Yesterday the news broke that "The Legend of Korra" was being pulled from Nickelodeon's Friday lineup to be put online for digital consumption. It was rumored that the series was being canceled because of ratings were lower than expected, but was quickly dispelled as the series co-creator Bryan Konietzko took to his Tumblr page to announce the series will still be around and more would be discussed at San Diego Comic-Con. Well now both creators, Konietzko and Michael DiMartino have explained why Korra will be moving to digital.
First, Konietzko revealed that the move to digital will not hurt the show because its digital presence is a lot stronger than it is on Nickelodeon:
So obviously there's been a big shakeup. We wanted to address that quickly but we don't want to take too much time because we're here to have fun and we have stuff you guys haven't seen yet. But pulling it off the channel and moving it to digital exclusively is part of the huge sea change in the whole industry. I'm sure you've seen articles about cable numbers and streaming and companies doing their own content and all sorts of stuff. So obviously we're in the middle of a huge change. And things have changed just for us since we did in Avatar in 2005-2008 and then when we came back in 2012. And when Book 1 of Korra came out it did pretty good on TV but its online presence was just insane. Not only the chatter from all the fans but the actual numbers in terms of digital downloads and streaming, it's just been huge. And as the show's gone along, by Book 2, the numbers in the digital streaming greatly outweighed the channel.
Konietzko also said online is where Korra belongs and was already in the works to make it an online only show but was disappointed with the way the news broke.
It's no secret that Avatar, especially Korra, is not typical Nickelodeon fare. And so they've had kind of a hard time fitting it into their programming. But basically the Book 2 finale, the numbers were insane when they streamed it, when it went on Nick.com. It was the biggest event they had that year. And that show, digital downloads for that season was amazing. And, as you've seen, not so much on the channel. So it's just part of this shift over.
It definitely caught us by surprise and it wasn't necessarily done in the smoothest way and that was upsetting to many of you and us as well. So, we're moving over to digital. It's actually a plan that was in place earlier and it changed course and then went back in a bit of a messy way. But thanks for sticking with us.
DiMartino chimmed in to say that the move will not effect the shows story at all and that nothing is changing except for the show moving to an online platform.
It won't effect what the show is or what stories we're telling. We've already written the scripts, we've finished all the pre-production, we're just doing post and Studio Mir is finishing the animation. Other than it not being on the Nickelodeon main channel nothing is changing. You get to see it, which is the important thing.
Admittedly we were a bit worried when Nick puled the series but it is good to know that nothing will change and we can still get our Korra fix!
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