Airspeed Prime here with another Community Opinion post. For this edition I asked the community to write about their thoughts on the lack of Korra info and how long it has been like this. The aim was to really understand what us as fans feel like when not only are we waiting for the show to come back, but also just waiting for Nick to say anything about it at all. It is not a "We hate Nick post" but something to point out how Nick could handle things better. So basically the topic was

The Lack Of Korra Info

Airspeed Prime (Super Moderator and Podcast Main Host) Lets start off by mentioning the longest break we have ever had when an Avatar show was airing. That was the break between the end of Book 2 and the start of Book 3 of ATLA. This break lasted from December 1st 2006 to September 21st 2007, that is 294 days or 9 months and 20 days. Currently with Korra we have been waiting from June 23rd 2012 to now, 268 days, or 8 months and 23 days. The difference is that a Book 2 release date does not seem to be coming any time soon, so it looks like this will soon become the biggest wait between Books yet. It is made worse by the fact that Nick have not once mentioned to the wider audience that Book 2 is actually happening. So if you were not paying attention to fansites you would not know Korra is continuing. You have to ask the question to nick, Why? Why did you not mention that once Book 1 ended there were more episodes to come on the channel. In my opinion it is down to something I think we as fans have known for a long time, Nick for the most part really do not know how to handle the fandom. They do not keep us up to date with news, that is left for fansites to do. The one good think Nick did with Korra info for Book 1 was the introduction of Korra Nation as this page that had exclusive concept art updates that teased upcoming things. That has disappeared completely, it has been pretty much a year since they posted a meaningful update. If they just started up Korra Nation again in the same way it was when it began it would help the fandom so much. The one good thing I will say about Nick is that unlike a lot of networks they for the most part allow their shows to finish and have their proper endings. It has been a rough 2-3 months for fans of shows on Channels like Cartoon Network and Disney XD. Shows like Tron Uprising, MotorCity, Young Justice, Green Lanturn and even Star Wars The Clone Wars being cancelled. With Nick we can have confidence that Korra will air all 4 planned Books as they were the ones who asked Mike and Bryan for another show. This does not excuse the lack of info though. The fandom thrives on info and staying excited about upcoming things. Right now we have no idea when Korra is coming back as there has not been any substantial information since SDCC 2012 almost immediately after Book 1 finished. It is clear to see when you look at even this site and other Avatar fansites that many of us are struggling to keep up the excitement about the show. This should not happen and Nick just learning to better communicate with the fanbase would go a long way to helping out. When Nick on twitter are asked a question about Korra they almost seem annoyed by the questions, like we should know the answers already. This needs to change. In my opinion Nick need to do a few things. -They should have better communication with fansites, use these established groups of hardcore fans to get out the info you seem incapable of getting out yourselves. Most fans follow fansites for news anyway so it would get the news out quicker and more efficiently. Look at how this site got out news of Korra Nation, we were actually contacted by Nick and told about it first and we got the news out ASAP and it was huge. Why can they not stay in touch with fansites? I understand Nick is a big company, but they thrive on people watching their shows, fans of their shows, why not put in the effort to keep the fans you already have. -Have something on the channel to update fans on upcoming stuff. A 2-3 minute quick news summary just before a break to update the fans of shows that are currently on a break. How cool would that be, just a brief segment to say Korra book 2 is coming, they are currently working on the music and show a picture of the track team working. That way the news gets out to fans who are waiting, while not taking up much time on the channel. -Work on your social media Nick. It is terrible right now. The official Korra page is weeks to months behind the current news. They should put a fan in charge of the page or just plain put some effort into it. The Nick twitter spends half the time following Victoria Justice around the world and the other half mentioning when the next spongebob marathon is. Use social media to inform fans about when shows are coming back and just be helpful. I have contacted Nick Uk on multiple occasions about Uk Korra news and they have been great, replying within a few days always and being helpful, explaining why they don't have certain info. While I have not once got a response from Nick america. Right now the fandom is just about remaining active due to tiny pieces of info from crew working on the show. Being reported by fansites, but not really mentioned by Nick. A final thing to mention is the Book 1 DVD set, coming soon was what was said in December. 3 months later and we are still no wiser. Nick had a chance to really profit from the popularity of Korra, but they have been so slow to get any merchandise out. Things need to change in my opinion, and nothing to huge. We as fans support the show and basically promote the show for Nick for free, all we ask in return is to be kept up to date on info. I don't expect things to change, but I just have a horrible feeling that once Book 2 airs the cycle will just start again. Nick will ignore Korra until Book 3 is a week away from airing and the fandom will just endlessly wait. We are so lucky that we have comics coming out to help with the waits. Note/ I understand that the show takes a long time to make, I am not asking for it to be rushed, simply that we get information about where production is at. Trojan People Before book one of Korra aired we got information well in advance, from rumors of a new Avatar in 2010 to a trailer in summer 2011. At San Diego eight months ago we looked to the future with optimism, Korra was announced to get an additional two books. Back then we thought the wait between Comic Con and book two would be moderate and we would be getting news for that time period. This was wrong and now we are disappointed that we have not yet gotten a repeat of pre-book one. Now I see people on Tumblr posting jokes about some decisions Nick has made. The posts call Nick, and extreme cases Bryke, unaware of basic intelligence. Some of the statements are rightful and others undeserved. The longest wait between ATLA (Avatar The Last Airbender) books was nine months, we are now approaching that time between books one and two. Will the wait between books three and four be the same? Children TV