I heard a story on NPR this morning about Jay Leno’s much-hyped move to a prime time slot (apparently 10pm still counts as prime time), and the story noted NBC is doing this (1) to try to pull their ratings out of last place and (2) to save money: According to the story, they can make five hours of Leno’s show for the same cost as one hour of drama programming such as CSI.
Why is that? Where does the money go for making drama shows – the writers? The actors? The sets or locations?
I took one of the public tours of the Warner Brothers studio once, and they walked us through the set of The Gilmore Girls. The guide told us that because of the number of takes and the elaborate details of setting up a scene, eight hours of filming would typically produce about six minutes of usable footage.
I imagine that things would take even longer on a show where people speak at normal speed.
Actually episodic TV shows don’t cost all that much compared to feature films. Their typical cost runs from 1 to 3 million dollars an episode. That’s a couple of million bucks for 45 minutes to an hour’s worth of show. Feature films by comparison cost 30 million or more for 2 hours’ worth of show.
For the CSI franchise shows, especially the original, the fees for the cast members and writer-executive producers are enormous. But that’s a function of the shows’ success and their almost guaranteed top ten position in the weekly ratings.
In order to put out an hour long show with the high production values of a Criminal Minds, Mentalist, Fringe, et al, you need to pay a highly skilled union crew for eight days. Long days which often run into overtime. The audience, both US and global, expects a certain look which is only attainable by careful, time consuming lighting and precise camera work. Any time the camera moves it costs in terms of setup time and rearranging what the camera sees. Action sequences like those in Buffy add another layer of cost and difficulty. (My coworkers used to call the show Buffy the Weekend Slayer.)
The audience also expects realistic effects, crowd scenes (requiring extras at a union rate of $120 a day and a non union rate of $60), and the occasional outdoor scene to break up the indoor monotony. Outdoor scenes require trucking the entire production to the location and back, renting the location, and paying everyone for their work and their transit time. The audience also expects good quality hair, makeup, and wardrobe, not to mention special effects.
All that said, it’s possible to do an hour show for much less. Soap operas, for example, shoot an episode in roughly a day. But their production values aren’t nearly as high - they just don’t look that good. Even a night time soap can save a lot of money by always staying inside on the soundstage, and sticking to a limited number of sets.
Time is the real killer. The longer it takes you to do something, the more it costs. Careful lighting and tricky camera work give a show a much nicer look, not just better picture but more motion and verisimiltude. This all costs money more money.
Studio backed feature films are typically shot much more slowly and carefully than TV shows are, so the costs are greater by an order of magnitude. A TV show shoots in eight days. A feature shot in eight days is super low budget.
Unions, specifically the writers’ union.
The Writer’s Guild of America is in a particular snit about reality shows and game shows being produced by non-union production companies.
A lot of movie and TV production is being moved away from LA to avoid unions and for lower costs overall. Other states are giving tax breaks for producers.
That’s studio propaganda.
The Guild’s attempt to unionize reality show writers has nothing to do with the costs of episodic dramatic shows. Two separate issues.
The writer’s fee for an episode and the subsequent fees for reuse of that episode - residuals are tiny compared to the overall cost of an episode. A writer’s fees are less than forty grand per script.
It’s more complicated than that, of course. Almost all TV writers these days are on staff, and their compensation includes producing fees and other duties. A staff writer who manages to survive a whole season can expect to make two hundred grand or more. This pay is also compensation for the years of low pay or unpaid work required to break in as a writer. Even successful TV writers are out of work for months and even years at a time.
http://www.wga.org/uploadedFiles/writers_resources/contracts/min2008.pdf
The real issue with unions and the Hollywood film industry is this: without union pay and health benefits, no one can dedicate the time and energy required to become a master craftsman. In the short run, you can get energetic young people to work for low wages in unsafe conditions and no work rules to prevent abuse. In the long run, no one afford to stay in the business if they don’t have a shot at making a decent living.
On the organizing reality shows issue.
It’s a hotly debated topic in Hollywood. The reality show producers make huge profits, because their costs are lower. They routinely work their non union employees 20 hour plus days, and fire them if they complain or try to organize.
