There's no way FOX spent $20 million on this show. The
whole purpose of having reality shows like this on television
is that they're cheap to put together, so spending that
type of money doesn't make sense.If you see it as a one-time investment defrayed over three years, three decades, three centuries, it makes a very small amount of sense. But that means going in believing the series will last that long.
I'm willing to bet most of that was set construction: they either had to build their own hotel or find one that was doing so badly that a perpetual pool of eleven guests looked good, then purchase it.
PH ratings were okay and that wouldn't justify FOX handing out that much cash and saying 'do what you want' on a show that
is a carbon copy of another reality show. If they did, they're CRAZY.
This is FOX. Your point is...?
I took that twenty mil figure from the http://ilovereality.com/Forever_Eden/news.html article. I am considering the source on accuracy, but renovating your own hotel isn't cheap. And in the ongoing costs department, figure in one twenty-four hour on-call production staff.
Explains a lot about why the prizes are so cheap. There's no money left.