Sean_Bean_Always_Die t1_j0kxhqj wrote
I've read all of the answers (so far) in this thread and whilst they're not wrong as such, the answer is and always will be: MONEY. Hollywood TV budgets are crazy compared to everywhere else on planet earth. I remember in the 2000's the cast of Friends getting $1million each per episode (OK for seasons 9 & 10 at least, but still) and this was like 15 years ago. Nobody in British TV is getting paid a mill an episode. I'm not trying to play the "dumb Americans" card but I think you guys are so used to the craziness of US entertainment budgets that you think it is normal - it isn't normal at all...only in America!
MT_Promises t1_j0m7ftd wrote
Money and really population. 103 million Americans watched the last episode of MASH, at the same time the population of the UK was 56 million people.
AmnesiaInnocent t1_j0l6ito wrote
I don't get how money is the factor. What's the difference between having one show on for 18 episodes or having three different shows on for 6 episodes each?
If anything, it would seem to me that the shorter shows would be more expensive, because you had to do marketing, create sets, etc... for each of the individual shows.
Waterologist t1_j0lbc6k wrote
Because the American shows are investing so much more into getting a show off the ground, they need so much more return to make that money off.
Think of it this way. Say it costs 5million to build the sets and do all of the stuff required to get the production up and going. Then each episode itself costs 500k for all the stuff needed for that specific episode. If you make 6 episodes, you spent 8mil(5mil set up, 6x500k=3mil, totaling 8mil). This means you need to sell 1.3mil in advertising per episode just to break even.
But! If you make 22 episodes you’ve spent 16mil(5mil set up, 22x500k=11mil, totaling 16 mil.) Now you only need to earn 727k per episode to break even.
The traditional american broadcast tv economy lets them charge the same to advertise on a show whether there is 6 eps or 22. So the larger the initial investment, the more benefit there is to spreading that initial investment across more episodes.
Because the BBC was publicly funded(and doesn’t invest nearly as much money into productions), they don’t have the same incentive to maximize earnings by spreading their expenses across as many episodes as they can.
Cut to decades later and the cultures behind tv production have grown in wildly different directions on either side of the pond.
Sean_Bean_Always_Die t1_j0letgz wrote
If you split your money 3 ways you have 3 chances at success and end up with 3 IPs at the end of it. Spending all your money on one show puts all your eggs in one basket.
Plus it is in generally cheaper in the UK and elsewhere in the world to produce shows than it is in Hollywood/US. So it is not the same comparing a 10 episode US show to a 10 episode UK show monetarily anyway. Like I said, US productions have crazy money at their disposal, not so elsewhere.
bicyclecat t1_j0lf3m9 wrote
There are over 6,000 episodes of EastEnders. Episode count doesn’t dictate budget either direction. The 22 episode US network model was about ad revenue but the real money was in making 100+ episodes so they could sell it into syndication. Many shows were produced pretty cheaply, and the few that became major hits and needed to pay actors a lot to keep them were the outliers. (And even then, the shows themselves were still pretty cheaply made. Friends was not blowing its budget on sets or visual effects.) Big budget TV like Game of Thrones is a new thing with streaming and they’re never 22 episode seasons.
MT_Promises t1_j0m4wdq wrote
The syndication 100 episode marker wasn't it though. Networks originally didn't want to let their shows be re-run at all as they thought it would decrease demand for the new stuff. Syndication was a later development.
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