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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is Planet Money from NPR. The other day I saw an item of clothing I was very tempted to buy. Possibly the most I would have ever paid for an item of clothing. It was a Montreal Metros hockey jersey. $150. The Metros are a made-up hockey team from the TV show Heated Rivalry. Official replica jerseys were on sale for $150, but totally sold out.
In fact, every single item on the official Heated Rivalry merch site is sold out, a sign, I suspect, that the TV show's creators were not expecting this level of success. Heated Rivalry is a Canadian television show based on a Canadian romance book series. It's streamed in the U.S. by HBO.
It's about a pair of professional men's hockey players, rising superstars, star-crossed lovers, very steamy, TVMA rated, and it has been a giant hit. I started watching it with my wife. I think we did it in two tranches and we loved it. I love that in your house you refer to binges as tranches. I feel like... Tranches, thank you. Yes, we're very fancy people. That's the perfect Kara Swisher, yes.
Chapter 2: What is the premise of the TV show Heated Rivalry?
Kara Swisher, journalist, podcaster, media icon, I dare say. And Kara has sort of owned the subject area of technology and business for the last 25 years. But today she is here to talk heated rivalry and business. I think one of the things that really struck me of a couple of things is it costs somewhere between $2 and $3.6 million per episode to make, which is really low.
Yeah, on average, the show was made for a little under $3 million per episode Canadian, so like $2.2 million US. And what struck Cara was the way that this scrappy little production in Canada was able to stretch that budget without the show looking cheap, getting way more bang for its buck than what she's seen on American productions.
If you've ever been on a Hollywood set, and I've been on a couple, I was on The Morning Show. I'm in an upcoming movie with someone named Meryl Streep coming up. But there's a lot going on, right? And they film in this way that, to me, seems somewhat inefficient.
So, you know, directors may want lots of takes of the same scene, lots of coverage from different angles, reactions from everybody in the scene. Heated rivalry, on the other hand, will often stay on one character's face as a scene plays out, meaning they need fewer takes, fewer extras in the background.
And the reason we're talking about all of this is because I have not been able to stop telling people what I've learned from a recent episode of Kara's podcast. That show is called Pivot. It's co-hosted by NYU business professor Scott Galloway. Typically, the show is about technology and business and antitrust, lots of antitrust lately.
But Cara took a break from that to talk to the creators of Heated Rivalry about the business of getting that show made. Because it's not just that I learned Heated Rivalry was made very cleverly. What I learned was that the Canadian economic system of making TV and movies is completely different from how we do it in the U.S., something I asked Cara about.
I guess naively, it hadn't occurred to me to even think of an American business model versus a Canadian business model. Sure, yeah. Were you aware of this? I mean, you've been- Yeah, no, I've covered Hollywood a lot because of the impact of digital. So I understand their economics quite well.
And one of the things that had been a constant theme was the costs are so high in this country and there's gotta be different economic systems that they could do really well. So today we are giving the episode over to Cara and her interview with Jacob Tierney and Brendan Brady, creators of Heated Rivalry. The Canadian business of entertainment lives in contrast to the U.S.
business, and I learned so much about the current state of both industries from this conversation. Oh, and also, all that merch I mentioned at the beginning? Turns out it is a way bigger deal for Canadian creators. Cara's interview with Heated Rivalry's creators after the break. So, hi, everyone. I'm Kara Swisher.
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Chapter 3: How much does it cost to produce an episode of Heated Rivalry?
We were like, there is a built-in audience. So I think that was the other like secret sauce in this is just like, this is a massive fan base that have not had their stories taken seriously and they got to see it taken seriously and they loved it. Talk about this, but getting it made.
Like we talk on this success on what it symbolizes, the difference between Canada and the US though, even how these productions are funded. And let me play very quickly a part of Mark Carney's speech about that, of how it was funded. Look, I'm a politician. I'm not above taking credit for the Canadian funding that helped you share this story with the world.
I might not have been here when the decision was made, but I'm here now. So yeah, I made, I greenlit this thing. I stood up to the Americans. That's amazing. So I think that like our show was made in the Canadian system and it is very different from the US. Explain it, explain it for people who don't understand.
So basically, the Canadian film and TV system has subsidies and equity and grant systems that are propped up by the Canadian government. So when you go to a broadcaster like we did with Crave, which is the streaming platform in Canada that commissioned the show, They go and say, OK, great. Here is a license fee. Typically, it'll run between 20 to 30 percent of the budget.
Then we have a tax credit, both provincial and federal, and that brings another 20 to 30 percent of the budget. And then it's always that last little piece that you're looking for. Right. So the benefit to us in Canada as producers is everything. It's unfortunate that we don't get necessarily the whole budget out of our broadcasters, but we as the producers own all the underlying IP.
So that is a big difference. So you don't sell it to a studio. Exactly. We are the studio in this system. But the limitations on that are you have to go then raise money. So how we did this with our show is we ended up talking to a couple of studios, some of them American, some of them Canadian. And ultimately, it wasn't the right fit from a creative perspective.
And, you know, we understand where everybody was coming from. It is a... This was, you know... on paper didn't seem like an amazing massive hit right out the gate.
And so luckily when we were going through this process, Crave's parent company, which is Bell Media, Bell Media is like if Comcast and Disney were merged into one in our country, they own everything from telecommunications to internet to sports. Right. And they have divisions like Crave, which is a streaming platform. Is it their only streaming platform? They have others, right? Yes.
