Warner Brothers, CBS, NBC, Fox, Sony, ABC are Television's Factory
The new TV season is near and the six major TV factories are pumping out an incredible number of TV shows, each employing hundreds on and off camera. Warner Brothers has 56 shows, CBS-40, NBC-37, Fox-30, Sony-27, ABC-20.
Pretty staggering stats. While each of them create movies which earn considerable money for them, TV shows are their main staple for revenue from advertisers, syndication, re-runs, DVD. Old shows from the 50s and 60s, still earn money for them. But of the six major players, WB, is by far, the largest of the TV factories in LA.
WB has 30 soundstages on 112 acres and produces the most TV shows for the world. Its wardrobe room is 200 yards long containing four miles of rail pipes from which to hang the millions of costumes. Its furnishing department for props is 150,000 sq. ft housing 60% of all TV used props for all shows.
To get a perspective of a Hollywood sound stage, think LARGE. Some soundstages look like a section of Chicago, some have 11 homes from suburbia, USA, or simply a jungle-like area. The word soundstage is very inaccurate because they are usually very large sections somewhere on the 112 acres. Some TV shows are filmed on stages that are 40,000 sq. ft.
TV shows that are syndicated sometimes get $2,000,000 per episode that WB pcokets. Since 1994, when Friends first began, WB has reaped $4,000,000,000! No longer made, there is money in re-runs.
The studio now operates in every month of the year. Usually, from March to June, production was done with, but now cable TV takes up that space to make their TV shows. If you make a TV show, you will go to WB.