Re: And we wonder why our cable and internet rates are going up ....
Adjusted for inflation, Star Trek TNG cost 2.38 mil per episode and raked in 7.64 mil per episode in profit (10 mil gross). That's 260million for the season
Edit: to put that in perspective: Reversing the calculation that show is the equivalent of $590,000 per episode compared to TNG - about the same cost as a micro budget film.
Edit 2: Also only $90,000 more than what a reality TV episode cost at the time.
One Million per episode ... that's typically 13 episodes per season ... 2 per year ... total 26 MILLION dollars. That's less than the average person earns in a 40 year career! And that gets reflected in programming costs that the studios charge the stations that charge the cable / satellite /telco tv cos who charge us. And they'll try to get it from every source they can ... TV, Internet, phone.
I N S A N E!
I just checked, and the Big Buck Theory generated 24 half-hour eps in each of seasons 4, 6, & 7; 23 eps in seasons 2,3, & 4; and 17 eps in season 1.
I find this trend interesting and exceptional, as it is the norm of many a successful series to negotiate to produce progressively LESS episodes per season for the later years, as part of their escalating contracts, to offset increasing actor salaries.
There was also a special during season 5, which included previous footage, and an alternate unaired version of the Premiere/Pilot.
I was able to pick up three Burlington, VT stations (with strong enough signals to be good quality). All three were PBS. If memory serves, two were HD, one was SD, and all three were showing different content.
Most likely that's just three streams from a single channel, not three channels. But still pretty nice.
You're right, they're 57.1, 57.2, and 57.3. One is 1080i, two are 480i. Apparently this means they all share the same 6MHz channel.
They do all three show different content, though. They really are three distinct feeds, even if they fit in the same channel.
They're currently broadcasting at 55 kW, but have an application to the FCC pending for 200 kW. Seems like that would help with reception in Montreal, since I can get the signal with the right indoor antenna placement at 55kW.
Try tuning in on 33.1 (UHF 32), they now have 2 1080i feeds and 2 480i feeds on the same channel, all different programming, the picture quality is still pretty amazing considering.
Try tuning in on 33.1 (UHF 32), they now have 2 1080i feeds and 2 480i feeds on the same channel, all different programming, the picture quality is still pretty amazing considering.
Yeah, one of the stations in Rochester has multiple HD subchannels, though they run them all in 720p to reduce bandwidth requirements.
The show is actually pretty shit and morphed into "Leonard's relationship drama show" personally though I think OTA may be doomed once we get h.265 and 4k since neither side will want to replace all their gear
The show quickly turned into "Friends 2.0". Hollywood really needs a new cookbook, 'cause everything tastes like last decade's pie. sbrook is correct, overpaid actors topped only by overpaid executives are a major driver of costs we absorb whether we watch or not.
Which won't impact me, who switched to OTA Not that there are many English-language OTA stations in Montreal, but I get CTV/CBC/Global/City, which isn't have bad for "free". I could also get three PBS stations from Burlington with a better antenna.
I still think that OTA is a colossal waste of spectrum that could be used enormously more efficiently by licensing it for mobile use with a provision that the resulting LTE networks must carry multicast h.265 streams of the stations that the network replaces with free access to the TV streams, mind you. But as long as we're wasting the spectrum on the TV stations, I'm gonna take advantage of it.
Considering that OTA is saving me $90/m that I was forking over to Rogers for crap I wasn't watching anyways, I think its an excellent use of the spectrum thanks
But seriously, I believe that free OTA has to survive otherwise we would have *no* option other than to get taken for a ride by a BDU cramming channels down our throats that we neither want to watch or pay for.
Hell, even the *basic* tier on Rogers and Bell has channels that I would never watch nor would I want to support with my money.
Free OTA (or equivalent) can survive without being so wasteful. Even if you absolutely want to maintain the traditional broadcast structure, you could mandate that channels must broadcast in h.265 or better with a 2MHz channel width... and reduce the number of channels reserved for any given territory. The FM band is underutilized too. When was the last time you saw a city with 100 complete FM radio stations? Montreal has only 24, although there are a few American stations that consider Montreal as their primary market (Montreal is ten times bigger than the combined population of the Burlington/Plattsburgh markets, so guess who the primary advertising targets on the American stations are).
Other parts of the world made the transition to digital radio, so we can too.
We've had digital radio operating in Canada for many years. The fact that you aren't aware of that is part of the reason why it hasn't caught on. That, and the Americans went with HD radio which is entirely different than DAB and thus there was never any real push for it.