Home entertainment has come a long way. From the humble beginning of free-to-air TV, it has evolved into cable television and in the last decade, on-demand services streamed via Internet. The latter, in turn, fuel consumers’ demand for more blockbuster-quality TV shows. In order to vie for our money, service providers jumped on original programming bandwagon in an effort to stand out from the competitions. And thanks to the competition, we get to enjoy TV shows like Orange Is The New Black and Games of Thrones, but while doing so, do you actually know how much was dropped by companies like HBO and Netflix to get these shows to us?
Well, we will save you the trouble of Googling for the answers; just take look at the infographic below which pretty much summarizes how much was spent to create popular blockbuster hits like The Big Bang Theory and how the competitions stacked against one another today. Oh before you get the colorful graphics with stats that would probably blow your mind, here’s a summary of the recent top TV shows and their cost per episode, stacked against viewer rating.
| Show | Network | Ave. budget per episode | Viewer rating (IMDB) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sense 8 | Netflix | $9,000,000 | 8.4 |
| Games of Thrones | HBO | $8,000,000 | 9.5 |
| Once Upon a Time | ABC | $4,500,000 | 8 |
| House of Cards | Netflix | $4,500,000 | 9 |
| Gotham | FX | $4,000,000 | 8 |
| The Big Bang Theory | CBS | $4,000,000 | 8.5 |
| Orange Is The New Black | Netflix | $4,000,000 | 8.4 |
| Daredevil | Netflix | $4,000,000 | 8.9 |
| Modern Family | ABC | $3,500,000 | 8.6 |
| Transparent | Amazon | $3,500,000 | 8 |
Now that you have a feel of the average cost per episode for some of the hit TV shows, do you know what’s major component of this cost? If you guessed salaries, well, you’d be right. That’s understandable when you have A-list actors in it which only could mean more stress for the advertising department, as the heat is on to recoup the money dropped into each show and possibly, roll in some decent profits for the network. Anyways, go ahead and check out the beautiful infographic for more on the costs of these blockbuster TV shows.
We want to thank OnStride for sharing these information with us and also to NeoMam Studios for pointing us to the right direction.
