Dollars & Sense

  • Over the past 10 years, Producers paid in excess of $10 billion in residuals, including at least $1 billion to WGA members.

  • In 2006, the average MPAA film cost over $100 million to produce, market and distribute in the domestic market, and approximately another $40 million if released overseas.

  • Six out of 10 movies never recoup their original investment (from all windows).

  • In television, some 85 - 90% of series fail before they can be syndicated.  The average deficit (production costs less license fee) for the first season of a one-hour series is $26.4 - $33 million and is $8.8 - $15.4 million for a half-hour series.

  • For the 2006/07 television season, the top-rated broadcast network averaged 4.4% of the total viewing audience, which means on average it captured 12.5 million viewers out of an estimated 285.5 million total viewers.

  • For the 2006/07 television season, 6 of the TOP 10 series were non-scripted programming.

  • For the 2007/08 television season, scripted series hit an all-time low of 67% down from 81% just two seasons ago (that represents 64 of 96 series on five networks).

  • Per the MPAA, member studios lost $6.1 billion to worldwide piracy in 2005, around $2.4 billion to bootlegging, $1.4 billion to illegal copying and $2.3 billion to Internet piracy.  This also means a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in residual payments. And, the figure jumps to an estimated $20 billion when factoring in the cascading effect of losses to other industries directly tied into the entertainment industry, such as film equipment manufacturers, ad agencies and caterers.

  • According to a 2006 MPAA nationwide study: the motion picture and television production industry is responsible for 1.3 million U.S. jobs, generates $30.24 billion in annual wages, funnels $10 billion in taxes each year to federal and state governments and contributes more than $30 billion annually into the local Los Angeles-area economy.

  • Revenues obtained in the initial market of release no longer cover the costs of production, much less distribution and marketing.  There is no such thing as supplemental or ancillary or secondary market any longer and hasn’t been for years.  All windows and media are needed for the vast majority of productions just to recoup initial costs, much less break even or make a profit.