viewers is a funky block, they watch what is on if they have free time unless they see a commercial for a new episode which the plan for and they don’t particularly mind quality work. Children stations are just as funky, they think children prefer comedies over action/adventure shows which in some cases can get more views. For Nick Korra and Ninja Turtles are the two shows with the highest viewership yet Spongebob and Odd Parents get not just more airtime but incredibly more airtime then Korra. Korra has not been on Nick since making of a legend. It’s hard to provide knowledge of quality work to children when the show is not on. After K101 and K102 aired things looked good, I saw Korra on Nick three times the weekend that those two premiered. It has not been shown for months for the channels highest rated show. How is this possible? Children viewership is funky in that adults would notice and complain the show they like isn’t up. Despite older viewers in the fandom complaining Korra isn’t being shown more. Is it really that executives like to air bad comedies to unsuspecting children? This could be that Korra does not have enough episodes and they don’t want to keep airing the same twelve, this is odd because the first twelve episodes of ATLA were on more when it was only them. I will now talk about the lack of an air-date. We had the book one TV airdate in March for an April premier. We could have gotten the book two airdate during Nick upfront, the same press event, in late February this year but we did not. We know from Comic Con that then they were half way done with book two production and we know they animated book one final until weeks before it premiered; so how can book two not be ready yet? The answer is that if you make a list of steps to make an episode there is writing, voice acting, animation and then music/sound effects. They were probably done with half the list not half of total production time. We know it takes nine months to make an episode and it has been nine months since book one production was done, so they are probably done with episode one, unless the animation is way better which I will talk about later. If episode one is done it probably will never air it until a good additional handful of episodes are done so it is not a completely random airing like Ninja Turtles. Finally I will talk about the quality of production. In addition to just putting something out there the amazing looking animation is important, I say this because writing and voicing don’t seem to be the limiting factor of time in production. We got are first completely done frame from production last month and it looks incredible the lack of a release date is understandable if the show will be frame by frame of that. Next I will talk about the amazing non-trailer. Korra in it looked non-amazing, what was she and the dark spirit not doing, Bolin looked not ready, makes me so not excited. I thought I would open this with a little of my humor, oh no. We had a book one trailer that covered the first three episodes in July 2011, nine months before book one aired. That we can’t have a trailer that has parts from the first couple episodes is ridiculous in my opinion. My grievances for lack of airdate and trailer will instantly be forgiven when Korra airs but with the lack of news in general it is a flaw of the show and a defect in the fandom. It would be understandable to spend this amount of time in production, because it is within reason (unless it grows to 15 months), the problem is keeping us informed. It should not be that hard to do something like what was said at Comic Con and say what percentage done with production it is. If we got regular news updates it would be much better, they are probably company rules on if this can be said and how. Nick is very careful to keep secrets about its show but not giving us a progress update is like tweeting who Amon is right after we meet him at Comic Con 2011. The lack of airdate news is bad but as far as other news we have some. The track team is posting on Facebook and twitter, the sound team on tumblr and Bryan has given us some storyboards, finished image and Eska's name so us being alive is not an unknown to Nick, crew, whoever is in charge of this thing. As I elegantly said before we should have a trailer and we could live with a spoiler clip of something like introducing Unalaq's personality so the fandom can get excited. I am not to upset about the lack of news about the show or airdate the real lack is no trailer, production update and Korra being on TV. Is this setup between books normal? If production is just going to take more time because of extra quality or production restraints and the fandom will for some reason be left in the shade we have two more waits like this one. Agent Nebraska (Moderator) This month in Avatar/Korra news: almost nothing. I should probably point out that it is right in the middle of the two seasons, so occasional periods of quiet is natural, but the lack of news is definitely making an impact. First of all, the fanbase’s actual interest. As you probably know, Season 1 wasn’t the MOST fan-liked or critically-acclaimed television season ever so many fans (even hardcore Avatar fans) have begun to lose interest in Korra altogether. I want to point out that, even though I find some opposing arguments reasonable to an extent, I (and many other people on this website) am not one of those people. However, with this void of almost no Avatar information or interaction with the staff (basically no new stuff), some of those fans are a bit bored and resentful. I continue to hear bad things about the staff outside of this website from fans who absolutely adored ATLA. A big point I’m hearing is that the series ”isn’t that good,” so why are they taking so long to make it? Hopefully most of the fanbase knows how tedious and arduous a task it is to create an animated series such as TLOK, and aren’t downgrading the staff for being so slow (like my brother). I just find that kind of thinking very frank and underdeveloped. However, I don’t think the lack of information should be too much of a drawback. If anything, it means that we are going to be entering the close-to-release-super-excited-for-the-show stage soon. I’m sure this is probably the worst it is going to get, as April is getting ever closer and with it, summer, a highly predicted time for the season to be released. We just got some HUGE information about some possibilities for an air sub ability, and that’s huge. All in all, I hope we get back in touch with Bryke and the rest of the staff with little tidbits of information here and there, just to keep people on. The effect is enormous; just look at the forums. We can’t even get people to participate in a trivia, me included! Anyway, everyone should stay expectant, as I see more Korra in our future. Avatar YangChen For me, the lack of information has been frustrating at times mostly because I dont like waiting. But it has not affected how much I love avatar because it is and always will be an awesome show

