Saving Blue Bloods: How Can The Show Survive Budget Cuts

The channel wants to cut the budget of the series, and it raises mild concerns amongst the show's fans. But as we know, even though it's not officially announced yet, season 14 is already in the making, which means the show will likely keep going.

But the official approval can only be received if the budget issue is settled. And we have a few ideas on how the showrunners could keep Blue Bloods strong regardless of the cuts… And beware: there are a lot of "cuts" ahead.

Cut the storylines

Storylines always have a matter of quality vs quantity. Admittedly, right now in Blue Bloods quantity wins.

Almost half of the storylines can be cut out to focus on the more interesting ones, prioritizing their quality — not only will it save the budget, but also improve the overall experience of the series.

Cut the guest characters

Blue Bloods keeps throwing a whole lot of guest and one-episode characters at us, but in reality, there's no need for that: they can instead use the already-existing characters to the same ends.

This will help out the budget massively. Can anyone explain why Captain McNichols has so much screen time, anyways?

Cut the locations

Different locations cost different money, and sometimes, there's really no point in paying more.

Blue Bloods showrunners showed us how great they are even under really strict restrictions — during Covid, they had access to barely any locations, and the season still turned out great. They can definitely do it again.

By getting rid of extra elements, skilled and talented showrunners (like the ones we're happy to have working on Blue Bloods) are able to make their show even better.

There's no reason to worry about the budget cut negotiations: after all, Blue Bloods already had much fewer storylines and characters in the first seasons and were very limited in location choice during the pandemic.

And neither of these restrictions made the series any worse; admittedly, that's exactly when we got the best seasons.