MyNetworkTV soaps' budget

[Sylph]

Does anyone know how much on average did the episode of one of those cost?

[Snark]

Title:

MyNetworkTV Nears WGA Deal.

Authors:

Hibberd, James

Source:

Television Week; 8/14/2006

Writers working on MyNetworkTV's year-round telenovela project are near a deal to gain union status, sources said.

Since last year, writers employed by Twentieth Television's upcoming U.S.-based telenovela dramas "Desire" and "Secret Obsessions" have been working without a guild contract. As first reported by TelevisionWeek March 13, the company deemed the writers "translators" since the projects are adaptations of previously produced telenovelas from other countries.

The fight echoes the ongoing efforts of reality show story editors, who are likewise trying to gain union status in an emerging genre.

Fox Television Stations CEO Jack Abernethy, who oversees MyNetworkTV, last week broke the network's silence on the dispute and defended the translator term.

"The point we're trying to make is these are not scripts we're testing," he said. "These are scripts that work very, very well. The point to focus on translating was to emphasize that we are not starting from scratch. We're taking scripts that were hits around the world and translating them to English."

Paul Buccieri, head of production for Twentieth, said the company employs translators to transfer the original scripts to English. Writers then adapt the material further. Twentieth is the programming and distribution arm of Fox TV Stations. The division is producing the programming to be featured on MyNetworkTV.

"There are writers who adapt the material, yes," Mr. Buccieri said. "We're not shying away from that."

Mr. Abernethy and Mr. Buccieri portrayed negotiations with the WGA as nearly finished.

"We have come to agreements with everybody," Mr. Buccieri said. "We'll come to a conclusion that everybody will be happy with soon. We want to create a situation where everybody wins."

The WGA declined to comment, but sources said an agreement is expected shortly.

When MyNetworkTV launches Sept. 5, the two-hour nightly prime-time telenovela block will signal the start of 600 hours per year of original programming. The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists have unionized the production on behalf of many crew positions and actors.

Mr. Buccieri said the project's scope made keeping production costs, which reportedly top out at about $500,000 per episode, a key priority.

"Sometimes we have nine units shooting at the same time and employing thousands of actors … that's a massive amount of production," he said. "Yet we made a decision to keep the production in the United States, to keep these jobs here."

[MarkH]

Now, what is the per-episode cost of Y&R and of GL (I'm asking here, because I imagine those two are maximum and minimum)? Is there any human way we can guess or find out?

[Sylph]

This is precisely why I asked - to compare the look of these shows, which had lower budget than daytime soaps, with daytime look.

Sure, MyNetworkTV shows at first weren't union shows, meaning that writers (or "translators", as MyNetworkTV called them) weren't under the protection of the Guild, so they saved some money there. But after the agreement with the Guild, the costs skyrocketted.

[EricMontreal22]

I never managed to catch any of these but they sounded ridicuulously bad...

[Drew]

Desire and Fashion House were good. Desire ended up being the better of the two, FH's story got away from itself in the last half and didnt seem to know where it was going.

Wicked Wicked Games looked interesting, but my canadian affiliate was my only option for watching it in the true widescreen and they dropped them after Desire and FH ended. The two MyNet affilites I get from the US chose to crop the video to a fake "full screen", which left people's heads out of view while they were the focus of scenes, and text cut off the sides - basically making it unwatchable.

[EricMontreal22]

That was my prob--no Canadian affiliate showed them here, and I was going to download but really bitorrenting a show EVERY DAY was just too much That's pretty shocking about how poorly the pan and scan was done for a show that was aimed primarily to people who prob had cheap 4:3 sets...

[detroitpiston]

I agree Drew, Fashion House and Desire were good. Wicked Wicked Games was horrible at first, got really good in the middle, and then got crappy again when they made Blythe have DID, which IMO was a total cop out. Watch Over Me started off good, and then got bad, really bad, and never recovered. I thought the last two telenovela's were the best, especially Saints & Sinners, and wish they would have been given more of a chance. What killed them was making the episodes two hours. I just wasn't willing to commit that much time to a show. I still would like to see the two shows re-aired so we can see all the episodes.