Can you assign any parallel to the way tv shows generate ad revenue with tv stations and the way movies generate concession revenue for movie theaters? How many tv shows are created by production companies and simply sold to say, CBS and local affiliates (like they are movie theaters that need concession revenue) vs tv shows that are created by NBC themselves? Not sure how all that works and how it affects how likely a particular TV show would end up in an ala carte scenario.
All really good questions unfortunately I'm not familiar enough in those areas to give a really good answer. I don't know how well a movie studio/movie theater relationship could parallel with a TV Network/TV station relationship because movie studios and movie theaters are completely separate entities where as TV stations can be independently owned & operated, owned & operated by a TV network or affiliated/partnered with a TV network.
Good points you raise here.
Sure, movies get revenue directly from the consumer, but also later (much later) from TV and their advertisers.
TV shows however, also get their initial pay check from TV advertisers, although since the use of PVRs are now common place, I don't know how many people still sit thru commercials to justify that whole model.
The money trail for both movies and TVs gets pretty byzantine pretty quick (especially when you consider that pretty much each country requires a unique distribution deal) which is why I was keeping it very basic. For example, back in the day a movie would have a theatrical window, a rental window, a pay-per-view window, a retail window, a premiere cable window, a basic cable window and a broadcast TV window. Each one of those was a separate deal and each one was staggered so as not to step on each others toes. Then comes streaming VOD which steps on all their toes. Let the hilarity ensue!
The estimates I gave were just the production costs. Factoring in marketing will of course increase the costs for both movies and TV shows.I think your estimate is quite on the low side when you factor in marketing costs that have been soaring:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/200-million-rising-hollywood-struggles-721818
Total up front costs are definitely in the 3 figure millions these days, except for indie films.
I'm still hoping that aside from the existing sales models, that we will see an a-la-carte download model.
You have it, you just don't have it at the price you want it at.
For example, you mentioned wanting an a la carte option on a show by show basis. Who pays the money up front to get the show made so it can show up on iTunes (or whichever service)? Typically content creators won't have the money to make the show themselves so they will shop the idea around (maybe even a pilot) to different networks/channels until they find a buyer. If network/channel foots the bill to make the show it's for the sole purpose of getting viewers to watch their channel so (and I know I'm repeating myself) why would they want to give people the option to watch their show someplace else? It's a completely foreign concept to them as TV (and radio before that) has always been ad driven (hence some of the clunky attempts at solutions so far).
The streaming companies are basically following the same pattern of making their own exclusive content though. Can I stream the current season of House of Cards on Amazon? The current season of Transparent on Hulu? The current season of Quickdraw on Netflix? Nope. Today people complain about NBC and FOX, maybe the next generation will complain about Netflix and Hulu.
Apologies for the rambling, but I think this is a fun topic to talk about.