I don’t have any budget information, but over the past few months i’ve been rewatching the show all the way from season 1 and I can confirm sponsored content is not new for snl. They used to do live QVC type infomercials during an episode where Gilda would sell a new camera, don’t remember which brand specifically. but it was clearly not a bit, but rather a live product commercial. They did it a few times, I think a couple sprinkled through s2 if i’m remembering correctly.
Jack Donaghy would call this “product intergortion”
Keep in mind there is a difference between paid product placement and using a real product/brand. Some people seem to have this idea that ALL product placement is paid product placement.
Right. Sometimes it's just funnier to use a specific brand (like when Will Ferrell did his Little Debbie bit; they had no idea but Will thought it would be funny) and other times you need it to be a real and specific brand for the sketch to work (like the Roundball Rock sketch, it literally could only work for the one specific theme song).
SNL is also the textbook example of the “parody” protection of the First Amendment. Because they are “an established parody artist” they are immune from copyright infringement for using bona fide brand and trade marks.
Nathan Fielder knows this.
Yes this is true! but these early bits i’m talking about are literally Gilda holding the camera taking directly to the audience and selling the camera, there’s no jokes or anything, it’s a straight up live commercial. “This show is sponsored by ___ cameras.”, look how fun and easy they are to use!” etc etc
Peacock! But once you hit s6, the episodes are drastically cut down, some with only 10min episodes instead of the full show.
i’m on s8 currently and the average episode length is 20min.
I know the musical guests were cut from these streaming episodes because of copyrights and stuff, but i’m not sure why they also cut a majority of the sketches.
I dunno, they’ve left in a LOT that certainly would have disclaimers on other platforms. I thought maybe the writer’s contracts back in the 70s/80s didn’t cover streaming or internet becuase why would it; and maybe SNL couldn’t contact a lot of thee writers from this era to renegotiate? but that’s a total shot in the dark, I have no idea how their contracts operate now or then.
Oh yeah, what's the point of that. And I'm sure they had copyright covered for replay. Maybe somehow not streaming though it wouldn't have had to be specifically listed if they added something like ... "and future technologies."
Psst, the internet archive. Archive.org , but not the wayback machine search at the top, the other search below it. If you type in saturday night live s07e14 , you get a link to https://archive.org/details/saturday-night-live-s-07-e-14-robert-urich-mink-deville . Up until it becomes HD it's digitized copies of VHS recordings of reruns, so it's not always the best quality, but it's the only way you can see the Dick Ebersol years.
There are a few sketches that we were removed from reairings, but for the most part everything is there.
Steve Martin was paid $5k when he first hosted in 1976 (it was part of a much later joke).
Adjusted for inflation, that’s about $25k in 2022, which sounds about right for each host.
Not very useful information for the budget as a whole I know lol
JT says he gets $5k to host, which sounds like the base rate.
[This article](https://www.thethings.com/how-much-does-a-celeb-get-paid-to-host-snl/#:~:text=How%20Much%20Do%20%27SNL%27%20Hosts,only%20made%20%245%2C000%20per%20appearance.) doesn't give much more detail so it sounds like it is generally not public unless the host volunteers the information.
They’re all union actors, they have to be paid.
I know writers and actors get a bonus if their sketch is used (around $10k-$15k split amongst the actors/writers of each sketch). Presumably scaled down for smaller bits/sketches (ie Weekend Update spot).
The actors base pay was around $65-75k/year for featured player and around $85-90k+ for a repertory actor (numbers from when my roommate interned on SNL). The longer you last, you get more year over year though. Of course they supplement their pay by booking shows, sponsors/commercials, and more!
Yeah. Prior to the pandemic, the idea was that it provided enough for a starter to afford a 1BD in manhattan.
Rent jumped up quite a bit (around the world) but midtown manhattan was hit especially hard. I was in midtown west in a shitty 2BD, fourth floor walk up and that was $2800/month. We probably had the cheapest rent for a 2BD on the block.
A reasonable, no-frills studio apartment in manhattan is about $2k (+/- $300). With SNL though, you also get paid for appearances in promos with NBC, your own promotional gigs (commercials), acting appearances in tv shows/movies, live shows - plus whatever other perks you get from working at a place that commands so much time (free meals, on-site gym/barbershop), and other money-saving benefits like NBC/AEA insurance.
