(CBS News) Stephen King is a gifted author with shelves full of scary books to his credit . . . and enough TV shows and movies to give anyone the jitters. This morning he talks with Anthony Mason for this Sunday Profile
Bridgton, Maine, was home for writer Stephen King in the 1970s, and it inspired the fictional town of Chester's Mill, which, in his 2009 novel, is trapped "Under the Dome."
"When you were here did you sort of envision where the dome would come down?" Mason asked.
"Yeah, I knew exactly," King replied -- and he could show Mason the spot, on the old map still posted on Main Street.
"In the book this would be Route 119, it goes up through here, and the dome would be here," he explained.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3445_162-57591492/stephen-king-and-his-compulsion-to-write/Under the Dome and TV’s New Ad-less Ways to Make Cash
TV ratings are going in only direction: down. Viewers have more options than ever for entertainment, be it what to watch or how to watch, and all of this has led to massive ratings declines for the Big Four. Not surprisingly, Madison Avenue has started penalizing broadcasters: While advance ad sales for the new season are expected to reach nearly $9 billion, that could be a year-to-year drop of about 7 percent, robbing networks of a collective $650 million, according to industry trade Adweek. The trend seems irreversible, a ticking countdown clock for the advertising model that has kept TV networks rich and happy for so long. Lucky for networks, they have many new backup plans that are resulting in an influx of alternative revenue even before a single rating point is measured.
Streaming deals with Amazon and Netflix. International sales. Tax incentives. Product placement. By cutting these and many more deals, networks can often break even before a series launch, making it even easier to profit even if ad sales prove underwhelming. To illustrate, let’s look at the many different deals made for CBS’s adaptation of Stephen King's Under the Dome, which premieres tonight, and had an estimated production budget of $3 million per episode. While Eye execs would very much like to wake up to big ratings for the show tomorrow morning, they don't need to wait for Nielsen to render its verdict because the show is already a financial winner, thanks to the following arrangements:
Back in February, CBS struck a deal with Amazon that would let Amazon Prime members stream episodes of the show four days after they debut on CBS, while anyone with a credit card will be able to download episodes on a pay-per-view basis. Vulture has learned via multiple sources that the streaming giant will pay CBS a whopping $750,000 per hour-long episode — that’s roughly one quarter of the show's estimated production cost, instantly covered.
Dome filmed in North Carolina, taking advantage of the state's generous tax credits to further reduce its costs. People familiar with the cost structure for Dome say the subsidies work out to approximately $400,000 per episode.
http://www.vulture.com/2013/06/under-the-dome-tv-revenue-when-ads-fail.html
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