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Throw enough money at a new TV show, and it’s bound to be a success. That might be the thinking in some executive suites, but it’s not always true, and that seems to be driving some behind-the-scenes changes.
At a National Association of Television Program Executives panel this month, senior scripted programming execs ended up discussing the runaway success of Crave’s relatively low-budget queer hockey romance series, Heated Rivalry. The show, which has been adapted from Rachel Reid’s steamy Game Changers book series, has turned into an unexpected smash hit to the point where you’d have to be living under a rock not to have heard about it. Reflecting on the phenomenon, the execs all had thoughts on why it has garnered so much attention in an overstuffed TV environment.
Bell VP of Content Development and Programming Justin Stockman reckoned that Heated Rivalry benefited from getting sexy quickly without watering down its creative side. Suzanna Makkos, head of comedy for ABC Entertainment and Hulu Originals, praised the show’s fast pace. But Robert Schildhouse, president of BritBox, had a more interesting take.
“I think there’s a lot of theme here, whether it’s smut, or murder, or Christmas movies,” he said. “We see almost no correlation between budget and audience consumption and engagement. And we see incredible engagement on shows that cost very little.”
Schildhouse is likely privy to spreadsheets full of numbers we’ll never see, but we can look at examples that indicate he’s probably not wrong. There have been a number of costly shows lately that seem to have flopped in those key aspects.
Take Prime Video, which apparently had a disaster on its hands after launching The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Reports suggested that only 37% of viewers made it to the end of the first season, which is thought to have cost $465 million, in addition to the $250 million Amazon paid for the rights. If that wasn’t bad enough, season 2 reportedly performed 60% worse.
Then there’s the critically panned Citadel, a globetrotting spy series starring Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra Jonas, which reportedly cost Amazon $50 million per episode to produce. Almost three years later, there’s still no release date set for its second season, despite spawning several smaller international spinoffs.
Even Marvel hasn’t consistently hit it out of the park with its expensive Disney+ shows, leading to a strategic rethink behind the scenes. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law reportedly had a budget of $225 million and became only the seventh most-streamed series on Disney+ in 2022, while Apple has spent a ton of cash on shows with smaller audiences like See and Foundation. The latter is still planning a long haul, but its ongoing production is said to have faced budgetary clashes.
None of this means that big-budget shows won’t become successes. Stranger Things, House of the Dragon, and The Mandalorian were all pricey. But when shows like Heated Rivalry and The Pitt, which reportedly only costs around $4 million per episode to make, are grabbing eyeballs and acclaim, it might be time to consider spending all that TV cash a little more wisely.
The post The Surprising Truth About TV Budgets and Viewer Engagement appeared first on Den of Geek.