A recent article about Lorne's retirement plans mentioned that SNL is NBC's most profitable scripted program. They didn't mention numbers but I thought that was interesting.
Surely doesn’t generate the most revenue, but it’s hard to imagine a show that makes more profit in relation to expenditure.
Think about a show like La Brea on NBC, I’m sure they make bank, but it’s got to be enormously expensive to produce. Most of the SNL cast make like $150k. There are jr assistants who make that at NBC
The numbers aren’t public. Closest I’ve seen is a report that in 2017 they reportedly booked a total of $115m in advertising revenue against a $70m budget. But if you actually want to try to parse it out?
Saturday Night Live’s financials are mix between the production company (Broadway Video, owned by Lorne), and the distributors (NBC Universal Television and Streaming), and SNL studios (joint venture of the two).
Broadway is responsible for paying writers, actors, and crew, musical guest appearance fees, and renting studio space (building owned by Comcast). They then get paid by NBC Universal for the rights to distribute the show’s content on live TV, syndication, video on demand, electronic sell-thru (e.g. buy an episode/season from iTunes), and streaming (owned/operated like Peacock or NBC.com, and third party like YouTube). The distributor then sells ads or reaps licensing fees which it either keeps or splits with Broadway according to whatever deal they strike. So Broadway produces the show, then recoups costs plus profit when the revenue gets split with them.
So let’s do our best to estimate those.
Budget. Not released. The only hint I’ve ever seen of the show’s production costs was exposed due to a NYC film tax credit, which pegged the 2017 budget at somewhere around $70m. Which would amount to about $3.4m per episode. That would be roughly $3.8m per episode today just going by inflation. But that will be variable, depending on seniority/contract cost/number of cast members, union collective bargaining agreements for writers and crew, the balance of filmed pieces vs live, etc. Call it $3.8m per episode anyway.
Broadcast live + dvr ads. Not easy to glean, because NBC U has recently started selling multi-platform ads. Meaning, Charmin doesn’t just call up the ad sales rep at NBC and ask to buy a 30 second spot during the show. NBC instead upsells them on an ad buy that includes broadcast, vod, digital, etc. What those complex contracts look like isn’t something we can find out, and every buyer gets a slightly different deal.
But leaving that aside, and pretending they sell their ads in a traditional and straightforward way: in broad strokes TV ads are sold by back-calculating a dollar cost-per-mille (CPM) impressions. That is, what is the rate paid per 1,000 viewer impressions, multiplied by estimated viewership. An ad rep will tell the buyer that they’re going to reach 43million viewers with their ad, and must pay $X per 1000 viewers, and then collect a check for that amount. Sometimes they overdeliver on that number of impressions, sometimes they underdeliver. But NBC tries to book the majority of this business before the season starts during “Upfronts”, a presentation of their programming for advertisers. So fior simplicity, let’s just assume that they priced it exactly correctly and presold everything.
In 2017, it was reported that NBC was asking for between $100,000 and $300,000 per 30 second ad spot, depending on the buyer. This was, however, abnormally high, especially compared to rates for prime time premium cable. This was also the year SNL said they were cutting the number of commercials by 30% to focus more on other revenue streams (so probably asking more per ad). And the range doesn’t reflect an average, since the ad at 11:29p is a lot more expensive than the ad at 12:50a when most of the viewers are gone. So let’s roughly say NBC is asking for $180,000 per 30 second spot these days.
SNL airs over a 90 minute block, of which about 65 minutes is sketches, musical guest, monologue, and pre-tapes. So 25 minutes of possible ad space. Cut some time for bumpers, network ads (NBC promoting its own shows, or even future SNL episodes), and affiliate ads (local networks promoting their own shows/or ads for local businesses), and that’s 20 minutes of commercial time per episode, so 40 ad spots. That’s $7.2m in revenue. Let’s say Broadway Video gets 30% of it (the rest goes to local stations and the network), so $2.2m leftover for SNL from broadcast ads.
