What about profitability?

[Joelist]

How much do we know about the cost to make and present SGU?

In a blog before the show was launched Mallozzi speculated that actor salaries should be lower. However, I would think the SFX budget is higher (given the ritzier SFX) and the overall cast budget is likely higher than SGA simply because there are more cast members.

Against this the horrid ratings create a big problem, because they force SyFy to lower the rates for ad placement, thus reducing income. Add in the tepid DVD sales and I expect this show is losing money every week.

Caprica suffers from the same problem - expensive because of the SFX but horrid ratings mean SyFy can't charge enough for ad space.

As an interesting contrast you have Sanctuary. It is (per TV by the Numbers) a reliable 1.4 - 1.45 rating every week. Also because of its use of green screen and other cost cutting measures produced on a low budget. Hence it is profitable at a 1.4 and thus a property SyFy will likely keep. Eureka is pulling in about a 3.2 and likewise is not super expensive to make, likewise Warehouse 13 pulls in about a 3.3 and has a similar budget to Eureka.

Then you get to the show they cut to make room for SGU: SGA. Correct me if I am wrong but SGA was consistently getting a 1.6 or so, and budget wise was at or under SGU's number. Plus the DVDs sold much better.

 

[Overmind One]

Great points, and thats why V will still be on the air long after SGU has been cancelled.

How much do we know about the cost to make and present SGU?

In a blog before the show was launched Mallozzi speculated that actor salaries should be lower. However, I would think the SFX budget is higher (given the ritzier SFX) and the overall cast budget is likely higher than SGA simply because there are more cast members.

Against this the horrid ratings create a big problem, because they force SyFy to lower the rates for ad placement, thus reducing income. Add in the tepid DVD sales and I expect this show is losing money every week.

Caprica suffers from the same problem - expensive because of the SFX but horrid ratings mean SyFy can't charge enough for ad space.

As an interesting contrast you have Sanctuary. It is (per TV by the Numbers) a reliable 1.4 - 1.45 rating every week. Also because of its use of green screen and other cost cutting measures produced on a low budget. Hence it is profitable at a 1.4 and thus a property SyFy will likely keep. Eureka is pulling in about a 3.2 and likewise is not super expensive to make, likewise Warehouse 13 pulls in about a 3.3 and has a similar budget to Eureka.

Then you get to the show they cut to make room for SGU: SGA. Correct me if I am wrong but SGA was consistently getting a 1.6 or so, and budget wise was at or under SGU's number. Plus the DVDs sold much better.

GREAT points. I wish we had those numbers too! If we knew the production costs of Atlantis, we could extrapolate the cost of SGU by adding a million to the cost of the episodes. The primary use of actual sets is the "old school" way of doing things in science fiction. If Star Trek TNG had used all real sets and props and miniatures, it would have never been made. CGI made TNG possible, as well as DS9 and Voyager and most recently the latest Star Trek movie. V is surprisingly easy to make because of green screen, according to ABC. Sanctuary as well. Then, you have the salaries of these actors. The lesser known actors most likely make much less than Carlyle, LDP and Ming Na. I wish we had solid info on that.

All we know is that SGU costs "1 million more per episode than SGA". Like you said, the profitability calculations are much different for SGU as it was for SGA and SG-1. I wonder if it would be worth it to actually contact Syfy and ask these questions directly?

 

[Illiterati]

Keep in mind that this is produced in Canada, so costs are lower than they would bere here in the States.

Shows such as Sanctuary are almost entirely CGI, to keep the cost of sets down. I can't help but wonder how that might also relate to SGEwww!s production costs.

 

[ChromeToasterX]

GREAT points. I wish we had those numbers too! If we knew the production costs of Atlantis, we could extrapolate the cost of SGU by adding a million to the cost of the episodes. The primary use of actual sets is the "old school" way of doing things in science fiction. If Star Trek TNG had used all real sets and props and miniatures, it would have never been made. CGI made TNG possible, as well as DS9 and Voyager and most recently the latest Star Trek movie.

TNG did use real sets and miniatures augmented with matte paintings and had IIRC a budget of a million dollars per episode, but since it went straight to syndication, I don't think that impacted things too much. DS9 and Voyager did start out with sets and miniatures, but replaced the miniatures with CGI in 95/96 (IIRC) and each probably had a similar budget to TNG.

