How to motivate more miniseries?

On the local television there was just a rerun of the miniseries The Lost Room. This time I only saw the last of the six one hour episodes, but the feeling was the same as on the first time around: it was an entertaining ride of imagination although the ending wasn't really that satisfying. Nevertheless, it made me once again think that it would be nice to have more short series like this on television, which entertainmentwise is mostly dominated by longer series and movies. Could it be possible to get more miniseries?

Miniseries are in many ways an intermediate form between regular continuous television series and movies, and as such they also have their own specific perks. Miniseries can tell longer stories than single movies. On the other hand the viewer knows that the series is set to have an ending, and the overall structure is likely to be more coherent than in a regular long-running series. It is true that a more regular series may also have a predefined ending and sometimes the final timespan of the series may be revealed quite early, like in the case of Lost. But even so, series like this are prone to either wither away and end up being much worse than they were in the beginning (like with Prison Break) or experience a relatively sudden and thus at least somewhat unsatisfying ending : for example 24 ended practically in just a couple of minutes, even though the whole series had lasted for 192 episodes or about 140 hours!

There have been really few miniseries lately. Even The Lost Room might have actually been a long pilot to a regular series, if it had been successful enough. And that might be the reason why the ending left the viewer hoping for more - and also the reason why the series is going continue its life in comic book format in 2011.

It is of course understandable why producers aren't that motivated by miniseries. Businesswise movies are better since they offer the money from the theatre distribution. Regular series are better since once the very basic setting has been constructed and a sufficient fan base has been reached, there is much less need to invest in the production or to market the series. If the series becomes a success, it doesn't matter that much even if the actors' salaries start skyrocketing.

So how to motivate producers to make miniseries? That's a difficult question. I believe there's more demand for them than there is supply, but the economically superior characteristics of movies and regular series are hard to overcome. There have been a few Finnish entirely fictional and quite good miniseries in the past few years - including one with a rather unique way of storytelling on this scale. However, apart from the (open-ended) Lost Room the only English miniseries I currently recall have been somehow related to history and/or actual events like the Tsunami, Angels in America, Band of Brothers. So I suppose there has to be an existing serious public interest in a specific theme that specifically fits in the miniseries format or otherwise there an idea will either turn into a movie or a television series or alternatively just be forgotten?

I think it's a pity really.