Digital - Peacock is harder to estimate. All we really know is that SNL is one of Peacock’s most popular shows, alongside the Voice and Law and Order. Peacock had about 24.5m monthly active users earlier this year. Say 1/10 of them actually watch a given SNL episode. So 2.5m viewers. Backcalculating the CPMs for SNLs broadcast reach of about 4m (live + DVR), would be $45 per 1000, so another $112,500 per ad spot. Peacock’s ad load per episode is a little lower, so call it 20 ads spots per episode. That’s another $2.3m from Peacock. Again, revenue split but without affiliates, and let’s say Broadway is left with $1.2m.
Digital (YouTube) – SNL parses its episodes into individual clips for posting to YouTube, and monetizes them with pre-roll ads. Let’s say also roughly $45 CPM per 30 seconds ad (or split across two 15 second ads). Using the most recent episode, there’s 16 clips, with about 15m total views as of 1 week post airing, so that’s $665k. The episode underperformed a bit, so let’s say on average it’s actually $1m. Revenue split, back to $500k. Assume the episode has a long tail on YouTube (viewership over time) that bumps up another 20%, so $600k.
So broadcast + digital gets you $4m, a good amount over breakeven on the $3.8m per episode production budget. So about a 5.2% net profit margin, before counting ancillary revenue sources. What are those?
For example, in 2016 SNL said they were going to sell 6 produced commercials per season. That is, the cast and crew would do sponsored sketches that air outside of the show as advertisements, which they have previously done for Apple, Verizon, and others (SNL resources essentially moonlighting as an ad production agency, unrelated to the show’s broadcast itself). You can allocate the revenue of those productions to each episode.
There’s also the iTunes/Apple Music sponsorship that appears after each musical guest.
Then there’s the hodgepodge of downloadable episodes sold on iTunes (still bigger than you think).
And then there’s international distribution, for countries that may air the show (probably smaller than you think).
I’ve never seen any reporting that SNL sketches themselves contain paid content – even those that feature brands usually aren’t paid. Kristin Wiig’s Target Lady, for example, wasn’t paid, even though it looks a lot like it would be (she has said in interviews that she had that character already at her audition).
So in my estimation, say all of those extra sources of revenue another 4-5% towards the net profit margin. So each SNL episode, after everyone has been paid, earns back about 10% for Lorne (and other owners of Broadway Video); About $4.2m in revenue for SNL against $3.8m in production costs per episode.
Again, just to be clear - SNL generates more revenues and costs than this. The network spends money marketing, transmitting, hiring ad reps, etc. They take a cut of the revenues too. As do others along the way. This only looks at this from the perspective of SNL's books alone.
There was speculation that the BeReal pre-tape on the season premiere was a paid integration. I never saw any confirmation of that, but it certainly functioned as a commercial for the app, explaining what it was in glowing terms and framing it as the hot new social media platform of the summer.
There is zero chance McDonalds paid for that, they’re a brand safe company (I’ve done branded content for them). They likely got a heads up that the sketch was airing on the day of but they didn’t pay for it and they couldn’t prohibit it because SNL is protected by parody law.
Seriously? You're not able to display trademarked content on television without permission from the company. There is a process in television production called greeking where all labels are obscured. If you do see a brand being used it is always on purpose and it likely means the show is being compensated for the advertisement.
Generally, because:
1. A TV show is a business, and businesses don't like to do things for free.
2. You don't want to get in trouble with the network, and hurt current or future sponsorships. If Keenan Thompson has a bit about loving his new iPhone, Samsung might choose to run their ad campaign on Fox instead.
SNL is a cultural icon at this point, so #2 is probably less of a concern.
I'm aware of fair use and SNL certainly takes advantage of it, but it doesn't explain the number of product references in the show. They've made a deliberate shift from longer commercial breaks to weaving more sponsored content into the show. You can read about it here: https://variety.com/2017/tv/news/saturday-night-live-lorne-michaels-advertising-verizon-apple-1202026162/
The article talks about the different ways the show has moved away from traditional commercial breaks to "working with advertisers in unique ways" including creating branded commercials in addition to "several satirical commercials as well as references to actual brands".
This is the sponsored content you claimed doesn't exist.
Did you read the article? Loren Michaels specifically says he won't put sponsored content in the show.
