Netflix

Google claims it's a 2 million per 1 hour episode and everyone knows Google knows everything

200 BJs

It depends what you mean by low budget. I can't find the Survivor show you're talking about. East Siders is 3 seasons of 8 15-minute episode shows. The original budget was about $7k per episode. It's since grown. Misfits had a budget of $400k per episode in 2009, and that's decidedly not "low budget". My friend is shooting a feature film for Netflix on a $1M budget. Again, this is a step up from low budget. He tells me of movies being made for less than $200k. Edit: to add to this, you can film a feature in 8-12 days, a low-budget 8 episode show in like 15-25 days. Assuming few locations, the most expensive part of production will be filming and editing. You'll likely pay AT LEAST $2k, probably $5k+ for filming per day of shooting. You'll likely pay AT LEAST $3k per hour in editing. For the $1M 2-hour feature, $50k is editing. You can get writer/directors for next to nothing, and you can get actors for actually nothing. In theory -- assuming you're not an actor, writer, cinematographer, editor, or director -- you could make a series of 8 24-minute episodes for about $100k. It's unlikely it would be very good, though. If you're a writer and you know a director, you could maybe make something worthwhile for $100k.