
The Business of Too Much TV - pmcpinto
http://www.vulture.com/2016/05/peak-tv-business-c-v-r.html#
======
sandworm101
The OP has the wrong perspective on profits. You have to look at the personal
relationships behind the numbers. Actors are indeed getting paid much much
more than in the past, but that doesn't make productions any less profitable.
It's that those profits aren't going where the used to.

Hollywood acting talent has moved behind the camera. Those owning and
producing content have far tighter personal relationships with those on
camera. They are married. The are each other's kids. That's what happens after
a couple generations in a business where workers age-out of on-screen work
very quickly. The days of studios treating actors like commodities are over.
If a production turns zero profits, but everyone walks away with a big
paycheck, that's a good day for those involved. The wishes of the stockholders
are way far away. (See Goodfellas, a "not profitable" production on paper.)

Remember that game "seven degrees of kevin Bacon"? It wasn't a joke. Every
wonder why the same actors end up working together year after year? Throw
directors, producers and studio execs into the mix and you diagram extended
families, or at least groups of tight friends, moving through the industry.

~~~
walterbell
_> talent has moved behind the camera. Those owning and producing content have
far tighter personal relationships with those on camera_

Do they also have strong relationships with distribution? The article suggests
that studios are losing distribution power to streaming networks who
completely own content after production.

 _> you diagram extended families, or at least groups of tight friends, moving
through the industry_

In these network diagrams, do clusters of family/friends bypass agents during
negotiations?

~~~
sandworm101
I don't think it extends to distribution. That's a corporate thing for
publicly-traded companies. The personal relationships I describe are local.
The people on the set or in the meetings all know each other and work for each
other. Distribution is handled by thousands of people spread around the world
who never meet the people in production. Streaming is just another form of
distribution. I doesn't touch the personal relationships that underpin
production.

As for agents, sometimes they are just a tax dodge. The ultra-rich are always
worried about moving money between generations without taxation. Calling your
kid, your nephew, your agent allows you to move a chunk of money to the next
gen without worry of estate taxes. It's part of estate planning. A similar
tactic works with jobs such as personal assistants, trainers or "producers"
whereby a slightly lesser rate is paid to a celeb in exchange for a child
being hired on. That money comes into the 'family' at a lower tax rate and
avoids estate tax.

------
computator
Producing TV shows today doesn't make financial sense.

In the 60s to 70s, the US had 3 networks (ABC, NBC, and CBS), few shows, low
budgets even for hit shows (think of Gilligan's Island and Brady Brunch), and
_massively_ greater viewership than today[1]. And the average American viewer
watched 4.5 hours of TV per day and knew the name of every prime time show on
TV.

Today, every point above is reversed: hundreds of channels, hundreds of shows,
something like one-tenth the viewership per show[1], and people watch much
less TV.

To give one example of budgets, an entire episode of Star Trek cost about the
same as just the voices on a Simpsons episode. (Star Trek cost $185,000 per
episode, or $2.2M in today's dollars; the 6 main voices actors of The Simpsons
were collectively getting $2.4M per episode but cut to $1.8M a couple years
ago.)

The only conclusion is that TV in the 60s and 70s was _obscenely_ profitable
and TV today is a marginal or money-losing business and covertly subsidized by
other parts of the company's business.

[1] The final episode of MASH had 125 million viewers.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M*A*S*H_%28TV_series%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M*A*S*H_%28TV_series%29)

The final episode of Breaking Bad had just 10 million.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_Bad#Viewership](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_Bad#Viewership)

~~~
cylinder
Like all other forms of content and pretty much everything else in America,
there's clearly an excess right now. This is mostly a pissing match between
Netflix and Amazon and maybe Hulu in order to push their stock valuation, with
the traditional networks trying to keep up. Last I checked, the population of
the US is growing at a steady 0.8% per year, and people still have the same
amount of free time as they did a few years ago, so there's not enough demand
to justify this.

~~~
rhino369
It's not just streaming but cable tv networks are doing it too. Not long ago,
cable didn't produce its own scripted prime time content. Now every channel is
in on it. They all want to be the next AMC.

Part of it was driven by growth in cable revenue. Customers are paying nearly
30 dollars a month that gets passed to cable stations.

I think another part of it was the assumption that netlix and Amazon will
payout to get a license to your content later.

But really I think it's the collapse of the broadcast networks. It used to be
everyone just watched whatever the big four had on. So now the wealth is being
spread.

~~~
quxbar
I believe it's also the case that ALL Television advertising (and most ads in
general) are incredibly overvalued. Most Marketers already know they're
blowing 50% of the budget, they just don't know where the waste is (hint:
everywhere). Most large corporations run on high enough profit margins that
they can do this, and people are happy constantly spending all of their extra
income on consumer goods. I wonder what the future holds...

------
breitling
> Between 2009 and 2015, the number of scripted shows nearly doubled, from
> just over 200 to an estimated 409 last year

This is probably related to the "reality" TV fatigue. They milked that cow to
death. Gimmick after gimmick.

Anyway, I personally would love to see more well scripted shows.

