Gone are the days of companies shelling out untold riches to create content and pay for top-notch talent in the hopes of attracting new customers; now they’re under pressure to actually turn a profit. That means less new content, more ads, and higher prices.
Weird that they don’t mention cheaper shows as an option. Last week I got around to watching Rings of Power. It was… okay. Didn’t think it was great or anything. But I thought I saw the show cost $500 million (maybe that includes rights for more shows, either way it was really expensive). Likewise, Star Trek Discovery is considered pretty mediocre by most Trek fans - certainly not as good as TNG or DS9. And yet I bet a whole 26-episode season of 90s Trek cost as much as a single episode of Discovery ($8-10 million). These streaming platforms are spending ungodly amounts of money on these shows but no one is really blown away with the results of what they’re spending that money on.
Funny, I love LOST but it’s often forgotten how much that show changed TV. I’d argue maybe the two most important shows of the last 25 years are LOST and Survivor (Survivor is mostly forgotten now but that was the show that launched a thousand reality shows).
This is very true. From a macro perspective those are prolly the two big ones. An argument can be made for Big Brother as the patient zero, but survivor has much bigger reach
Definitely more, but considering that Discovery’s seasons were half as long (13 episodes per season to TNG’s 26) and could thus allocate twice as much of the season’s budget to an episode, it’s surprisingly not that much more. About 50% higher.
They still should have taken some of that CGI budget and spent it on the writers, though.
Weird that they don’t mention cheaper shows as an option. Last week I got around to watching Rings of Power. It was… okay. Didn’t think it was great or anything. But I thought I saw the show cost $500 million (maybe that includes rights for more shows, either way it was really expensive). Likewise, Star Trek Discovery is considered pretty mediocre by most Trek fans - certainly not as good as TNG or DS9. And yet I bet a whole 26-episode season of 90s Trek cost as much as a single episode of Discovery ($8-10 million). These streaming platforms are spending ungodly amounts of money on these shows but no one is really blown away with the results of what they’re spending that money on.
Thank lost for ruining tv
Funny, I love LOST but it’s often forgotten how much that show changed TV. I’d argue maybe the two most important shows of the last 25 years are LOST and Survivor (Survivor is mostly forgotten now but that was the show that launched a thousand reality shows).
This is very true. From a macro perspective those are prolly the two big ones. An argument can be made for Big Brother as the patient zero, but survivor has much bigger reach
That makes Real World and Road Rules the ur-Big Brother.
Kinda insane that getting assholes drunk on camera is just a genre of entertainment
truuuUUuuu storraaaaaaay
Survivor still airs new seasons and has an audience in the millions.
I was curious so I did some research. The costs:
TOS: $190,635 per episode ($1.7 million when adjusted for inflation)
TNG: $1.3 million per episode ($3.3 million when adjusted for inflation)
Discovery: $8 million per episode ($9.8 million adjusted for inflation)
Definitely more, but considering that Discovery’s seasons were half as long (13 episodes per season to TNG’s 26) and could thus allocate twice as much of the season’s budget to an episode, it’s surprisingly not that much more. About 50% higher.
They still should have taken some of that CGI budget and spent it on the writers, though.
Wow, didn’t realize TNG was that expensive.
Half of the budget was for Roddenberry’s cocaine.