 

[Overmind One]

The later seasons of TNG used more CGI

TNG did use real sets and miniatures augmented with matte paintings and had IIRC a budget of a million dollars per episode, but since it went straight to syndication, I don't think that impacted things too much. DS9 and Voyager did start out with sets and miniatures, but replaced the miniatures with CGI in 95/96 (IIRC) and each probably had a similar budget to TNG.

Seasons 4-7 of TNG used more CGI than real sets. But you are right, it went straight to syndication, and considering the popularity of TNG and DS9, they still would have been profitable! SGA had the perfect balance of CGI and actual sets IMO, and the cast was so fun to watch and root for.

Is there a way we can get production numbers for shows somewhere?

 

[podbaydoors]

GREAT points. I wish we had those numbers too! If we knew the production costs of Atlantis, we could extrapolate the cost of SGU by adding a million to the cost of the episodes. The primary use of actual sets is the "old school" way of doing things in science fiction. If Star Trek TNG had used all real sets and props and miniatures, it would have never been made. CGI made TNG possible, as well as DS9 and Voyager and most recently the latest Star Trek movie. V is surprisingly easy to make because of green screen, according to ABC. Sanctuary as well. Then, you have the salaries of these actors. The lesser known actors most likely make much less than Carlyle, LDP and Ming Na. I wish we had solid info on that.

All we know is that SGU costs "1 million more per episode than SGA". Like you said, the profitability calculations are much different for SGU as it was for SGA and SG-1. I wonder if it would be worth it to actually contact Syfy and ask these questions directly?

It doesn't matter if we know the actual figures, profitability is only revenue minus costs. We know the show costs $20 million more to make a year than SGA, whether they spend the money on CGI or sets is irrelevant. The question is- does it make over $20 million more per year? I seriously doubt it, the ratings are too low. Remember they were expecting FAR higher ratings than SGA and spent accordingly. And so, SyFy is definitely losing money on this dog if they're paying most of the production costs. And this is why they may still cancel the rest of the season if they think they can pull in better ratings with ANY other show. The money's spent, but they might try to cut their losses.

As for MGM's revenue, I suspect they too make substantially less than they did on SGA because the DVD sales are horrible- while SGA's were good. Over substantially similar time periods- so the old "DVD market is collapsing" argument is not a good excuse for SGU's failure. Even the COTG re-release made money, it was cheap and sold well during the recession. Plus, the amount they can get out of SyFy is probably far less this year than last because the ratings are so low. And this is why we will not ever see an SGU movie, no matter what Joe says.

So, if the ratings and (therefore ad revenue) are lower than SGA, and the DVD sales are considerably lower than SGA, but the cost is $20 million more, how could it possibly be making more than SGA? It can't. It probably isn't even breaking even.

 

[SexyDexy]

It is almost certainly losing money.

I don't think Syfy would ever release the actual numbers. They likely keep them confidential for competitive reasons.

PBD is right though, even without the exact total numbers, there is no doubt SGU is not as profitable as SGA was. SGU costs more to make but it gets less viewers, so even before DVD sales are taken into account that translates to less profit.

A big part of profitability really boils down to cost per viewer. Cost per viewer is one of the major ways to defend a show's production costs to the network. Since SGU's production costs are higher than SGA's, it would have needed to gain a substantial amount of viewers to make it's Cost Per Viewer comparable to or less than SGA's cost per viewer. Obviously TPTB expected to gain tons of viewers with SGU, and they likely used that argument in their "sales pitch." They probably said, "hey, we deserve one million more per episode, because we'll add at least 1.6 million viewers to the paltry 1.6 of SGA!" They had to convince the execs that the Cost Per Viewer would be the same or better than SGA's - otherwise, financially it would have been a bad decision to greenlight SGU.

Well, they may have convinced the execs then, but now we see the reality is that SGU is tanking. That means Syfy is basically throwing away that extra one million dollars per episode, and also losing out on ad revenue and even DVD sales potential (since Atlantis DVDs have sold well in the past, one could reason DVDs for a season 6 would have also sold well).