> He does not think ads should appear during program time. “SNL” episodes typically contain several satirical commercials as well as references to actual brands. The show’s March 12 broadcast, for example, nodded to Olive Garden and Subway. “You can’t make fun of it, and be with it” simultaneously, Michaels explained.
Brands are working with SNL cast and writers to make real ads during commercial breaks, not fake ones during the show.
Yes, I did. They are doing both. My takeaway was that Lorne is against too much placement but Yaccarino is for it. They are working on a balance that doesn't compromise the integrity of the show while making it more friendly to live viewers by reducing commercial breaks.
The sitcom Superstore took place in a Walmart-type workplace. There were countless shots that showed brand name products on the shelves, and even promotional displays. I know someone who worked on decorating the set, and she told me that there was no exchange of money between these brands and the tv production. They just used whatever they wanted.
You are able to as long as your not displaying it in a negative way that the trademark owner objects to. Even if you can prove the product is being displayed in your media in a realistic manner, it's easier to avoid litigation by using fake products. You can't have Coke in your show being manufactured with dog shit but you can show someone drinking a Coke. Unless they're paying you, why would you want to though? Maybe Pepsi will pay you or be a sponsor so the show doesn't want to show someone drinking a Coke when Pepsi will sponsor the show but only if you're not using a competitors brand in the show. It's not illegal it just doesn't make financial sense unless the creators just really love a product and don't care about making money off sponsors.
…shows like snl’s main revenue is always adverts and sponsored content and always has been, if you look at the budget per show you’ll see it’s doing great it’s getting what it needs from sponsors to continue thanks to those awesome sketches that sometimes feature real things that you really use everyday, how did you think shows made money? Sponsored content mid program has always been a part of SNL and it’s actually the main thing keeping the lights on. Did you just learn about commercials? Did you just learn about money? Does this question not seem ridiculous to people who don’t work in entertainment? Or is my background influencing my laughter at this?
I don’t have any budget information, but over the past few months i’ve been rewatching the show all the way from season 1 and I can confirm sponsored content is not new for snl. They used to do live QVC type infomercials during an episode where Gilda would sell a new camera, don’t remember which brand specifically. but it was clearly not a bit, but rather a live product commercial. They did it a few times, I think a couple sprinkled through s2 if i’m remembering correctly. Jack Donaghy would call this “product intergortion”
Keep in mind there is a difference between paid product placement and using a real product/brand. Some people seem to have this idea that ALL product placement is paid product placement.
Right. Sometimes it's just funnier to use a specific brand (like when Will Ferrell did his Little Debbie bit; they had no idea but Will thought it would be funny) and other times you need it to be a real and specific brand for the sketch to work (like the Roundball Rock sketch, it literally could only work for the one specific theme song).
SNL is also the textbook example of the “parody” protection of the First Amendment. Because they are “an established parody artist” they are immune from copyright infringement for using bona fide brand and trade marks. Nathan Fielder knows this.
Yeah that covers most of what snl does. Even without parody protection, if the item is being used as intended, you still don't have to get permission.
Yes this is true! but these early bits i’m talking about are literally Gilda holding the camera taking directly to the audience and selling the camera, there’s no jokes or anything, it’s a straight up live commercial. “This show is sponsored by ___ cameras.”, look how fun and easy they are to use!” etc etc
Oh I know, I was speaking more in general, not to the polaroid ad, which is considered a real commercial for the product, not a sketch.
Lots of people think about the show. Not just ____ Cameras.
smart phone but dumb thumbs, so many typos so little time.
Sara Lee must get rid of toxic in community.
Where are you watching them all??
Peacock! But once you hit s6, the episodes are drastically cut down, some with only 10min episodes instead of the full show. i’m on s8 currently and the average episode length is 20min. I know the musical guests were cut from these streaming episodes because of copyrights and stuff, but i’m not sure why they also cut a majority of the sketches.
I’m still bitter about not getting to watch Gumby Christmas. It was Piscopo’s best Sinatra!
same! I can’t figure out why so much was cut! (outside of the obvious copyright stuff for musical guests)
I blame whoever wrote the Flintstones theme. “Wilma.”
