Commercial production a $182M biz

National television live-action commercial production in Canada is a $182 million industry, according to statistics derived from a Playback industry study.

The figure reflects an increase of 30% over the 1992 estimate of $140 million, the latest comparable figure available. It is up 36% over the 1990 estimate of $134 million, although $1 million shy of the 1989 tally of $183 million.

The figure is an estimate of the amount of money that went into commercial production for the year ending Sept. 29, 1995. It is a total based on all production work coming through Canadian production houses, excluding animation and special effects work, including those spots originating from outside Canada.

The total does not include in-house commercial production by television stations.

In September, Playback sent questionnaires to the major Canadian production houses and received 33 responses, including the major national shops.

In addition to the total number of shoot days and commercials produced, both Canada and foreign-originated, production house execs were asked to submit their cumulative production budgets for the same period.

Of the responses, many submitted their budgets, some down to the last dollar. For the remaining houses, Playback used the number of days/number of spots ratio to rank the company high-end, medium-end, and low-end. For example, if a company did 90 shoot days and 180 spots, it ranked at the low end since jobs on average were a half day. If one did 125 days and 120 spots, it was placed in the medium range since its average shoot was slightly over one day. At the high end were those running an average of close to two or more shoot days.

The number of shoot days was subsequently multiplied by a best estimate of an average shoot day, $75,000 for the high end, $60,000 for medium and $30,000 for low.

Production houses were also asked for average budgets for a 30-second spot. According to data received, the average budget at the low end for a 30-second spot was $39,600, mid-range average, $77,162, and high end, $183,173.