Revenue streams are growing; strike also hot
Networks have need to fill skeds in case of walkout
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Rob Weller, co-owner of Weller/Grossman Prods., one of the most active suppliers of reality programming to cable networks, says he's getting inquiries from broadcasters seeking to buy non-scripted series in the event of a writers' strike this spring.
Speaking at an ALTV panel on "The Cable Connection," Weller said that his company's reputation as a producer of thousands of hours of non-fiction series has made it a magnet for networks that will be desperate to fill their schedules during a strike.
The panel also discussed the growth of cable networks "as a moneymaking part of the business," said Weller's partner Gary Grossman.
Cable's revenue expansion has fueled a ramping up of license fees to reality-show producers by veteran cable networks like the Learning Channel and AMC, both of which had representatives on the panel.
But while the mass-circulation cable networks are ponying up bigger bucks, the startup networks can offer only anorexic fees, said the panel's host Marc Summers, who produces non-fiction series for Food Network and History Channel.
Summers got a laugh from the audience when he pointed out that he had to produce a show for Nickelodeon 15 years ago for a minuscule $9,000 an episode, with the punchline that he's now in production on a show for the modestly circulated Health Network for - you guessed it - $9,000 an episode. (He's producing series for as much as $1 million an episode as well.)
Weller agreed that license fees are usually tied to the overall financial health of the given cable network.
One of the problems non-fiction producers run into, said Susan Cohen-Dickler, president of Banyan Prods., is that it's very hard to keep even the carefully drawn-up budget of a reality series from shooting up by 25% more than expected in the first season.
Banyan, based in Philadelphia and which has 100 employees on its payroll, may be forced to absorb these overages as the cost of doing business.
Companies like Banyan and Weller/Grossman can handle such extra costs because they have what Weller calls "an infrastructure," which allows them to cover losses from one project with profits from another long-running series.
"But when we eat these overages on the first season of a series," Weller says, "we're also hoping and praying for a second season," when presumably the show has succeeded enough for the network to raise the license fees.
