Licensing videos to mainstream television - how much?
 

Does anyone have any experience in licensing videos to mainstream television?

I have been contacted by a US cable channel/tv show for ~3-5minutes of footage of mine.

I'm looking for information on industry rates, so any help with this would be much appreciated.

cheers

Most libraries charge about $15 a sec, and they have minimum charges and minimum shot charges to. These rates for national areas and for say 2 showings.

If it was national US TV you could ask $30-50 per second for 2 national showings...

Problem being cable TV may be very small with not much budget, aslo with 3-5 minutes you would do a deal.....

You can see rates for time-lapse footage sold
http://www.time-lapse.co.uk/images/prices.gif

Interesting thread,
bump for more information.

Thanks for that - they've offered me low low $xxx and it's not worth my time to get all the footage together (it's about 30 to 40 small clips from 12 months of shooting) for the price. I'm not looking to make millions out of it, simply get paid what it's worth. It's one of a kind footage in HD and there isn't a chance they could ever get the same footage anywhere else.

Their release specifies that the footage can be used by them for absolutely anything once it is signed over to them.

If you sold it to them you should only sell it licensed for use in one program and for either a limited number of showings or time period.

It has become very hard to make money from stock footage.

They ended up increasing their offer substantially and reworked the release to be as you said. ie only for that show / season of the show.

Thanks alot for your help Cherry - I found it very useful in negotiating with these guys. :thumbsup

Some interesting info in this thread... GL George.

Happy to be of help.