'Blue Cheap': 4 New Ways of Making TV Only Look Expensive
As budgets shrink, scripted teams lean on unscripted's playbook and new digital tools: ‘If we can make a show for $250,000 [that will be bought], what can we do?'
Manori Ravindran covers int’l TV from London. She recently covered producers cashing in on YouTube and AI this year, interviewed YouTube star Amelia Dimoldenberg on turning the tables on TV, and explained the model TV producers are loving to get shows made.
Greetings from the U.K., Series Business readers. Let me start by saying how sorry I am for everyone affected by the Los Angeles fires. It’s been horrific to witness from a distance, and I hope you’re keeping safe.
Events like this remind all of us across Europe how inextricably our industry community is linked to L.A.’s. Everyone — even from all the way over here in London — seems to have at least one person in their orbit who’s lost everything to the wildfires. Some British executives I’ve spoken to this week had keenly anticipated meeting American contacts at conferences later this month but have put a pin in those plans because they’re no longer coming: A TV market is, understandably, the furthest thing from your mind in a disaster.
I hope this edition of Series Business provides something of a roadmap for anyone interested in how to adapt and push forward through hard times. Here goes ...
For the last year, most producers I’ve spoken to have consistently complained about squeezed margins due to much-reduced budgets from broadcasters and streamers. “We have to do the same or more for far less money!” is a refrain I hear weekly, if not daily.
The specifics of how exactly they’ve been doing this have always felt a little fuzzy to me. How do you make something look consistently good on screen — quality cinematography, chic locales, and sharp editing — on an eroding budget?
If you have the “same-old same-old” program ideas, says Tom Brisley, CEO of Body Cam and American Monster indie Arrow Media, you’ll end up with a budget that worked three years ago, but is “too expensive” now.
Some producers, especially in the unscripted arena, are parking blue-chip (industry jargon for “premium”) and instead going “blue cheap” — it’s a phrase I first heard a few months ago from a distribution exec, and it’s gaining wider usage as shorthand for shows that have a high-end sheen but can work with lower budgets, sometimes by clever uses of technology or user-generated content.
One company is even finding ways to convert its non-fiction knowhow to the scripted arena. While some British drama-makers now struggle to make anything for less than £3 million ($3.6 million) an hour in under two years, this business is managing to deliver shows for a third of the price in the span of 12 months. (For some points of comparison, consider the reported $20 million-per-episode spend on HBO’s House of the Dragon, with $3 million per hour considered the baseline for U.S. scripted drama.)
This week, I asked enterprising producers how they make shows look good when they’ve got less money to work with, and basic costs are only going up. I got the lowdown on the tech that’s accelerating their output, the surprise skills saving their companies and the tactics that help them do more for less.
In this newsletter, you’ll learn:
How Paramount Global’s British crown jewel, Channel 5, MacGyvered an original drama strategy through lowered costs
How use of unscripted crews can help squeeze major costs out of scripted productions
The story sacrifices producers are using to save money (that writers hate)
How the “preditor” role is spreading to scripted
The new tech tools helping editors and graphics pros do “amazing things for a fraction of the cost”
Why execs at every level in U.K. production are wearing multiple hats
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