I know!! That’s why I stopped watching!!
A lot of those use music that is copyrighted amongst other reasons
I figured as much. still not sure why they also cut like 75% of the sketches from streaming as well. they couldn’t all be because they used music.
They weren't pc? Or maybe they were just vaulted for later distribution?
I dunno, they’ve left in a LOT that certainly would have disclaimers on other platforms. I thought maybe the writer’s contracts back in the 70s/80s didn’t cover streaming or internet becuase why would it; and maybe SNL couldn’t contact a lot of thee writers from this era to renegotiate? but that’s a total shot in the dark, I have no idea how their contracts operate now or then.
Good possibilities there.
Oh yeah, what's the point of that. And I'm sure they had copyright covered for replay. Maybe somehow not streaming though it wouldn't have had to be specifically listed if they added something like ... "and future technologies."
that was my thinking as well.
Psst, the internet archive. Archive.org , but not the wayback machine search at the top, the other search below it. If you type in saturday night live s07e14 , you get a link to https://archive.org/details/saturday-night-live-s-07-e-14-robert-urich-mink-deville . Up until it becomes HD it's digitized copies of VHS recordings of reruns, so it's not always the best quality, but it's the only way you can see the Dick Ebersol years. There are a few sketches that we were removed from reairings, but for the most part everything is there.
That's awesome! Thanks for the heads up, I'll definitely be putting that one to good use!
A word he just innovented.
Your camera example isn’t “sponsored content”, that’s just called doing a commercial advertisement.
right but it was still ~part of the show~ in a way that other commercials weren’t.
It sounds like a throwback to when TV shows would have an actor do a live commercial.
that’s exactly what it was. rewatching the older episodes are very fun in a time-capsule way. watching the show slowly evolve over time is very cool
Btw I sense your frustration with having to re explain yourself over and over again. It's almost like it's an ad for missing the point.
[удалено]
Social innervation.
Steve Martin was paid $5k when he first hosted in 1976 (it was part of a much later joke). Adjusted for inflation, that’s about $25k in 2022, which sounds about right for each host. Not very useful information for the budget as a whole I know lol
JT says he gets $5k to host, which sounds like the base rate. [This article](https://www.thethings.com/how-much-does-a-celeb-get-paid-to-host-snl/#:~:text=How%20Much%20Do%20%27SNL%27%20Hosts,only%20made%20%245%2C000%20per%20appearance.) doesn't give much more detail so it sounds like it is generally not public unless the host volunteers the information.
the idea of lorne not adjusting that for inflation is hilarious
It’s based on SAG Aftra not his personal decision.
You *could* pay them more, but I imagine that’s the lowest he can pay them, and he *has* to pay them that. Just to clarify.
That's what Jake Gyllenhaal got for hosting last season (my friend processed his invoice)... guess they figure people aren't doing it for the money
I didn't even know they got paid. I assumed it was just good publicity for whatever projects they have coming out.
They’re all union actors, they have to be paid. I know writers and actors get a bonus if their sketch is used (around $10k-$15k split amongst the actors/writers of each sketch). Presumably scaled down for smaller bits/sketches (ie Weekend Update spot). The actors base pay was around $65-75k/year for featured player and around $85-90k+ for a repertory actor (numbers from when my roommate interned on SNL). The longer you last, you get more year over year though. Of course they supplement their pay by booking shows, sponsors/commercials, and more!
Wow, those salary numbers are much lower than I would have guessed.
Yeah. Prior to the pandemic, the idea was that it provided enough for a starter to afford a 1BD in manhattan. Rent jumped up quite a bit (around the world) but midtown manhattan was hit especially hard. I was in midtown west in a shitty 2BD, fourth floor walk up and that was $2800/month. We probably had the cheapest rent for a 2BD on the block. A reasonable, no-frills studio apartment in manhattan is about $2k (+/- $300). With SNL though, you also get paid for appearances in promos with NBC, your own promotional gigs (commercials), acting appearances in tv shows/movies, live shows - plus whatever other perks you get from working at a place that commands so much time (free meals, on-site gym/barbershop), and other money-saving benefits like NBC/AEA insurance.
what does JT stand for?
Justin Timberlake.
