4 ms·

Just pointing out, having spent the first third of my career working IN television, that perfectly profitable programs and networks are discarded simply because

by kmbfjr 3y ago

Just pointing out, having spent the first third of my career working IN television, that perfectly profitable programs and networks are discarded simply because they are not profitable enough for the manager du jour. These entities are removed to make room for programming that appeals to the lowest common denominator, which after initial successes will provide ever lasting grief as to why advertisers don’t want to buy on such LCD programming.

philwelch 3y ago
There's also a history of television programming being dropped for completely non-commercial reasons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_purge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_purge
dehrmann 3y ago
> are not profitable enough With businesses, you need a certain amount of profitability for the risk or investors will look elsewhere. Maybe your stable, profitable business has a 3% profit margin. Cool, but if it's not growing, I can get 5% on treasuries. Your comment also depends on when you were in television. Before streaming, prime time slots were limited, so being profitable alone isn't enough if the average pilot you pick up is more profitable.
- 8note 3y ago
  Instead of shutting it down and laying everyone off, they could spin it out to be not-a-business though. Not everyone is an investor in an industry they don't care anything about - somebody who loves cycling could own and run GCN without needing to beat treasuries
  - dehrmann 3y ago
    Hobby/lifestyle/passion businesses are interesting. People will basically run them at-cost (or even a loss) because they enjoy what they do.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    Of the people your suggesting to no layoff, how many of them are going to make that transition to working for a not-a-business? Doesn't seem like a smart move. I'm also not sure how much experience you have with creating content for some form of broadcast or how much experience you have running the broadcast side of things. Some one has to schedule the content to avoid dead air. Someone has to set up the ad breaks so that you can hopefully monetize it. Someone has to put the content in the correct format for the streaming system to use. Someone has to wrangle/manage all of that wonderful metadata about that content so someone wonder WTF this channel is about can have a clue. What backend are you using to do the streaming? Who's going to maintain that when some intern at the cloud provider you're using runs an update to a core router? yeah, i might be to close to this as i've been around linear channels for streaming and back to bouncing the feed to a satellite for distribution. it is irksome to read someone's "just do it for free" like it's no big deal
- thebradbain 3y ago
  “Hollywood Accounting” gets its name for a reason. I guarantee you there is _no one_ who knows the exact ROI of a show in terms of dollars. In fact they don’t want to know (because it would be a liability). Often times studios set up entire shell companies for tv shows that they “loan” studio money to, and then set a variable interest rate slightly greater than the rate the shows bring in money, so they can declare a loss no matter how successful the show is even though they’re getting their own money back. That’s been going on for decades. This is all a roundabout way to say, only in the highest profile disasters is something ever cancelled for “money”. Usually it’s something else, and much less rational: this exec doesn’t like this show for their personal resume, the show is successful and entering its fourth season but the showrunner wants a raise that an exec doesn’t want to sign off on lest other showrunners hear and demand a raise, an exec thinks starting a new show will demonstrate “leadership”, another exec hates another producer, the streaming service decided it doesn’t want to host one of the few-WGA animated shows (this is what happened to Bojack Horseman), etc. https://www.languageunlimited.org/englishlessonhollywoodaccounting/# https://www.languageunlimited.org/englishlessonhollywoodacco...

by kmbfjr 3y ago

philwelch 3y ago

There's also a history of television programming being dropped for completely non-commercial reasons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_purge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_purge

dehrmann 3y ago

> are not profitable enough With businesses, you need a certain amount of profitability for the risk or investors will look elsewhere. Maybe your stable, profitable business has a 3% profit margin. Cool, but if it's not growing, I can get 5% on treasuries. Your comment also depends on when you were in television. Before streaming, prime time slots were limited, so being profitable alone isn't enough if the average pilot you pick up is more profitable.

8note 3y ago
Instead of shutting it down and laying everyone off, they could spin it out to be not-a-business though. Not everyone is an investor in an industry they don't care anything about - somebody who loves cycling could own and run GCN without needing to beat treasuries
- dehrmann 3y ago
  Hobby/lifestyle/passion businesses are interesting. People will basically run them at-cost (or even a loss) because they enjoy what they do.
- dylan604 3y ago
  Of the people your suggesting to no layoff, how many of them are going to make that transition to working for a not-a-business? Doesn't seem like a smart move. I'm also not sure how much experience you have with creating content for some form of broadcast or how much experience you have running the broadcast side of things. Some one has to schedule the content to avoid dead air. Someone has to set up the ad breaks so that you can hopefully monetize it. Someone has to put the content in the correct format for the streaming system to use. Someone has to wrangle/manage all of that wonderful metadata about that content so someone wonder WTF this channel is about can have a clue. What backend are you using to do the streaming? Who's going to maintain that when some intern at the cloud provider you're using runs an update to a core router? yeah, i might be to close to this as i've been around linear channels for streaming and back to bouncing the feed to a satellite for distribution. it is irksome to read someone's "just do it for free" like it's no big deal
thebradbain 3y ago
“Hollywood Accounting” gets its name for a reason. I guarantee you there is _no one_ who knows the exact ROI of a show in terms of dollars. In fact they don’t want to know (because it would be a liability). Often times studios set up entire shell companies for tv shows that they “loan” studio money to, and then set a variable interest rate slightly greater than the rate the shows bring in money, so they can declare a loss no matter how successful the show is even though they’re getting their own money back. That’s been going on for decades. This is all a roundabout way to say, only in the highest profile disasters is something ever cancelled for “money”. Usually it’s something else, and much less rational: this exec doesn’t like this show for their personal resume, the show is successful and entering its fourth season but the showrunner wants a raise that an exec doesn’t want to sign off on lest other showrunners hear and demand a raise, an exec thinks starting a new show will demonstrate “leadership”, another exec hates another producer, the streaming service decided it doesn’t want to host one of the few-WGA animated shows (this is what happened to Bojack Horseman), etc. https://www.languageunlimited.org/englishlessonhollywoodaccounting/# https://www.languageunlimited.org/englishlessonhollywoodacco...