Gosh, sorry guys.

Jenny Stiven:
No, no worries.

David Read:
I loved this thing once I understood what it was, because I was like, “Is it a sequel to the books or is it a reboot?” If you look at Stephen King’s mythology, it’s both, because of the nature of that reality and all that has happened before will happen again. It may not happen exactly, it just rhymes. I’m really disappointed that it didn’t continue.

Jenny Stiven:
Me too. I loved it.

David Read:
I brought this up because, going back to reading books, now I want to go read The Dark Tower series knowing that it’s a previous iteration of that reality. So, I won’t say anything else.

Jenny Stiven:
I have two recommendations for you guys. The audiobook for The Sandman, Neil Gaiman’s, in advance of The Sandman show. The audiobook of The Sandman is killer. It is so good. I’m not sure the show can live up to it.

David Read:
Who does the audio?

Jenny Stiven:
I’m blanking, but famous people.

David Read:
Let’s see.

Jenny Stiven:
High Republic. Star Wars.

David Read:
It’s a whole cast?

Jenny Stiven:
Star Wars High Republic.

David Read:
High Republic.

Jenny Stiven:
Because a lot of the shows that they’re coming forward with have roots in High Republic.

David Read:
OK, cool. That’s legit.

Darren Sumner:
That might be the Star Wars show that I’m most excited about, is Acolyte. I’m interested.

Jenny Stiven:
That’s why I brought it up. I think it’s gonna be so cool.

David Read:
I don’t know anything about it. I loved the first two episodes of Obi-Wan for the most part.

Jenny Stiven:
Andor is gonna be intense.

David Read:
Andor looks intense.

Jenny Stiven:
I’m gonna have to be in a really good head space, be in a happy place. I don’t know if you guys have seen the artwork, but the artwork for it, I love the key art. The key art is crazy good. It’s based on Che Guevara 1960s revolutionary art.

David Read:
It looks to be really interesting. I’m all for all of it. I appreciate you guys.

Jenny Stiven:
You guys are the best. Hi to everybody. Hopefully I’ll see a whole bunch of people at Gatecon. That would be my goal.

David Read:
Absolutely. Darren, you’re going to Gatecon, yes?

Darren Sumner:
Yeah, that’s the plan.

Jenny Stiven:
Woo-hoo! Let’s have a party.

Darren Sumner:
Let’s do it.

David Read:
Guys, thank you so, so much for coming on, and thank you to everyone who submitted seven pages’ worth of questions. My gosh. I feel so bad that we couldn’t get to everything.

Jenny Stiven:
I’ll try to go in the chat and answer some things too.

David Read:
There are all kinds of stuff there. I will speak to you guys soon. Thank you so much for being a big part of the show and Season Two. We’ll see where we go from here and if there are any big updates from GateWorld.

Jenny Stiven:
Thank you for having me.

David Read:
Thank you, Jenny. Thank you, Darren.

Darren Sumner:
Thank you.

Jenny Stiven:
Thank you.

David Read:
Be in touch with you guys.

Jenny Stiven:
Bye, guys.

David Read:
Darren Sumner of GateWorld and Jenny Stiven of Clio Consulting and Kaleidoko. Thank you, guys, so much for submitting all the questions that you did. I wanted to announce, Martin McClean, we had on a few episodes ago, is a fan prop maker. He has just released his Naquadah generator, full size. The smaller one is behind me here, but his Naquadah generator design is now available on Etsy and you can go to the link in the description below for this video, it will take you over to his Etsy page. I was blown away by the design for this thing and he’s absolutely done it right. I’m so thrilled for him that this piece has finally come off the ground. Look at that.

Twist, come on, and down, and on.

It is so freaking cool and now you can go and have one of your own made up, so check out his Etsy page in the description. We have a link in the description below the video here. Thanks so much to Big J over at Big J Customs for submitting the prop giveaway, thank you. Thanks so much to Big J for submitting the pop and congratulations again to Linda Franklin for winning this custom-made Daniel Jackson pop figure signed by Michael Shanks. I really appreciate everyone who submitted questions in the chat. This was extra cool and the fact that we sustained a huge portion of viewers, 160 through the entire show, was really terrific. We have merchandise. So, Dial the Gate is brought to you every week for free and we do appreciate you watching. If you wanna support the show further, buy yourself some of our themed swag over at dialthegate.com/merch. I will be adding some new T-shirt designs here fairly soon. Couple of questions were set aside for me. Ákos Tamás Nováki, “David, could you share any photos or videos which were taken during the Propworx era?” I saw this in advance of the wrap-up and I was like, “You know what? We had Jenny on, so let’s show some pictures of Jenny while I was at Propworx doing the Propworx sale.” This is Jenny with the U.S.S. George Hammond’s logo. This is Jenny with a drone and this is her son Timmy in the Daedalus chair, the bridge chair. This is them with one of the hero zero point modules. This would’ve been circa, when was this taken? This was taken 2011, so this is 11 years ago. Jenny and Tim with Thor in one of his casket crates with all of his electronics. He came with two crates when we got him and he’s still decked out in the Vanir assets here. That’s what we got for there. If you wanna see more of those, I suppose I can do an episode where I go through a deep dive of all of my Propworx stuff. I have a huge archive of that content and let me know in the comments if you’d be interested in seeing more of that ’cause there’s a lotta Stargate history there. Teresa Mc, “Speaking of marketing, how about a fashion show featuring Stargate merchandise, David?” Genuine Stardust! Yeah, I suppose we could probably come up with something like that. That’d be kinda cool. I think that that’s everything I got for you guys here. Big thanks to Sommer and Tracy for making this day possible. Tracy especially, she went over and beyond. Big thanks to my producer Linda “GateGabber” Furey, my whole moderating team, Keith, Jeremy, Rhys and Antony, Frederick Marcoux at Concepts Web, our web developer for Dial the Gate, and Jeremy Heiner, our webmaster as well. We’re gonna have more Dial the Gate content in June and then wind down Season Two. Because of my sinus issues over the past few weeks, I’ve been a little bit behind on getting some guests, but I do have a few that are going to be announced in the next few days here that I’m really looking forward to sharing with you guys. I think it’s gonna be a good time. Thanks so much to Jenny and Darren over at GateWorld for making this episode possible. Fascinating discussion, gave everyone a good lowdown on everything that’s been going on and we’ll see what happens next. I’m David Read for Dial the Gate and we’ll see you on the other side.