It’s clear that the workers who put the shows together create and work off of written outlines, but then again so editors in regular episodic shows. Are the reality show workers writers, or editors? Which union has jurisdiction?
Many observers see the Guild’s attempt to organize reality workers as hamfisted and doomed to failure. This doesn’t change the fact that reality show workers are often abused and exploited, and that they should get health care and reasonable working conditions.
Jay Leno wrote his own material during the strike and the union tried to fine him but he won the case. It’s not like he really needs a union to begin with so he could have easily quit.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with the thread topic.
You’re always free to start a thread entitled “Let’s Bash the Writers’ Guild! Why Fight Ignorance, When You Can Wallow in It?!”
A key reason also is that there is not much future in syndication. Historically very few shows of an hour’s length have ever been successful in reruns. The ones that are sold and do play are for barter only meaning even less proft, though in the past few years even sitcoms are going for barter only.
HD televison presents further problems as you used to be able to take shortcuts with TV, like using cheap substitutions that look real on analog but look awful on High Def.
Hour long shows tend to be pet projects and writers can command top dollar. As far back as the 80s, “Hill Street Blues” and other top rated shows were pulling in over $300,000/episode for their head writers, far more than sitcom head writers got.
Again it falls back to syndication where the companies make their big profits. If you can recoup these expenses in the future you’re going to be limited.
If hour long shows don’t make it in syndication, then why is Law and Order on about 400 times a day? 
“Very few” =/= “none”. L&O is a noteworthy exception to the general rule.
Plenty of hour longs do quite well in syndication. Law and Order does particularly well because it’s almost all self contained episodes based on a plot formula which never changes. Dick Wolf is of course an effing genius.
The hour longs which fail in syndication are the ones which have multi episode and even season long plot lines. Lost, for example.
Where I live the popular syndicated shows are run from 7-8 PM on local stations and I can’t recall any hour long shows in that slot - it’s normally 2 comedies or 2 game shows or 2 shows like ET.
TBS, TNT and USA show a lot more syndicated shows and they do run stuff hour long stuff besides L&O.
It’s those sets and locations. And the second unit that goes with them. Also the studio audience. British dramas dispense with those and are cheap to make. They don’t build sets if they can rent or borrow a real building, seldom actually damage cars, but just prop up old bangers that they buy as junk. If they want to be in Germany, they put one German sign over an English shop and shoot from the outside so no interior signage spoils it.
Don’t spend a fortune on new costumes but recycle from the cinema extras rack.
Not really a surprise, but not everyone wants Jay Leno to make it with his new show.
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They complain about his show taking jobs from actors and writers but they don’t mention how many more shows there are now vs. even 10-15 years ago. HBO, Showtime, USA, TNT, etc now all have original dramas. The world is not just the big 4 networks.
One NBC 10:00 PM show (Life) was canceled to make room for The Jay Leno Show. Two others (Lipstick Jungle and My Own Worst Enemy) were canceled long before NBC execs even considered handing Jay Leno a daily primetime slot.
And actors wonder why everyone thinks they’re stupid? This is why.
Some actors are stupid, some are Ivy Leaguers w/ IQ’s in the top 5%.
The point of the complaints is that the 10 PM hour has primarily featured scripted programming for decades. If not for Leno, the cancelled shows would have been replaced with new scripted shows.
It’s a fact that Leno in prime time takes away jobs for writers and actors. No one in the industry debates this. That’s part of the reason why Leno’s cheaper.
Members of studio audiences are generally not paid. There are exceptions, and audience members often get gifts, prizes, coupons, etc. but studio audiences aren’t a cost factor.
Among scripted shows, only multi camera sitcoms, which are exclusively half hour, have studio audiences. Hour dramas don’t have studio audiences, period.
Game shows do, but game shows are very cheap to produce.
The independent film director Alex Cox has a little maxim which he recites to any potential backers: “Quick, cheap and good. Pick two.”
Because if it’s quick and cheap it won’t be good, if it’s quick and good it won’t be cheap and if it’s cheap and good it won’t be quick.