|
Over the years my views on the “reality” TV craze have been well documented here. In case you are a new reader or happened to be out of the country on an amazing race when those columns ran, in a nutshell, I think they suck.
Unfortunately I am obviously in the minority when it comes to this assessment, not just in the television viewing public, but here in my own house as well. So during the evening hours if I want to see the members of my family I must, on most nights, subject myself to these annoying programs. I guess in the scheme of things it is a small sacrifice, but I wish it didn’t have to be that way.
Many times I wonder why the drive is so intense in the contestants of these shows to be on TV, many times exposing what flawed excuses for human beings they are. I guess that the answer is simple. Fame and notoriety. Well that and the potential of becoming a TV star outside of the reality spectrum. So far none that I have seen have made the jump to any primetime sitcom or drama. But one can dream I suppose.
The drive for fame has driven lots of people to do many a stupid thing. The dreams of making millions has fueled the entertainment industry since the first movie theatre opened and the first TV set cast its flickering glow on our living rooms. For many a moon, the two, movies and TV, were completely separate entities operating in universes that rarely met.
Sure, occasionally a big time movie star like William Holden or Harpo Marx would pop up in a cameo on I Love Lucy. But rarely were there stars who could successfully navigate both oceans without getting pigeon holed as one type of actor or another. It was always far more dangerous for the movie star, because back in the day it was considered a step down to be called a TV star as opposed to a movie star.
Those lines have all but been erased as time has passed and many a big time movie star has made the jump to the small screen in hopes of keeping a waning career afloat or keeping those paychecks coming in. Fame and those paychecks go hand in hand when it comes down to life in the entertainment fast lane. That life is what keeps the majority of the reality show auditions filled.
So what kind of dough are we talking about here? While it is not the ridiculous amounts paid to “A” list movie stars, 10 to 20 million a pop, it isn’t peanuts either. The salaries of TV stars have skyrocketed in recent years and has become completely out of control. It keeps climbing and just like anything, the bubble is bound to burst eventually.
Last week, in the Entertainment Weekly magazine, they spilled the beans about the runaway salaries that most of the TV actors make and some of the extortion style tactics actors used to get them there. While I would not normally condone discussing one’s salary, in my opinion what an employee makes is between he and his employer, but in the case of anyone who courts fame and celebrity, their life becomes an open book. One that can be read by anyone who so desires, it is part of the price they have to pay for those hefty paychecks.
As I mentioned, those TV paydays have grown quite sizably, which is probably why so many who once aspired to the silver screen now don’t see doing a TV series as a step down. As it stands right now, according to the EW article, the average per episode pay for a relatively inexperienced actor ranges between $25,000 to $40,000. That is nothing to sneeze about, especially when you are just starting off.
It’s when your show becomes a hit when the salaries really jump. Just recently, Katherine Heigl of Grey’s Anatomy got into a very public dispute over her $30,000 per episode salary claiming that she felt “undervalued” in comparison to the rest of the cast.
Heigl walked out of salary negotiations with the studio because the sizable raise they were offering was not sizable enough in comparison to the rest of her cast mates. I guess in her greedy little tirade she also forgot she was under contract as well. Because according to the studio, under that contract, they didn’t have to offer her anything.
What she needed to do was one of the things that have worked in the past. Gain popularity, like her co-star Patrick Dempsey or Dr. McDreamy as he is referred to, he pulls down $175,000 an episode. That’s a lot of dough for nice looking hair. Or develop a consortium of your fellow actors who are making the same as you do and present a unified front while negotiating.
The latter worked like a charm for the cast of Friends. Back in 1996 the six compadres who were making $40,000 each per episode, presented a united front and got it raised to $100,000. This, according to industry insiders, was the “Big Bang” as far as TV actor salaries were concerned. It was the day that everything changed. After seeing that this worked, they went back again in 2000 and walked away with $750,000 per episode, each. Then in 2002 they struck again and came away with a whopping $1,000,000.
While I watched and for the most part enjoyed Friends, that to me was just outrageous. So were the salaries of Tim Allen while doing Home Improvement, who was making $1,250,000 an episode or Ray Romano’s $1,800,000 an episode. I’m sorry but those guys were not even actors, they were comedians playing basically themselves. Once they reached that high water mark the genie was out of the bottle and the salaries we see now seem tame in comparison.
As the article in EW pointed out, there are some people who are considered worth making the big bucks and those who are not. While I agree with their assessment that Kiefer Sutherland is worth the $400,000 he makes for 24, he is also the show’s executive producer. I also agreed that Kevin James is not worth the $400,000+ he pulls down for The King of Queens, which is one of the least funny shows on television. I was appalled that they thought that Simon Cowell was worth $263,000 an episode.
For anyone on a reality TV show to be making that much money makes me ill. Especially Cowell, the queen of mean, who does nothing more than sit there and pass judgment on others who are generally far more talented than he could ever be. Sure his assessments are sometimes right, but $263,000 an hour right?
I think what frustrates me the most about the entire TV payday spectrum is that there are so many people who are far more deserving, but under paid. People who may not entertain us on a weekly basis, but change, save, and enhance our lives.
Remind me again, how much do teachers make?
|
