Glee: A Money Making Machine

Glee is a postmodern musical that draws in young demographics with high school actors in order to open nontraditional revenue streams. This is able to work so effectively because Glee portrays each member as an underdog that everyone can relate to. Glee is able to do this to a greater degree because the contemporary songs that they sing ring true with viewers who already like and identify with that song. This makes the actors seem more relatable to the viewer and often functions as an advertisement for that song, which will later be sold on ITunes. This strategy has been particularly effective because of a successful marketing campaign and innovative style. The new business model that uses characters and story lines to draw audiences in, only to simultaneously sell them songs and merchandising, has made Glee as profitable as it is popular. Additionally, Glee has such an audience following that it is now used to prop up and anchor other shows around it.

Glee has managed to secure a pretty large target audience, with strong numbers in the 18-49 demographic. This is due to the underdog portrayal of the high school actors. While this format appeals to tweens and teens by giving them situations and characters that they can identify with, it is also able to draw in older viewers by giving them a product that they often feel nostalgic about. Playing on stereotypes instantly draws viewers in by getting them to identify with one of the many main characters. Glee manages to then play up the forces and pressures that make each member, even the star football quarterback, an underdog. This allows Glee to capitalize on the idea that “Every teenager… goes through a time when they are not sure where or if they belong” and extend it to “all ages, because that feeling never really goes away.” However, the show does not stop at creating characters that most people can identify with, but goes further to tap into the same cultural phenomenon that was part of American Idol’s success, “the idea that anyone can be a star, even underdogs.” the show is able to accomplish this by tying misfits, jocks, nerds, and cheerleaders together with songs that everyone knows. However, even though this form of “pure escapism” utilizes “cultural staples to grab a broad audience” it still tends to promote more songs that are listed in the top 40 in order to remain “the No. 1 show in the 18-49 demographic among women.” This tendency functions as more than just a trick that allows the show to stay relevant, but actively allows the audience to “feel like one of the cool kids when they can sing along to Bruno Mars' ‘Just the Way You Are.’” This tendency to play to women between the ages of 18-49 is in order to attract this particularly prized demographic, but also to market the show to entire families. This brings in a large number of viewers per episode, and has given Glee a reputation as a PG viewing experience, despite the fact that “it still has an edge.”

Glee charges "over $270,000 per 30 seconds in the fall and $370,000 in the spring,” which is the 3rd highest price for advertising on television. This is peculiar because they are ranked 33rd in total viewers. However, one should not be too surprised since they are able to draw in one of the most high-quality audiences that a show can have. However, in spite of this gigantic revenue base, the producers are still looking for alternate streams of income. Glee, which has a “cost [of] more than $3 million” per episode, has made up these costs by aggressively selling merchandise. The success of their first season’s advertising campaign to drive viewers to iTunes in order to buy singles, albums, and shows, culminated in “4.2 million downloads of songs featured in its episodes” and “as of December, ‘Glee’ now has 102 songs” that have made it to the Billboard top 100. Additionally, product placement has been huge. An entire episode was devoted to a bright yellow, convertible Corvette which allowed one of the teachers to “break out of his doldrums and try to win back his girlfriend.” The “Camaro and the Cruze” have also made appearances on the show, which is part of a strategy to target the heavy female audience. This use of product placement is only the beginning as producers and executives look for ways to make Glee as profitable as other primetime dramas that often cost up to 50% less. However, with a karaoke machine, a Wiki game, multiple board games, trivia games, and books, Glee is becoming profitable, which is unusual in the early life of a television series, and is becoming “not unlike the kind of revenue juggernaut [that] ‘American Idol’” turned out to be.

This hour long, post modern musical, which has been dubbed a “musical dramedy,” was inspired by what “made ‘Chicago’ such a successful film” and continues to market itself as a genre defying experience that is different from everything “at the networks and cable.” This concept, which had originated as a movie, was picked up by Fox within 15 hours of receiving the script and Glee is now aired by 20th Television and produced by 20th Century Fox Television, but shares the rights with Brad Nalchik Tetley-Vision, and Ryan Murphy Television. Fox originally aired Glee right after American Idol in order to gather a strong lead in with an audience that would be predisposed to musical entertainment. However, since the massive success of Glee, Fox has used it to anchor their “comedy block on Tuesdays” and to prop up new shows like ‘Raising Hope.’ This strategy has paid off immensely, especially because it has allowed them to strengthen weaker slots with American Idol. This has allowed Fox to spread its largest revenue contributors across the week. Glee’s success, many say, is due to the creators, and executive producers of Glee, “Ryan Murphy, Brad Nalchik, and Ian Brennan,” who wanted to build this innovative show from the ground up and started by recruiting actors from Broadway. Matthew Morrison, for example, had already played a role in "Hairspray" and "The Light in the Piazza," while Lea Michele starred in the rock musical "Spring Awakening" and Jenna Ushkowitz had acted in the Broadway revival of "The King and I."

However, the innovative feeling of Glee has not only been helped by its actors, but is also set apart by the marketing strategy that Fox used. In order to get people excited, and to drum up audiences, Fox was “carpet bombing its airwaves with Glee promos” before they started off the first season of Glee. However, even before this television campaign, Fox was working overtime to grab attention for Glee. In order to arouse interest they showed the pilot of Glee on May 19, 2009, months before the first episode would appear. Additionally, cast members showed up at Hot Topic clothing stores to get people excited about the show. Fox also gave out free copies of the show on DVD, and left it online at Hula in order to garner more attention. All of this was combined with an aggressive social media campaign on YouTube, Face book, and twitter. This aggressive marketing strategy worked, bringing in 9,619 million viewers to the first episode. Since then, Glee has been performing well; peaking at over 26 million viewers after the Super bowl and continuing to bring in at least 10 million viewers an episode in the second season.

Glee draws people in by creating stereotypical situations and characters, each with their own flaws that the audience can easily identify with. This identification process allows viewers to become more intimate with the show, especially when the actors begin to sing songs that modern viewers already know and love. Fox originally took a chance on the new musical project, but hedged their bets with innovative marketing strategies and with a huge lead in audience from American Idol. The use of cultural classics and songs that recently premiered on the top 40, drew in the American Idol audience members specifically, and music lovers generally. This target audience was strong in the 18-49 demographic, and particularly strong with women. The strength in these demographics enabled Glee to become the 3rd most expensive show to buy advertisements on. This advertising revenue is supplemented with a steady stream of money made from selling singles on ITunes. This model has been so successful that Glee has now become a tent-pole of its own and anchors the entire comedy lineup on Tuesdays.