‘It stinks,’ but producing domestically is just too expensive, says The CW’s Heather Olander
The CW’s Heather Olander has said even unscripted programming is now prohibitively expensive unless produced outside of the US.
Heather Olander
The CW owner Nexstar pivoted the network away from drama towards unscripted to cut costs after it bought the US broadcast network from Warner Bros and Paramount in 2022.
It quickly scaled down its previous young adult drama staples in favour of more cost effective unscripted originals with the aim of turning a profit by this year. NBCU alum Olander was soon hired as head of unscripted programming.
Speaking on day two of the RealScreen Summit here in Miami, Olander said never in her career had she seen such a focus on “the business model of shows” over the creative.
“The decisions are not ‘we love it, it’s perfect,I want to work with this producer…’ it’s ‘does it make financial sense?’,” Olander said. “Everything that comes in the door is evaluated by, obviously do we like the thing, but does it work for us and does it work for our business model?”
That increasingly means that, even outside of notoriously costly and time-consuming drama, The CW is producing its shows abroad.
“I don’t know what will happen down the road politically but for the foreseeable future it is what it is – much cheaper [to film overseas],” Olander said. “It stinks, we’re taking a lot of production work outside of LA, but we’ve found on our shows it is much cheaper to shoot abroad.
“All of my colleagues at broadcast and cable with big formats are not shooting in the US, they’re finding economies elsewhere. It’s not even with a hub model in a lot of cases. You get incentives in other countries, it’s cheaper, you get a lot more bang for your buck in other places. It doesn’t have to be a hub model it’s just what you can do outside the US.”
Olander’s comments come as US president Donald Trump attempts to bring more production back to the country and specifically Hollywood.
Last month Trump named Jon Voight, Mel Gibson, and Sylvester Stallone as special ambassadors to improve business in Hollywood.
Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social in January the trio would be tasked with “bringing Hollywood, which has lost much business over the last four years to Foreign Countries, BACK—BIGGER, BETTER, AND STRONGER THAN EVER BEFORE!”
