In an effort to cut costs, TV giant NBC Universal announced that they are cutting their pilot program. Jeff Zucker, CEO for NBC Universal, says that costs for producing pilots has risin dramatically from $7M for a one hour program from about $3M three years ago. I say that Americans are thriftless in general, and if NBC wants to cut costs, they should get a bunch of Canadian Producers in there, we know how to work on a budget and get more bang for your buck.
Granted, most Pilots end up on the cutting room floor anyway, mainly because people like Jeff think they know what normal people want to watch (Sorry Jeff, I don’t care how long you have been doing this, it’s a new era and our tastes have changed dramatically). This move will reduce the amount of crap we have to put up with on TV this fall, however, it also means more reruns of old hit shows because they won’t have anything to replace with!
The fact that they spent even $3M on a pilot baffles me to begin with. In Canada, we are lucky to get $1M for a one hour episode of TV, while these frivolous Executives spend $7M for just a Pilot!!! Here are a few ideas for Mr. Zucker to cut costs.
1. Replace your money hungry producers with Canadian Producers. They could make the same episode for less than half the cost if it was needed (And it would look just as good).
2. Forget about your shareholders. Sure, everybody wants to please the shareholders, but all they are concerned about is MONEY. So the consumer, the people you rely on to watch your crap end up with less creative and ingenious programming because your too damn worried about offending the shareholders. TV is not about making money, it’s about entertainment, pure and simple. As soon as you forget that (Which you did years ago) you become the victim of piracy (Who wants to PAY for the crap you’re putting out, personally, I won’t even waste bandwidth on 98% of the crap out there) and your numbers go down because less people are watching because they would rather watch paint dry than watch your lame excuse for a TV show (At least NBC didn’t attempt to make a TV show based off a Geico commercial *COUGH*ABC*COUGH*).
3. Figure out Digital! I really don’t understand the Movie, Music and TV industries reluctance to dump their money into digital and try to push the envelope…. oh wait, could it be all the over the hill execs who barely understand email running the companies? Yes, I think it could be.
It’s not hard, really. You guys should have jumped on this nearly 10 years ago when Digital Video started hitting the web. What, you didn’t think it was going to go anywhere? Thought the net was going to fade out of existence? Yeah, I’ll watch for that to happen, along with the US giving up it’s dependance on oil and electing presidents that can count to double digits without using their fingers.
4. Advertising. Is it really that difficult to figure out a new advertising model for digital? Go back tot he old school days of product placement. You are in an era of Tivo and Pirates. It is quite blatantly obvious (If you look past those rotating dollar signs in your eyes) that people want 1. Digital files. 2. No commercials. If they didn’t why would they buy Tivo and why would they download the episodes online with no advertising.
Switch to product placement (I know you’re already doing it, I doubt you just happened to pick X Brand of vehicles for the hit show 24. Somebody lined their pockets on that one) and maybe 15 second ads at the start and end of a show. If it’s embedded right into the programming the best hackers in the world can’t get rid of it with the best technology out there! Comon, do you really need 20 old farts sitting around a table in Armani suits discussing this to figure out what is right in front of your faces?
5. Go Green - Do you realize how much money you could save on electricity costs alone just by installing a green roof on your enormous buildings? Maybe you should look into that. Not only would you be greatly helping the environment (Yeah, I know, all the suits out there are getting out of their H2s and High Performance Mercedes going “What? Save Gas? What Environment?”) but you will reduce the amount of energy you use. A green roof helps insulate your building, meaning less heat gets out (Hey, that means you spend less on heating costs) in the winter, and less heat gets in during the summer (Hey, that means you spend less on air conditioning costs). You could even convert rain water into water for the toilets and sinks, imagine how much you could save on water costs. Oh yeah, how about turning off some of those damn lights when there are only 4 people in your 40,000 Sq Ft buildings. Geez, you guys seem to LOVE waste!
Those are just a few ideas off the top of my head. I barely even had to think about them, and my coffee has not even kicked in yet! Surely if a lowly tech from Canada can come up with these ideas, corporate executives could come up with a few of the same idea’s, I mean, they are getting paid enough to have at least ONE decent thought a year.
OK, I will give both NBC and Fox props for setting up Hulu, but really, you should get everybody else on board and make one big site, divided by broadcaster, and take over the distribution. Whos going to pirate when they can go to the source for fast, high quality product? Oh, why do I even bother, it’s not like any of them will ever read this anyway. *sigh* I used to love TV….
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