Comparing Costs: Lonelygirl15 vs. LOST

Lonelygirl15 has a monthly budget of about $40,000 with a staff of 10 (including actors). With this, the LG15 team produces about 20 2+ minute videos, or roughly the amount of time in a single 42 minute episode of the television show LOST. According to one article (a bit dated), each episode of LOST Season 1 cost about $2.5 to $2.8 million.

In other words,
the cost ratio of LOST minutes to Lonelygirl15 minutes is as high as 70 to 1 ! At these production prices, Lonelygirl15 could produce 1,400 videos for the cost of a single episode of LOST.

A little sanity checking would indicate that the ratio is probably not quite this high, perhaps more on the order of 40 or 50 to 1... but that still makes Lonelygirl15 production costs a heck of a bargain.

In the opinion of this blogger, this statistic makes "24 videos in 24 hours" sound like a piece of cake ;).

references:
March 19, 2007 blogs.business2.com
Lonelygirl15 Gets Its First Product Placement

January 26, 2005 starbulletin.com
High filming costs force ABC network executives to consider relocating

~ QtheC