NEW YORK -- Soap opera producers are increasingly hawk-eyed about budgets. With their huge casts -- 25 to 30 is the norm -- and squadrons of writers, producers and techies, soap operas are high-priced undertakings. It can easily cost $50 million to $60 million to produce the 260 annual episodes -- no reruns, no hiatuses -- of an hour-long drama.
Almost any other form of daytime programming, from real-life weddings on cable's the Learning Channel to syndicated judge and talk shows that crowd network schedules, is cheaper. Producing a talk show, for instance, might run a piddling $6 million for 39 weeks (talk shows are rerun for 13) -- plus the host's salary. If the host is Oprah, that's more than most soaps' annual budgets. But as a rule, "syndicated court and talk shows are much more profitable than network soaps," says Janeen Bjork, programming director at the rep firm Seltel.Some soaps now tape scenes out of sequence, as movies do, to reduce costs of continually erecting, then striking sets. Also in the works are "virtual sets," a computer-generated way to less expensively create, for starters, the docks of Port Charles on "General Hospital."
Actors are facing lower salaries as producers cut back on their guarantees (the number of shows they're paid for, whether they appear or not). "You're guaranteed $6,000 per episode and the guarantee is three per week, and then the new contract is two per week -- that's the way it's done," says Stephen Burrow, who heads the New York local of AFTRA, the television actors' union. The example applies to a valued veteran, highly paid but not a Lucci-esque icon.
Casts and crews are far less likely to jet off for pricey location shoots in the Bahamas or Europe than in the '80s. Says ABC Daytime President Angela Shapiro, "I should be able to break your heart in Pine Valley as easily as in Paris."