It's their only streaming platform. And they had just acquired a distribution company called Sphere Abacus out of the UK. And so we were looking for that last 30% of the budget. And they came in for 20% more on a distribution advance. So the last 10% was Jacob and I putting our producer fees. And we put in almost all of our producer fees.
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Chapter 4: What makes the Canadian production model different from the U.S. model?
Primarily women. And so we also just feel that in our business, we need to change this mentality of endlessly shooting 15, 16 hour days, which is where the costs balloon. Right, right. What are you, a lesbian? What's happening here? Anyway, so, Jacob, talk about your production style. Besides being, you know, truncated, like making it tight, keep it tight kind of thing, you call it anti-fascist.
Explain what you mean by that. Well, I mean... I guess what I mean about that is there's a desire often for perfection that is, I think, not only unachievable, but also insane and cruel to be even attempting. There's no reason to do, if you're doing 25 takes of a scene because you don't like the performance of the actor, I'm an actor. I've been doing this since I was four years old.
The problem is the scene. It's not the actor. You haven't written it properly. If you're not accomplishing what you need to accomplish, there's a fundamental issue. And by torturing people into repeating and repeating and repeating, I don't know what you're gaining. And so that's kind of... I just did a... It was all day. I was like, why? I kept saying, why? It's insane. Why is it all day?
To do nine different sizes on a close-up is insane. All of this stuff is crazy. I do believe fundamentally that film and TV is an ensemble process. It is. Otherwise, go write a book, you know, go paint a picture. There's lots of ways to be in total control.
So, you know, anti-fascist might be a big statement, but it is kind of, it's a rejection of an idea that everything has to come from one person and like what, you know, the brilliant man idea. It's very top-down. So when you talk about owning this intellectual property, what does that mean now for you all? Because I own all my intellectual property, just so you know. And I think it's important.
Explain why it is for you, especially in this space. Because that's something that's been an anathema to the industry. Well, I'll tell you what it means. Jacob and I worked on a show called Letterkenny and Shorzy. And the producers of that show made it in Canada as well. And they had a robust merchandise business. And when we were in post-production, we decided because we have...
you know, retained all the intellectual property behind the series that we wanted to take advantage of that and make a line of merchandise, which we're doing, which is now incredibly, uh, like it's, it's become this amazing part of our business that we're super excited about. But it also means that ultimately, like when we, we made the decision to reinvest our fees and
It was because we knew that if this goes really well, we're going to benefit for the next 25 years off of this. And that is the difference.
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Chapter 5: How did the creators manage to keep production costs low?
And I think people always ask about, I guess you look at the Canadian system versus the American system. The Canadian system, you as the producers, if you want to take advantage of being a really, truly Canadian show, part of the offering is the broadcasters can't own the IP. The producers get to. And some people will look at that.
But the flip side in the US is you're making way more money up front. I don't think that either is right or the other is wrong. I just think that our system is something to protect. For 100 years, this business was run on the idea that creators and the people who made it got to own and benefit from what they did for their entire lives. And I think that that's something worth fighting for.
I think so completely. At some point, I wasn't going to make something for someone. And I said, you just have to give me IP. And they said, why do you have to have it?
Chapter 6: What role does merchandise play in the success of Heated Rivalry?
I said, it's none of your business. Cause I want it. Cause it's mine. It's not yours. It's like the old musician, right? It was like own your own publishing, right? Because why would you let somebody else administer your work and take all the profit from it? And like, we're going to, we have opportunities and we will work in this system that doesn't have that. And it'll be fine as well.
But I just think that like, when we talk about, you know, there's so many reasons why budgets have exploded, you know, the economy, like, the economy of scale on TV has just completely fallen out because we don't make enough episodes.
We don't contain them into certain locations, but also it doesn't matter if you have a massive hit or a kind of a middling hit, you seem to win no matter what at that level. So I think that there is something to look at as we move forward in these systems of like giving people backend again, like these old ideas should be new.
After the break, more from Kara Swisher's conversation with the creators of Heated Rivalry, how streaming is changing the way directors are asked to tell their stories, and what Paramount's bid to buy Warner Brothers and HBO might mean for Heated Rivalry. We're back with executive producers Jacob Tierney and Brendan Brady, who are the people behind this huge hit, Heated Rivalry.
I want to play something Matt Damon said on Joe Rogan last month about how streaming has impacted the creative process, because a lot of it, part of it are people breaking free, right? Like myself many years ago, or I have a lot of people coming to me. I'm like, it's great out here. Like, you don't need all that stuff. But let's talk, let's hear what he had to say.
And this is a very successful actor and producer. Sorry, you said Matt Damon? Matt Damon. Oh, okay. Yeah. He's talking about the business. I've heard of him. I think I've heard of him. You've heard of him. Like, for instance, Netflix, you know,
The standard way to make an action movie that we learned was, you know, you usually have, like, three set pieces, one in the first act, one in the second, one in the third, and, you know, they kind of ramp up, and the big one with all the explosions, and you spend most of your money on that one in the third act. That's your kind of finale.
Um, and now they're, you know, they're like, can we get a big one in the first five minutes to get somebody, you know, we want people to stay tuned in and, and can, and, you know, it wouldn't be terrible if you reiterated the plot three or four times in the dialogue because people are on their phones while they're watching, you know what I mean? So talk about that.
He would, by the way, make an excellent gay hockey player. Too old. An old gay hockey player. A retired one. Listen, I should be clear. I love Matt Damon. I've always loved Matt Damon. So talk about that, what's happening now in the creation. Do either of you feel pressure? We've yet to really experience that, if I'm being perfectly honest. Crave was not like that.
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