So, SGU is an epic fail when it comes to profitability. I think we have enough data to demonstrate it is for sure less profitable than SGA. I would go one step further to say it's almost certainly losing money at its current ratings levels - but I don't have absolute proof of that. However, it has been hinted that 1.4 viewers was the minimum it needed to not get cancelled, so that level may be around where it stops breaking even.

 

[podbaydoors]

I don't think Syfy would ever release the actual numbers. They likely keep them confidential for competitive reasons.

PBD is right though, even without the exact total numbers, there is no doubt SGU is not as profitable as SGA was. SGU costs more to make but it gets less viewers, so even before DVD sales are taken into account that translates to less profit.

A big part of profitability really boils down to cost per viewer. Cost per viewer is one of the major ways to defend a show's production costs to the network. Since SGU's production costs are higher than SGA's, it would have needed to gain a substantial amount of viewers to make it's Cost Per Viewer comparable to or less than SGA's cost per viewer. Obviously TPTB expected to gain tons of viewers with SGU, and they likely used that argument in their "sales pitch." They probably said, "hey, we deserve one million more per episode, because we'll add at least 1.6 million viewers to the paltry 1.6 of SGA!" They had to convince the execs that the Cost Per Viewer would be the same or better than SGA's - otherwise, financially it would have been a bad decision to greenlight SGU.

Well, they may have convinced the execs then, but now we see the reality is that SGU is tanking. That means Syfy is basically throwing away that extra one million dollars per episode, and also losing out on ad revenue and even DVD sales potential (since Atlantis DVDs have sold well in the past, one could reason DVDs for a season 6 would have also sold well).

So, SGU is an epic fail when it comes to profitability. I think we have enough data to demonstrate it is for sure less profitable than SGA. I would go one step further to say it's almost certainly losing money at it's current ratings levels - but I don't have absolute proof of that. However, it has been hinted that 1.4 viewers was the minimum it needed to not get cancelled, so that level may be around where it stops breaking even.

You've explained that very well- it's cost per viewer. And I think that number is pretty high for SGU- I agree they are almost certainly losing money though we can't prove it. A show with high ratings like NCIS could have a spin-off with higher cost-per-viewer like NCIS:LA (I don't know that's true, it's just an example) and that spinoff could still be profitable because profits are already up in the stratosphere. But little Stargate hasn't that much wiggle room.

Over on the resurrected GW ratings thread ROX has up a chart showing that SGU was doing better than the SyFy average in ratings and demos. But without knowing what the Syfy average cost per show is, one can't say SGU is doing better than average from SyFys point of view. I would be willing to bet SGU is the most expensive show SyFy has. It's ratings should be stellar to justify the cost- and they're not. Sanctuary is probably far more profitable, even if its ratings aren't as good, because it's low-budget. And they're probably making a killing off of Ghost Hunters!:roll:

 

[Joelist]

You've explained that very well- it's cost per viewer. And I think that number is pretty high for SGU- I agree they are almost certainly losing money though we can't prove it. A show with high ratings like NCIS could have a spin-off with higher cost-per-viewer like NCIS:LA (I don't know that's true, it's just an example) and that spinoff could still be profitable because profits are already up in the stratosphere. But little Stargate hasn't that much wiggle room.

Over on the resurrected GW ratings thread ROX has up a chart showing that SGU was doing better than the SyFy average in ratings and demos. But without knowing what the Syfy average cost per show is, one can't say SGU is doing better than average from SyFys point of view. I would be willing to bet SGU is the most expensive show SyFy has. It's ratings should be stellar to justify the cost- and they're not. Sanctuary is probably far more profitable, even if its ratings aren't as good, because it's low-budget. And they're probably making a killing off of Ghost Hunters!:roll:

That's the thing. Sanctuary gets BETTER ratings than SGU and costs less to make to boot. It averages 1.4 to 1.45 and SGU is nowhere near that number.

 

[Aragon101]

Re: Sanctuary

There's something to be said about the best revenge is living well :p

 

[Illiterati]

Advertisers are only going to pay for a show that gets their target audience, which SGU does not appear to be getting.

Once the advertisers decide to take their money elsewhere (and with tight budgets everywhere, they will), then SyFy will have to take a realistic look at SGU's cost vs revenue.

And right now, I suspect it's a fairly negative revenue stream.