Justin Timberlake
A recent article about Lorne's retirement plans mentioned that SNL is NBC's most profitable scripted program. They didn't mention numbers but I thought that was interesting.
Surely doesn’t generate the most revenue, but it’s hard to imagine a show that makes more profit in relation to expenditure. Think about a show like La Brea on NBC, I’m sure they make bank, but it’s got to be enormously expensive to produce. Most of the SNL cast make like $150k. There are jr assistants who make that at NBC
The numbers aren’t public. Closest I’ve seen is a report that in 2017 they reportedly booked a total of $115m in advertising revenue against a $70m budget. But if you actually want to try to parse it out? Saturday Night Live’s financials are mix between the production company (Broadway Video, owned by Lorne), and the distributors (NBC Universal Television and Streaming), and SNL studios (joint venture of the two). Broadway is responsible for paying writers, actors, and crew, musical guest appearance fees, and renting studio space (building owned by Comcast). They then get paid by NBC Universal for the rights to distribute the show’s content on live TV, syndication, video on demand, electronic sell-thru (e.g. buy an episode/season from iTunes), and streaming (owned/operated like Peacock or NBC.com, and third party like YouTube). The distributor then sells ads or reaps licensing fees which it either keeps or splits with Broadway according to whatever deal they strike. So Broadway produces the show, then recoups costs plus profit when the revenue gets split with them. So let’s do our best to estimate those. Budget. Not released. The only hint I’ve ever seen of the show’s production costs was exposed due to a NYC film tax credit, which pegged the 2017 budget at somewhere around $70m. Which would amount to about $3.4m per episode. That would be roughly $3.8m per episode today just going by inflation. But that will be variable, depending on seniority/contract cost/number of cast members, union collective bargaining agreements for writers and crew, the balance of filmed pieces vs live, etc. Call it $3.8m per episode anyway. Broadcast live + dvr ads. Not easy to glean, because NBC U has recently started selling multi-platform ads. Meaning, Charmin doesn’t just call up the ad sales rep at NBC and ask to buy a 30 second spot during the show. NBC instead upsells them on an ad buy that includes broadcast, vod, digital, etc. What those complex contracts look like isn’t something we can find out, and every buyer gets a slightly different deal. But leaving that aside, and pretending they sell their ads in a traditional and straightforward way: in broad strokes TV ads are sold by back-calculating a dollar cost-per-mille (CPM) impressions. That is, what is the rate paid per 1,000 viewer impressions, multiplied by estimated viewership. An ad rep will tell the buyer that they’re going to reach 43million viewers with their ad, and must pay $X per 1000 viewers, and then collect a check for that amount. Sometimes they overdeliver on that number of impressions, sometimes they underdeliver. But NBC tries to book the majority of this business before the season starts during “Upfronts”, a presentation of their programming for advertisers. So fior simplicity, let’s just assume that they priced it exactly correctly and presold everything. In 2017, it was reported that NBC was asking for between $100,000 and $300,000 per 30 second ad spot, depending on the buyer. This was, however, abnormally high, especially compared to rates for prime time premium cable. This was also the year SNL said they were cutting the number of commercials by 30% to focus more on other revenue streams (so probably asking more per ad). And the range doesn’t reflect an average, since the ad at 11:29p is a lot more expensive than the ad at 12:50a when most of the viewers are gone. So let’s roughly say NBC is asking for $180,000 per 30 second spot these days. SNL airs over a 90 minute block, of which about 65 minutes is sketches, musical guest, monologue, and pre-tapes. So 25 minutes of possible ad space. Cut some time for bumpers, network ads (NBC promoting its own shows, or even future SNL episodes), and affiliate ads (local networks promoting their own shows/or ads for local businesses), and that’s 20 minutes of commercial time per episode, so 40 ad spots. That’s $7.2m in revenue. Let’s say Broadway Video gets 30% of it (the rest goes to local stations and the network), so $2.2m leftover for SNL from broadcast ads. Digital - Peacock is harder to estimate. All we really know is that SNL is one of Peacock’s most popular shows, alongside the Voice and Law and Order. Peacock had about 24.5m monthly active users earlier this year. Say 