Party Down: Some Amateur Accounting
“Party Down” got canceled yesterday and that’s a huge bummer for me and at least 17 other people.
In July of 2008, I was working on a piece for Tilzy.tv (now Tubefilter) about the economics of “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” and I reached out to Rob Thomas, creator and executive producer of the also canceled-too-soon “Veronica Mars” (and subsequently of “Party Down”) for comments. His response wasn’t really relevant to the post I was writing (which I never finished), but it’s interesting, if a little sad, to read now:
As we speak, I’m downloading Dr. Horrible. I’m curious about how it turned out.
I suspect that Joss has the resources to back this sort of venture that I don’t have. I’ll be curious to see whether he’s able to make money doing it.
I did just shoot a self-financed half-hour comedy [Party Down] in my house. I made it for $150,000, but everyone was doing it at “favor rate.” We’ve put together the numbers, and it would cost $500,000 in real wages if it were to go to series. At the $150,000 cost per episode, I might be tempted to make episodes and sell them on iTunes. At a half-million, the risk is too great, and I simply don’t have the resources to be my own studio. (And, incidentally, those figures are with me making zero dollars.)
We have a cable network offer to put ten episodes on the air, though there are a few more hurdles to cross.
Even if 1) Thomas had been able to sustainably produce “Party Down” at $150k/episode and 2) the 74,000 people (according to Nielsen) who watched it on TV, plus another 25,000 (unfounded assumption) Netflix streaming viewers each payed $1.99 for each episode on iTunes… that’s only $199,000 gross. If iTunes takes 30%, now we’re at $139,000…
A Soup ‘R Crackers franchise would be a better investment.
So, lesson learned (again). Next time an awesome show hits the air (or the web for that matter) let’s not wait ‘till it gets canceled to start evangelizing, k?
