Was it time for Spooks to finish?

[Alpha One]

(01-11-2011 05:08 PM)A Cousin Wrote:  

(01-11-2011 03:52 PM)Scarlet Wrote:  I don't know how these things work, - does Kudos determine the budget for each series and then sell it to the BBC or does the BBC give them a certain budget to make it? If the BBC kept cutting their budget, this could explain why they decided to end it now rather than dragging on even though the BBC had not cut the programme.

I am not fully up to speed on it either, but as I understand it, the BBC is required to "commission" a specific amount of their programming (25% I believe) from independent production companies, of which KUDOs is one. BBC1 has room for up to 14 drama series of 6-8 60-minute episodes at 21:00 and/or 3-4 90-minute episodes at 20:30. The tariff range (what I assume is a fee the BBC pays to Kudos for production?) for any of these should be targeted between £500k - £750k per hour. I would imagine that it is that tariff range that is being cut? I do not know if Kudo's puts any of their money into production or if they rely completely on the BBC to fund projects. I would imagine they fund it at least partially. Consequently, the lower the tariff goes the more money Kudos has to sink into a project to maintain standards.

For more on the boring business of the commissioning business, check this out: http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/tv/ho...ndex.shtml

Really, the thing to take away from all of this is that there is so much more that goes into commissioning and scheduling than we can even begin to wrap our brains around. It is best to let the professionals do their jobs.

I read that Kudos lost their independent status when the Shine group (their parent company) was sold to NewsCorp. It was in the Guardian, I think. I don't know if this affected decisions on continuing series.

Last year, Ben Stephenson mooted the ending of a number of long running drama series including Spooks. There was an outcry at the time. I'm an avid Spooks fan so I look beneath the surface of decisions. Did Kudos agree to accept responsibility for ending the series to avoid the BBC being blamed, as I've read elsewhere?

I think it was time to end it though. S10 had a feeling of being special because it was the last. If that hadn't been the case, I think the storylines might have been different and possibly more mundane. The middle episodes were very samey