A budget is very similar to a site survey but is really a numeric evaluation of the production plan.
Hank Levine, CFO, Olympic Broadcasting Services
While television sports production is an enjoyable passion for many in the business, bottom line, it is a business. There are a number of ways that television sports productions get broadcast. We will refer to the organization that broadcasts the programming as a chan nel. However, we are using the word “channel” to refer to any of the following: broadcast network, broadcast station, cable channel, or any entity on the Internet that distributes programming. While there are variations of the following, these are the most common ways:
Budgeting for remote productions varies greatly from event to event. We chose to use a medium-sized event as our television production budget case study. This way, smaller production personnel can review the costs of a medium production and adapt them for a smaller event.
For this rough production budget, we have assumed that a freelance crew has to be hired and a large mobile unit/OB van needs to be rented. The event, a small auto race, will require three days on site and the final product will be two hours of programming shown on a national network. The amounts shown are based on 2015 costs in the United States and are given as an example for studying the budget process.
For three days on-site with a freelance crew and rented mobile unit/OB van.
There are a number of unaddressed items in this budget:
# Needed | Position | Approx. Pay/Person | Total per Person | Total Cost |
|
||||
1 | Line producer | $1,500/day | $6,000 | $6,000 |
3 | Pit/tape/feature producers | $450/day | $1,800 | $5,400 |
1 | Director | $1,500/day | $6,000 | $6,000 |
1 | Associate director | $500/day | $1,000 | $1,000 |
4 | Talent | $2,500/day | $7,500 | $30,000 |
3 | Production coordinator | $300/day | $600 | $1,800 |
1 | Technical director | $600/day | $1,800 | $1,800 |
8 | Camera operators | $450/day | $1,340 | $10,720 |
6 | Videotape operators | $425/day | $1,700 | $10,200 |
3 | Video operator | $500/day | $1,500 | $4,500 |
2 | Graphics | $500/day | $2,000 | $4,000 |
1 | Font coordinator | $425/day | $1,275 | $1,275 |
1 | Senior audio (A-1) | $575/day | $2,300 | $2,300 |
4 | A-2 | $420/day | $1,260 | $5,040 |
1 | Stage manager | $300/day | $600 | $600 |
6 | Utilities | $350/day | $1,050 | $6,300 |
5 | Spotter | $250/day | $500 | $2,500 |
2 | Runner | $250/day | $750 | $1,550 |
Total: | 53 crew members | |||
Total pay: | $90,785 |
302 disciplines / 38 sports + 57 digital OB vans × 18 cameras + explosion of the cost of broadcasting facilities – best ever TV coverage + 40 billion viewers × global economic downturn + 40 venues / 3,500 employees – shared crews / venues / equipment + logistics expenses × 3,700 live transmission hours × less is more + quality = budgeting of the Athens Olympic Games.
Anna Chrysou, Deputy Producer, Athens Olympic Broadcasting
Hank Levine, veteran of many sports broadcasts, sums up the budgeting experience like this:
Creating and managing a good working budget requires part foresight, part discipline, and a lot of experience. When developing a project budget, for instance, you need to have a plan for every situation while also realizing that every situation will not actually happen. A budget should be used as a planning tool and, if used properly, it will challenge the team to focus their energies on ensuring that the resources are used in appropriate ways to enhance the production.
(Ben Brown, President, Event Support Services, significantly contributed to this chapter)
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