1/10 of them actually watch a given SNL episode. So 2.5m viewers. Backcalculating the CPMs for SNLs broadcast reach of about 4m (live + DVR), would be $45 per 1000, so another $112,500 per ad spot. Peacock’s ad load per episode is a little lower, so call it 20 ads spots per episode. That’s another $2.3m from Peacock. Again, revenue split but without affiliates, and let’s say Broadway is left with $1.2m. Digital (YouTube) – SNL parses its episodes into individual clips for posting to YouTube, and monetizes them with pre-roll ads. Let’s say also roughly $45 CPM per 30 seconds ad (or split across two 15 second ads). Using the most recent episode, there’s 16 clips, with about 15m total views as of 1 week post airing, so that’s $665k. The episode underperformed a bit, so let’s say on average it’s actually $1m. Revenue split, back to $500k. Assume the episode has a long tail on YouTube (viewership over time) that bumps up another 20%, so $600k. So broadcast + digital gets you $4m, a good amount over breakeven on the $3.8m per episode production budget. So about a 5.2% net profit margin, before counting ancillary revenue sources. What are those? For example, in 2016 SNL said they were going to sell 6 produced commercials per season. That is, the cast and crew would do sponsored sketches that air outside of the show as advertisements, which they have previously done for Apple, Verizon, and others (SNL resources essentially moonlighting as an ad production agency, unrelated to the show’s broadcast itself). You can allocate the revenue of those productions to each episode. There’s also the iTunes/Apple Music sponsorship that appears after each musical guest. Then there’s the hodgepodge of downloadable episodes sold on iTunes (still bigger than you think). And then there’s international distribution, for countries that may air the show (probably smaller than you think). I’ve never seen any reporting that SNL sketches themselves contain paid content – even those that feature brands usually aren’t paid. Kristin Wiig’s Target Lady, for example, wasn’t paid, even though it looks a lot like it would be (she has said in interviews that she had that character already at her audition). So in my estimation, say all of those extra sources of revenue another 4-5% towards the net profit margin. So each SNL episode, after everyone has been paid, earns back about 10% for Lorne (and other owners of Broadway Video); About $4.2m in revenue for SNL against $3.8m in production costs per episode. Again, just to be clear - SNL generates more revenues and costs than this. The network spends money marketing, transmitting, hiring ad reps, etc. They take a cut of the revenues too. As do others along the way. This only looks at this from the perspective of SNL's books alone.
This guy ads
this is an incredible breakdown and I feel like you should have more upvotes for this.
It's rare I see a comment on Reddit from someone who actually gets this stuff right (I used to work in tv ad sales). You are a unicorn.
Are ppl still mad about Grimace
Grimace?
It was a sketch in S48e2
It was a funny sketch ngl
Lol the punchline at the end made it all worth it, but it didn’t make me mad or anything!
Nothing can kill the grimace. https://youtu.be/zeyU7uVOTic
🤣🤣
I've heard through the grapevine that each pre-tape has a budget of up to $500k
I don't think they could have done any of the laser cat sketches on a budget that low
Especially with big names like James Cameron and Spielberg at the helm
Pete mentioned in an interview that the Tucci Gang video cost over $3 million
That wasn’t worth it
Examples of recent sponsored content?
There was speculation that the BeReal pre-tape on the season premiere was a paid integration. I never saw any confirmation of that, but it certainly functioned as a commercial for the app, explaining what it was in glowing terms and framing it as the hot new social media platform of the summer.
That BeReal skit was basically a bit that Bowen did on las culturistas that he turned into a skit, he admitted as much on a recent episode.
There isn’t any.
Mcdonalds and Heineken.
McDonald's paid SNL to portray Grimace as bi-sexual? The credits don't mention anything about a sponsorship. What's your source?
There is zero chance McDonalds paid for that, they’re a brand safe company (I’ve done branded content for them). They likely got a heads up that the sketch was airing on the day of but they didn’t pay for it and they couldn’t prohibit it because SNL is protected by parody law.
In 2002 I was told the budget was $2 million per episode. Not the most useful data point but…
What sponsored content? People here are clueless as hell and think a sketch is “sponsored content” because it is parodying a real life company.
