How do TV shows earn money and how to find the stats about it?

Whenever a big budget movie comes out we see some statistics like first week earning breaks this and that record. So money/earning also became a source of addressing success or failure for that movie. IMDb shows us some stats like budget for the movie, gross earning, net earning.

Though it can't be a measurement for the quality of the movie, but somewhat it gives an idea that yes this is a popular movie. Specially I use this stat sometimes for movies that are not in English. It helps me somehow to have an idea about the popularity of the movie (hit or flop factor).

But for a TV show the above case is not true. The front end audience only gets to know a TV show is on for next season or not (to my knowledge). Earning stats are not that much revealed that even if a show is a hit, it it cut off because of the earning!

So here are a few questions. How is budget calculated, season wise or episode by episode? How is earning or profit calculated? Is there any way to see those stats like for movies in IMDb? And lastly how do TV shows actually earn money? Is it only through advertisement?

Best Answer

TV Stations are constantly updating their 'revenue map' - this is how much money they make at certain times on certain days - it's really just an annual calendar, it has to be annual to take into account seasonal variations (viewing drops in the summer) and special events (Christmas, easter etc.). These figures are actually very easy to compile because they're based on real revenue earned in previous months/quarters/years - they try not to speculate about this. Actual viewing figures are really more used for revenue creation, i.e. ad sales. The Nielsen system in the US is actually one of the least accurate and most costly viewing management figure systems in the world as it only captures a very small sample of viewing data - but it's a well known and understood mechanism and nobody's too keen to replace it because they all know how to manipulate it!

They then commission shows to the budget they can afford for a certain slot, so if it's a 2am Sunday morning show the budget is smaller than say a Saturday 9pm slot. They know they'll get it wrong all the time, a supposed-hit will fail, a smaller show will blow-up - but over the course of a year they balance out and in the absence of a crystal-ball it's the best system available.

In the US, UK and several other countries the broadcasting channels are bound by rules/guidance to publish viewing figures but that's not the case for the online-only companies such as NetFlix, Amazon Prime etc. They get to hold onto their data as they wish and in fact have VERY accurate viewing figures as their playouts are inherently log'able and reportable. I'm the designer of a similar system to these and we get a staggering amount of data back that we can use to understand viewing patterns and this really does help with predicting future viewing figures.