One of our TV producers came to me this week saying he needs $20,000 for a special effect she wants to use in the season finale of the show. We can’t afford to give her that, so do we tell her now and risk losing viewers and this producer or do we let her accept product placement in the show to pay for it? Why or why not?
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I would let the producer know right away that the network can’t afford the product she wants. I would give alternative suggestions that would be similar to the effect she wants but the suggestions will be in our price range and more doable. You shouldn’t wait to tell the producer that there is a problem. It wastes time from coming up with another solution. There is no reason to go over budget when you can find a reasonable replacement that will work just the same.
Before any show is produced, a budget has to be set for that production. A producer should have a pretty good handle on allocating those funds in such a way that production spending does not exceed the budget. The scripts for each show are also written out in advance so everything that is to come in future episodes is already known. It should not be a surprise to the producer that the special affect desired would be expensive. Knowing this in advance, she should not have come to you last-minute in desperation. As far as I’m concerned, this producer has no real ability to handle funds and no consideration for her boss. It would probably be worth your time and money to find a new producer.
That’s a tough one, I honestly think goign for product placement would be the best bet. The reason being is that losing a producer and viewers could cost you big money in the long run, viewers bring in the money and with a great producer the show can gain more and more popularity which can turn a low viewed show into a show everyone watches every night before they go to be and in turn talk to their friends about it and others. However though, when making product placement you have to be careful cause the company will tell you how long they want their product in their and how they want it to look they don’t want someone bashing their product but show people how great their product is. Like soemone is eating or drinking something and when they are done they say, I wish I had more of this or do you know how good this tasted. Furthermore people like it when you can make it subtle and not just obvious like throwing it in their faces, taking their view out of the show. It just all depends on you want everything to go down, do you want to risk losing a great producer who brings in the views or just throwing in some product placements keeping the viewers their as well as the producer, just have to think ahead for the long run.
I agree, we have to be careful on how much power we are willing to allow the company to have when placing their product in our show. Too much of a plug and we will lose the viewers we are trying to keep. Nothing riles their ire more than a show trying to trick or persuade them into buying something, interrupting their enjoyment of our program. If we go too far, or allow the company to go too far, we will lose not only our viewers forever, but also our show.
Well, I guess it all depends on how good this producer is. I tend to agree with njcady13, the producer should have definitely already known that the budget had no room for that kind of expense. If this is a game changing producer, then you want to keep this producer happy and on board. I think that you don’t risk losing viewers and a producer. You give the producer the funds for the special effects and find the money to pay for it. You can only accomplish this by having product placement in the show to pay for the special effects.
I think product placement is the only way out of this predicament. We can’t afford to lose the show and if the producer thinks this special effect in the season finale will be a big hit, then we need to let her follow through. And hopefully she is right. We could stand to gain in the end.
But since we don’t have it in the budget right now, lets take a sponsor who’s willing to pay to have their product placed in the show, like Pepsi or Budweiser, and no one will be the wiser. No harm done.
Chapter 11 Public Relations (not sure where this goes)
I think it is ok to have a bit of PR stories and advertorials, but it would certainly depend on their content. But if we don’t have enough stories to fill the pages, I think the best thing to do would be to fill the lack with human interest stories that we keep on file for just such occasions. Reprint old editorials and Dear Abby. We wouldn’t want to put off our readers by lowering our standards, even for a week.
When there is not enough news and local events to report on, perhaps it is time for an essay contest. But I find it hard to believe, that we couldn’t come up with something of interest. A few phone calls to the local schools could reveal a goldmine of community news.
Advertorials and PR stories have become common place throughout the media, but the public is catching on and we wouldn’t want to damage their trust in us to bring them the real news.
I think we should give her the okay to accept product placement so we can keep our viewers and also for the continued success of the show. A season finale is a big deal, it needs to either provide a huge dramatic and explosive impact, or have a suspenseful cliffhanger in order to keep the attention and interest of our viewers that would last through the break to the next season start-up.
The problem we run into if we allow product placement into the episode is that the viewers can show their dissatisfaction by the plug in of the product. We need to ensure that this placement doesn’t take away from the show’s content. We also have to be careful of how we do the placement, so we do not strongly link ourselves to that brand, thus alienating other brand competitors from our business. The special effects for the show must be worth the risks of adding in a product placement, and if our viewers are still hooked when the new season commences, then it will be a gamble that will have paid off.
I vote that we accept product placement to get the special effect. After all, it is the season finale, and if we’re able to send it out with a bang, more hype will be generated for the next season, earning us more money in the long run. Product placement is a small price to pay for having a memorable scene that the show would be lackluster without. Wouldn’t Game of Thrones be pretty lame if the dragons were never shown because HBO didn’t want to spend the money on CGI?
It has been shown that a good finale makes a lasting thought for those who follow the program and every show is attempting to one up each other. The use of product placement would make it easy to have the special effect in the finale. It also depends on the type of show it is as if it was something like supernatural or the flash the effect is practically needed and product placement is a small issue when having that memorable episode.
I don’t think that we should give in. Yes, product placement would pay for it and we could do really well with the program! However, we set a budget. The budget is something that is set very early in the game, and there is a reason that it exists. I wish I knew more details about this situation, but seeing as I don’t, that’s my opinion. If our producer is a good one, she’ll use her resources. I know it’s a huge risk to take, and maybe it’ll flop. However, I think that it’s important to stick to the budget. If we were able to pull unspent money from other areas of production that we had budgeted but didn’t use, then maybe we could swing it. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Unless she can show and prove that the show will flop without these special effects, then we should stick to the budget and figure out something else.
After I wrote the above paragraph, I searched to see what a typical episode costs. 2 million dollars? Wow. Seeing that number makes 20,000 seem super small. I still stand by my decision, but I thought that was interesting. I figured it had to cost a lot to produce one episode if one special effect cost 20,000 dollars.