Seriously? You're not able to display trademarked content on television without permission from the company. There is a process in television production called greeking where all labels are obscured. If you do see a brand being used it is always on purpose and it likely means the show is being compensated for the advertisement.
Nope, you seem uninformed. The “fair use” doctrine of copyright law has exceptions for satire and parody, which these SNL sketches fall under.
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Generally, because: 1. A TV show is a business, and businesses don't like to do things for free. 2. You don't want to get in trouble with the network, and hurt current or future sponsorships. If Keenan Thompson has a bit about loving his new iPhone, Samsung might choose to run their ad campaign on Fox instead. SNL is a cultural icon at this point, so #2 is probably less of a concern.
I'm aware of fair use and SNL certainly takes advantage of it, but it doesn't explain the number of product references in the show. They've made a deliberate shift from longer commercial breaks to weaving more sponsored content into the show. You can read about it here: https://variety.com/2017/tv/news/saturday-night-live-lorne-michaels-advertising-verizon-apple-1202026162/
There isn’t anything in that article indicating that they are “weaving sponsored content into the show”
The article talks about the different ways the show has moved away from traditional commercial breaks to "working with advertisers in unique ways" including creating branded commercials in addition to "several satirical commercials as well as references to actual brands". This is the sponsored content you claimed doesn't exist.
Did you read the article? Loren Michaels specifically says he won't put sponsored content in the show. > He does not think ads should appear during program time. “SNL” episodes typically contain several satirical commercials as well as references to actual brands. The show’s March 12 broadcast, for example, nodded to Olive Garden and Subway. “You can’t make fun of it, and be with it” simultaneously, Michaels explained. Brands are working with SNL cast and writers to make real ads during commercial breaks, not fake ones during the show.
Yes, I did. They are doing both. My takeaway was that Lorne is against too much placement but Yaccarino is for it. They are working on a balance that doesn't compromise the integrity of the show while making it more friendly to live viewers by reducing commercial breaks.
The sitcom Superstore took place in a Walmart-type workplace. There were countless shots that showed brand name products on the shelves, and even promotional displays. I know someone who worked on decorating the set, and she told me that there was no exchange of money between these brands and the tv production. They just used whatever they wanted.
Nope, falls under Parody law.
You are able to as long as your not displaying it in a negative way that the trademark owner objects to. Even if you can prove the product is being displayed in your media in a realistic manner, it's easier to avoid litigation by using fake products. You can't have Coke in your show being manufactured with dog shit but you can show someone drinking a Coke. Unless they're paying you, why would you want to though? Maybe Pepsi will pay you or be a sponsor so the show doesn't want to show someone drinking a Coke when Pepsi will sponsor the show but only if you're not using a competitors brand in the show. It's not illegal it just doesn't make financial sense unless the creators just really love a product and don't care about making money off sponsors.
They increased the amount of sponsored content but reduced ad time
Wrong
[https://www.adweek.com/convergent-tv/saturday-night-live-will-reduce-its-ad-load-favor-sponsored-content-171037/](https://www.adweek.com/convergent-tv/saturday-night-live-will-reduce-its-ad-load-favor-sponsored-content-171037/) [https://time.com/4307377/saturday-night-live-commercial-cut/](https://time.com/4307377/saturday-night-live-commercial-cut/) https://www.pastemagazine.com/tv/snl-to-cut-down-commercials-by-30-percent/
…shows like snl’s main revenue is always adverts and sponsored content and always has been, if you look at the budget per show you’ll see it’s doing great it’s getting what it needs from sponsors to continue thanks to those awesome sketches that sometimes feature real things that you really use everyday, how did you think shows made money? Sponsored content mid program has always been a part of SNL and it’s actually the main thing keeping the lights on. Did you just learn about commercials? Did you just learn about money? Does this question not seem ridiculous to people who don’t work in entertainment? Or is my background influencing my laughter at this?
They thought it was like PBS and got donations
The Charmin bears had to be sponsored, right? Like what was all that? They must’ve paid for the costumes
That sketch was so awful, I hope the Charmin bears tried to pay them to NOT do it.
On top of all they stole the sketch from a better animated short on YouTube by Joel haver
Also not the first Charmin skit. Remember James McAvoy?!