 

[SG-1wasbetterthenSGU]

It doesn't matter if we know the actual figures, profitability is only revenue minus costs. We know the show costs $20 million more to make a year than SGA, whether they spend the money on CGI or sets is irrelevant. The question is- does it make over $20 million more per year? I seriously doubt it, the ratings are too low. Remember they were expecting FAR higher ratings than SGA and spent accordingly. And so, SyFy is definitely losing money on this dog if they're paying most of the production costs. And this is why they may still cancel the rest of the season if they think they can pull in better ratings with ANY other show. The money's spent, but they might try to cut their losses.

As for MGM's revenue, I suspect they too make substantially less than they did on SGA because the DVD sales are horrible- while SGA's were good. Over substantially similar time periods- so the old "DVD market is collapsing" argument is not a good excuse for SGU's failure. Even the COTG re-release made money, it was cheap and sold well during the recession. Plus, the amount they can get out of SyFy is probably far less this year than last because the ratings are so low. And this is why we will not ever see an SGU movie, no matter what Joe says.

So, if the ratings and (therefore ad revenue) are lower than SGA, and the DVD sales are considerably lower than SGA, but the cost is $20 million more, how could it possibly be making more than SGA? It can't. It probably isn't even breaking even.

What would happen if the producers of SGu are stuborn and use cost cutting technique to save the show. Do you think its possible that they could do such a thing?

 

[Mr. A]

TNG did use real sets and miniatures augmented with matte paintings and had IIRC a budget of a million dollars per episode, but since it went straight to syndication, I don't think that impacted things too much. DS9 and Voyager did start out with sets and miniatures, but replaced the miniatures with CGI in 95/96 (IIRC) and each probably had a similar budget to TNG.

Some people have speculated elsewhere that SGA costed 1 million dollars per episode, which would mean SGU costs double. That is IMO absurd.
What we know for sure is that ST:Voy cost around 1.5 million per episode in its 4th and 5th season - Tim Russ mentioned it in an interview when speaking about the Phase II project. That was 1999. So I presume we can estimate the cost of an SGA episode in 2008 to be around 2 million, which would put SGU at around 3 million per episode.
However, that tells us nothing about the profitability of the show, since we don't know what license fee was negotiated between Syfy and MGM and what kind of revenues the studio and the channel get from advertising and merchandise.

 

[SexyDexy]

So I presume we can estimate the cost of an SGA episode in 2008 to be around 2 million, which would put SGU at around 3 million per episode.

I think this is a pretty good estimate. I found on GW that the 2-part premiere of SGA got what was considered a gigantic budget at the time, of 5 million dollars (which would be 2.5 million for each half of it). Then on one of the DVD extras it says that Sateda in season three got 4 million, and GW said that Sateda had the highest budget for an SGA episode since the premiere. So an average episode was much less. By season five, I highly doubt it was up to 4 million an episode, it was probably around two million like you estimated.

 

[stclare]

You've explained that very well- it's cost per viewer. And I think that number is pretty high for SGU- I agree they are almost certainly losing money though we can't prove it. A show with high ratings like NCIS could have a spin-off with higher cost-per-viewer like NCIS:LA (I don't know that's true, it's just an example) and that spinoff could still be profitable because profits are already up in the stratosphere. But little Stargate hasn't that much wiggle room.

Over on the resurrected GW ratings thread ROX has up a chart showing that SGU was doing better than the SyFy average in ratings and demos. But without knowing what the Syfy average cost per show is, one can't say SGU is doing better than average from SyFys point of view. I would be willing to bet SGU is the most expensive show SyFy has. It's ratings should be stellar to justify the cost- and they're not. Sanctuary is probably far more profitable, even if its ratings aren't as good, because it's low-budget. And they're probably making a killing off of Ghost Hunters!:roll:

They must be running pretty low numbers if 1.07 keeps them in that category. also sanctuary must be golden then? Maybe sgu was last year due to the premiere increasing there average, take that away and its no better than a show 5 years old i would guess.

 

[MetalFoldingChair]

What would happen if the producers of SGu are stuborn and use cost cutting technique to save the show. Do you think its possible that they could do such a thing?

That would be as effective as putting a Band-aid on a torn artery so no worries there.

