NBC announced layoffs earlier this week, and they also announced that they would no longer air scripted dramas and comedies at the 8:00 PM Eastern hour because game shows and reality shows are cheaper to produce. The example comparison that I saw was an episode of Friday Nights Lights costs $2.6 million, while an episode of Deal or No Deal costs only $1.1 million. What? Deal or No Deal costs $1.1 million per episode? There's nothing to this show.
In other news, FOX is advertising a new game show called The Rich List, which they say is the first game show with no limit to the amount of money that you can win. (Jeopardy got rid of it's five day limit a while ago, and it seems to me that there's no limit to the money one can win on it either.) This is clearly a ploy to entice viewers, but if it is really true, this means that there is no limit to what the budget of the show will be. As the number of reality shows and games show proliferates, they have to try to outdo the last one, which leads me to believe that their budgets are indeed growing.
The deciding factor in whether or not to air a show has to be viewers per dollar to make. (Okay, so it's really ad dollar generated per dollar spent to make the show, but that's essentially a weighted average of who's watching.) Could the next breakthrough category of network show be the low-budget scripted show? When game shows get so lavish that their budgets become comparable to scripted shows, will they be able to stand?
In other news, FOX is advertising a new game show called The Rich List, which they say is the first game show with no limit to the amount of money that you can win. (Jeopardy got rid of it's five day limit a while ago, and it seems to me that there's no limit to the money one can win on it either.) This is clearly a ploy to entice viewers, but if it is really true, this means that there is no limit to what the budget of the show will be. As the number of reality shows and games show proliferates, they have to try to outdo the last one, which leads me to believe that their budgets are indeed growing.
The deciding factor in whether or not to air a show has to be viewers per dollar to make. (Okay, so it's really ad dollar generated per dollar spent to make the show, but that's essentially a weighted average of who's watching.) Could the next breakthrough category of network show be the low-budget scripted show? When game shows get so lavish that their budgets become comparable to scripted shows, will they be able to stand?
1 Comments:
Coming next: The One-man Stage show.
Deal or No Deal was a letdown, after finally catching it for the first time.
I wonder how DVD sales factor in to this. A show would not have to be completely based on ad revenue. I would expect a game show to not even make a DVD set. (on the other hand, I am amazed that a reality show dvd set sells at all.)
I also wonder how show syndication factors in. When a current show has been on long enough to syndicate, you'd think they could use some of that money to budget the new episodes.
But, what do I know?
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