I am producing a half-hour pilot for an animated kids series... and am trying to determine the appropriate budget level.
Can anyone give me guidance on the fees generally paid for US broadcast rights for...
a) prime time on premium cable (Disney Channel / Nickleodeon, etc.)
b) Saturday morning Network
c) basic cable (Discovery Kids / HBO Family, etc.)???
I understand prime time cable budgets on shows like Power Rangers, and live action like Lizzie Maguire, etc. are in the $500k to $550k range per half hour... but basic cable is much less.
Thanks
license fees are always negotiable so it depends on your content and the kind of deal you get.
for your budget ideally you need to use the prod criteria to creat a price.
story, v+o, production, post.
depending on how well you do the above, if you are going 2d,3d,Flash and how much post prod work you need, you should be able to arrive at a budget.
Thanks for the comments... but it isn't quite the information that I am seeking.
We thoroughly know the costs of the production.
What we are creating is a financial model (US TV licensing, International TV licensing by territory, DVD licensing territoy by territory, merchandising, etc.) to piece together the financing for an entire series... thus more creative control and hopefully greater profits.
The information I am seeking is the "general" price paid for a "typical" show on...
a) prime time family cable
b) saturday morning
c) basic cable family channels
Most networks pay within a very specific range that works within their business model (i.e. in live action, for a Sci Fi Channel original movie, they will pay between $500k to $700k and if it outside of this range they usually don't buy it). These are very specific ranges of license fees.
We have lots of experience in live action feature film and TV movie production and distribution, and I am seeking someone with similar distribution experience in animation to provide us the ranges of US domestic license fees in each of the above categories.
Thanks for your thoughts.
If you contact a rep from these networks they are usualy pretty open to giving out that information. The amount that they do give can be quite a range depending on the network and is usualy broken down by episode. I'm not too knowedgable about the US fees but in canada it can be around 10% of your total cost. More depending on what you can negotiate. So if you have a 13 episode series at $500 K and ep you could be looking at $50 K an ep.
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I'm not sure, but I think licensing fees are only about $20,000 per episode.
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The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself
Hi Marty,
Let me see if I can help. There are these websites on Internet which give out the information to question which you are asking. One such website which I used for answer, to a similar query like that of yours is C21media.net. No I am not there representative or something but it really gave out the figures of license fees across territories in all continents. Of course this info is not free and you have to become a member of the site or something like that. I took up 10 day period membership and utilised the service.
Let me know if this is of any help to you.
HS
Atish,
whats happening man?