Somebody earlier in the thread said the colour of money was 200k an episode, beat the star 1 million an episode and the cube 450k an episode. 200k an episode for millionaire looks an bit low to me.

I think Millionaire's costs per episode are lower because so many episodes are made per series, bringing down the average cost per episode.

Im surprised Itv1 didnt hold up better with the great ratings it had for the x factor and doc martin.

If you average those figures BBC1 24.2% - ITV1 23.8%. Very close and very good figures for both sides.

That might be it and Chris Tarrant must be a lot cheaper these days considering he is doing an new show on Watch.

Thanks for this. No wonder ITV originally axed Primeval as it was making a loss of about £500,000 per episode! They must be getting a pretty good deal on series 4 and 5 for them to change their minds.

Over the Summer, ITV aired the Australian version of Ladette To Lady, which they paid an exceptionally cheap £25,000 per episode for, so therefore they made a profit of about £300,000 per episode on it!

The Fixer is just dead now. A shame because it seems to be one of the more ambitious ITV dramas of recent years. And WWTBAM is very much a non-event now. I think its numbers likely depend on what its opposition is. Its that sort of TV wallpaper - to watch if theres nothing else on.

Ratings pretty uninspired all round last night, to be frank. Jamie doesn't seem to high on Channel 4 - he certainly doesn't seem to generate the attention he used to any more.

Some good timeshifts in the officials. Nice to see Merlin pulling a hefty 0.7 timeshift too. Thats a big proportion of its audience and must be pleasing for BBC One.

Oh, and I stumbled across this yesterday that I thought some people might appreciate about Live From Studio Five. Yet again, Charlie Brooker sums up everything I think far more eloquently and hilariously than I ever could:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-rad...ve-studio-five

I think George is right. This article says that it costs £180,000 per episode:


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/me...v-1629293.html

Edit: 10,000th post !

Yeah. Some of the articles today are saying BBC Worldwide are paying the bulk of the cost for Primeval.

Does make you realise that a lot of drama ITV shows must be making them a loss. At rough estimates, 5m viewers would seem to be the minimum benchmark although that doesn't take repeats into account.

Thanks for letting me know.My God, they must have made a lot of cash from it, back when it was very popular.

Congrats on 10,000 posts RZT

In regards primeval

''In the new funding structure BBC Worldwide has overtaken ITV to become the largest partner, with BBC America''

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009...recommissioned

How much does the average episode of an ITV drama cost? Because, Blue Murder, for instance, with it's 5m viewers, would need to be less than about £550,000 per episode to make a profit, which I doubt it is.

Doesn't WWTBAM have a preminum phoneline, I imagine that ITV and 2waytraffic make a good bit of money from that aspect of the show.

Drama does make a loss intially but they make it back through international sales and syndication. Lewis is expensive but I imagine it makes it money back through those sales and repeats on ITV1 and ITV3.

Yeah I thinks it the same with Poirot and Marple

Hmmm, not sure. Isn't Doctor Who something like £800,000-900,000 per episode?

So a normal crime drama would be around £600,000-800,000 as a guess. Big adaptations like Wuthering Heights was reported to be £1m per episode, although that was a co-production so ITV would have paid less.

As Jonwo says, repeats can rate well and cover the costs. Also there's sponsorship to take into account in addition to advertising revenue which can rise if there are more viewers from ABC1 demographic.

Gameshows are pretty much the cheapest things to make. Millionaire probably cost ITV far more at its prime than it does now but that would just have been higher fee's for the format and probably paying Chris Tarrant more.

Showtime (premium channel owned by CBS) will be teaming up with BBC2 to make a television based sitcom starring Matt Le Blanc (Friends). Due on both channels in 2010.

http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/09/30...m-satire/29018

Was the Colour of Money actually making a loss then if it cost them so little to make it in the first place? Maybe they just axed it for their own ethical reasons as it was so awful! I wonder what came about of the two international versions of the format that were being piloted.

I read on one of those gameshow websites that the colour of money was actually for daytime and orginally hosted ny Mark Durden Smith. Then an unnamed Itv entertainment exec saw the pilot and got over excited.

Period dramas do well in the ratings and sell well abroadd but rarely are they produced solely by the broadcaster who commisioned it with the exception of Lark Rise to Candleford which is based in one or two places and probably cost half of what a period drama usually costs. WGBH Boston is usually the co-producer of quite a few of them.

This shows that the average BBC1 primetime drama series costs £630-700k per hour, so if you reduce this to 45 minutes for ITV, it works out at £470-525k per episode. This was last updated in 2006, though, so you can probably add a bit onto these figures, which suggests that ITV dramas need a minimum of about 5m to breakeven, so it's clear why ITV are cutting down.

Wuthering Heights cost £1m per hour, so £3m for the two episodes, so they'll have made a loss on that, which may be made back by international sales. They seem prepared to make a certain amount of losses on drama to boost their profile, but this does seem to be where they're cutting down.

I think it was a producer on prime suspect as well

Yesterday's This Morning averaged 1m (22%). Source: ITV Insider

Also ITV has confirmed their schedules for Saturday 10th - Friday 16th October. Saturday:

19:30- Harry Hill's TV Burp
20:00- The X Factor
22:00- Piers Morgan's Life Stories

Joan Does Glamour confirmed for Tuesday at 9pm, England v Belarus is on Wednesday. Everything else is pretty much the same as the previous week.

ITV seem to be completely ignoring BBC1 when comprising their Saturday schedule, probably as they know X Factor can beat Strictly comfortably. Piers Morgan is in the perfect slot but his ratings will probably depend on who his guests are.

Ratings on the up??

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Looking at the top 10 programmes the show that stands out for me is Doc Martin managing a 0.6m timeshift despite the Scottish audience for whatever was shown at 9pm being taken away. I think it will increase quite a bit this Sunday.

Last night very poor for The Fixer, but I don't know what ITV expected putting it on a Tuesday up against CSI:Miami and other strong competition from BBC2 and Ch4.