The main reason I think there has been a lack of information is because they are focusing on more than one thing right now. For example, Before/during book 1 of Korra, the creators were working on the promise and maybe even the start of the search as well. And now they are working on a DVD for Book 1, the Search, the Junior Novelization, and Book 2. They are (or were) working on a lot of commentary and extras in the DVD, and they also have to set release dates, trailers, etc. in the future which also takes time to do. So when you think about it, there is only so much even a team of humans can do and they are currently faced with a ton of stuff (though I do agree they could gove us more information). Also, I think one of the things Nick has done to make our situation a little less aggravating is that they have created a few games to keep us busy during our wait. So Nick hasn’t totally been ignoring us all this time and I really don’t think they deserve to be blamed as much as they are. Naturally when we have to wait a long time for things we get impatient and we want excitement to keep us busy. I am also disappointed as well about the current situation, but I am not super angry with Nick at this point, as long as the time we wait doesn’t end up being like two or more years from now. At the moment, people are just hating on Nick and blaming them for all of our Korra problems which isn’t necessarily right, and it most likely will not resolve them (even though the rant on the one podcast may have lead to three news posts in one day by airspeed

). Our Communities Thoughts As you can see, the lack of information has had an effect on everyone in some way or another. What are your thoughts on it ?

Korra In High Def