I remember reading an interview some years ago with a "Star Trek" producer who said that new shows were generally given a large budget for the first season or two and then once established the budget dropped considerably. She said that one way for any shows producers to work with a small budget and stretch it out was to do "ship in a bottle" episodes. These are basically episodes that take place on the established sets with limited location shots and with the existing cast. I'm sure you know the type of episode I'm talking about as every sci-fi show has them. Like the TNG episode called "Remember me" where Dr. Crusher notices everyone on the Enterprise is disappearing. The whole episode takes place within the confines of the ship and has limited effects. Sure they brought in a character actor to play a role that episode but he couldn't have cost much over scale. In short, they saved money on that episode which they could then put towards the budget of a different episode.

No matter though as SGU is just too bloated with cast and bad story lines as to make any cost saving measure be effective enough to save the show.

 

[Aragon101]

What would happen if the producers of SGu are stuborn and use cost cutting technique to save the show. Do you think its possible that they could do such a thing?

I almost guarantee it, but cost cutting measures have a tendency to make something suck even more. SGU already has enough cheap cost long drawn out argument scenes, adding more and lessening the 'expensive' action is just going to hurt the show even more since they already suck at it

 

[Mr. A]

That would be as effective as putting a Band-aid on a torn artery so no worries there.

I remember reading an interview some years ago with a "Star Trek" producer who said that new shows were generally given a large budget for the first season or two and then once established the budget dropped considerably. She said that one way for any shows producers to work with a small budget and stretch it out was to do "ship in a bottle" episodes. These are basically episodes that take place on the established sets with limited location shots and with the existing cast. I'm sure you know the type of episode I'm talking about as every sci-fi show has them. Like the TNG episode called "Remember me" where Dr. Crusher notices everyone on the Enterprise is disappearing. The whole episode takes place within the confines of the ship and has limited effects. Sure they brought in a character actor to play a role that episode but he couldn't have cost much over scale. In short, they saved money on that episode which they could then put towards the budget of a different episode.

No matter though as SGU is just too bloated with cast and bad story lines as to make any cost saving measure be effective enough to save the show.

Quite true. I think the biggest cost factor in SGU is Robert Carlyle. There's no way to reduce that, as the show is done if he dies and he won't settle for just showing up in some episodes - it's not like he can do other gigs in BC to cover the lost income, and why should he submit to that?
Robert Carlyle's salary will be the undoing of SGU, followed maybe by Louis Ferreira's.

 

[MetalFoldingChair]

Quite true. I think the biggest cost factor in SGU is Robert Carlyle. There's no way to reduce that, as the show is done if he dies and he won't settle for just showing up in some episodes - it's not like he can do other gigs in BC to cover the lost income, and why should he submit to that?
Robert Carlyle's salary will be the undoing of SGU, followed maybe by Louis Ferreira's.

Lou Diamond Phillips salary has to be up there also. The sundry, lesser cast members don't get paid as much of course but there are so many of them that their collective salaries have to take a huge bite out of the budget too. There's a reason they had the four SG1 cast members do most of the heavy lifting in each episode and that's because of the cost of having more cast members. At the end of the day it's all about the money.

As for Rober Carlyle, well I think whatever they're paying him it's too much. He just doesn't bring any cache to the show at all in my opinion. If his agent was able to snag him a hefty salary then bully for him, but I don't know of anyone who goes out of their way to see anything he's in just for him. "The Full Monty" was ages ago and the last "big" thing he was in was a zombie sequel. Not exactly a big name star that attracts attention, but if the SGU folks were dumb enough to hire him at an exhorbitant rate then all the worse for them. Since his salary goes towards aiding the demise of this show (that should never have been made in the first place) then I'm quite happy with it. Same for Ming Na. "ER" was awhile ago and she really isn't exactly a draw, especially playing a bitchy, angry lesbian. Here's hoping TPTB give all these winners a hefty raise!

 

[Joelist]

I would expect that SGU lost money last season too. It pulled in a 1.6 which for a show costing about a million per episode more than SGA is pretty bad. Remember SGA delivered a 1.6 for a million less per episode than SGU.

Meanwhile Sanctuary troops along and delivers a 1.4 - 1.5 for a smaller budget than either show (about 1 to 1.25 million per episode or so). As such it turns a good profit. I expect Warehouse 13 and Eureka cost more per episode but they also pull in 3.3 to 3.4, so they will be very profitable.