“If you make a new show and you build a set, in the old days you would spend $3 million on your set, but you spread that cost out over 22 episodes. Well, it's not that much per episode to have that set. Now you're only spreading it over eight episodes.”
The Indicator (Planet Money) · Money & Markets · November 2026
Context
The hosts had explained that streamers order far fewer episodes per season, which raises the cost of each one. Schur gives the concrete example of a single set.
Transcript
This actually raises production costs because of an accounting principle called amortization.
And this is when a business spreads out the cost of a big purchase. Fewer episodes means there's less room to spread.
You know, if you make a new show and you build a set, in the old days, you would build a set, you would spend $3 million on your set, but you spread that cost out over 22 episodes. Well, it's not that much per episode to have that set. Now you're only spreading it over eight episodes.
So this means that TV studios need to find other ways to make money. One being selling distribution overseas.
The world is now almost completely open. And as a result, the studios need, in order to make the amounts of money, the gobs of money they're trying to make, they have to sell their shows everywhere.
And comedy is cultural.
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