I don't fully understand syndication, but I do know when a shows goes to it the money is huge.
{LOL} I hear ya. The thing with syndication is that prior to it, a show like say "Friends" or "Seinfeld" would only be broadcast on the NBC network. Syndication, allows any other network, or TV station, independant or otherwise, regardless of the network affiliation, to air the show as well. Most people mistake television programs as vehicles for entertaining the masses, but once you lift the robes, clear away the cobwebs, and shine a light on things, the harsh reality is, TV programs exist as a medium to deliver commercials. Many eyeballs on a TV show, mean many advertisers trying to reach the very demographic that show delivers. That's why you'll see great shows get cancelled. It's not because they're not good, or because they don't have an audience. It's because they don't deliver
the right audience. Who cares if boys 18 - 25 are watching it? The advertiser who wants to air commercials on this network is trying to reach women 40+. Syndicated shows have a proven track record of delivering precise demographics. They are more of a sure thing than a new show, so advertisers consistently pay more to have those shows deliver their ads.
So now, in syndication, instead of being on the air between 7-7:30pm, one night a week, an actors face can be on the air 7 days a week, across all the networks, independant stations, specialty channels, and through out various time slots, ...anywhere in the world. They are in a gadzillion places at once. Their work, is creating countless selling opportunities for advertisers, and the networks rake it in hand over fist as a result. This poses a tremendous problem for the actor because, now, their images and the characters they create, (whether they be goofy oddballs, stoic heroes, murderous villians, or little goody goodies) take on a life of their own, and are forever embedded in the minds of the public. They may never work again, because:
- 1) -The audience may refuse to accept them in any other role. (I think Stallone would kill to do Shakespeare ...but who wants to see it?) That's why Jessica Biel (7th Heaven) did a Playboy spread, in order to shatter the good little church girl image, and why Maureen McCormick (Marsha Brady) after the demise of the Brady Bunch refused to accept any role unless she could play a biyotch. Bruce Willis was smart. He took the money and ran. After MoonLighting, he caught a break with Die Hard, then he got out while he still could and made projects he wanted to make. Ya the "Die Hard" franchise was good to him, but if he hadn't escaped when he did, I doubt he would have been accepted in "The Sixth Sense" or the upcoming animated film "Over the Hedge" from the makers of Shrek & Madagascar (I'm sooo looking forward to seeing that)
- 2) -No producer is going to want to hire a guy who when audiences see him say "Hey, that's the XYZ cookie kid!" What sponsor would advertise on that show? You want the audience to focus on your product, not your competitor's.
Through commercials and syndicated programs, advertisers are leveraging off your image, which they can project all over the market indiscriminately. During which time, ...the performer is essentially out-of-work, ...but his captured image continues to deliver consumers, and sell products, upon which the ad agencies, advertisers, networks etc are all enriched. How about the actor? That's why you should NEVER do non-union. Over-exposure can kill a career before it starts. It can also kill a successful one too. Just ask Ben-nifer?
Thank Goodness she can sing, and has already parlayed alot of her earnings into other business ventures. Her fragrance line is fabulous. She might lay low for a few years, and re-emerge just like Madonna did after her "Sex" book. That was just far too much exposure if ya ask me.
This is why there needs to be residuals for actors in the industry. Without them, actors may leave the business altogether, once the initial thrill of seeing their faces on TV wears off, ...and trust me, ...it wears off real quick. Producers also need to keep a stable pool of talent to select from.
I just heard someone got a $40 million paycheck cause their show went to syndication.
I can see it. I've never starred in or had a re-occuring role in a show that got syndicated. I've done episodes in syndicated shows, but doing 1 episode in a series that had a 6 yr run doesn't really weigh down the wallet when you consider how many actors, regular cast, guest stars, day players, under 5's, guest directors etc also worked on those shows. That's 100's of episode, with thousands of performers and other residual income attracting independant contractors, with whom all of those residual profits must be shared.
When I initially said you lost resids for syndication, I was thinking about syndicated shows in Canada. {lol} Traditionally our market has always been much smaller, with only a few companies producing TV shows. Of course these same companies are so vertically integrated, that they also had distribution as well, and when they syndicated, they always sold the shows to themselves with sweetheart deals. {lol} The earlier story where I mentioned the producer getting busted because of the Florida TV guide was just such a case. As a result of that, court orders came down, books were seized and the forensic accountants rolled their sleeves up. Based on the given exchange rate, we were able to determine exactly when the show had been sold. Because it was such a sweetheart deal, when they tallied it all up, the 2nd lead, who had worked in 96 out of 104 episodes over 4 years, came away with a royalty cheque of $1,000
...FOR 25 YEARS USE!!! 
No joke! Meanwhile, just 9 months earlier, she had guest starred in only
one episode of
"Murder She Wrote" with Angela Lansbury, for which she had already received close to $11,000 in residuals, and counting. Needless to say, our negotiators played some serious hardball after that, and our next negotiation, we walked away with resids on the gross, not the net, and introduced the 20:1 ratio for talent.
Then there were all those poor guys in the 60's who worked on such syndicated shows like Gilligan's Island, Star Trek etc. Back then, Sherwood Schwartz offered them upfront buy-outs or back-end resids. Considering the level or "art" these shows were, ...most actors took the upfront money and thought they were making out like bandits. At the time, the entire cast, except Tina Louise (who was a very serious Broadway actress who was deceived into taking the role, and whose career was ruined by the show), had an absolute laugh riot making what they all thought was a bunch of silly little fluff, ...and it was silly fluff, but audiences lapped it up, ...and bought whatever products were advertised during the commercial breaks. Little did they anticipate the show would be so successful. And none of them foresaw the invention of the VCR. {lol} Nowadays, the contracts are hundreds of pages long, coveraging just about every forseeable contingency during filming and beyond, as well as stipulating residuals be due if/when the work is repurposed, or repackaged, and distributed, not only theatrically, but also on free TV, cable TV, pay-per-view, subscription channels, by means of video cassettes, DVD's, or any other anticipated or unanticipated future technology on earth,
...or in the universe. I kid you not! The universe part always cracks me up.
They still have buy-outs, but they are four 4 years use
ONLY. After that, residuals are due, and they are based on the distributor's
gross not net, and must be divied up with no greater than a 20:1 ratio among all members of the cast. So in exchange for our fees + an additional 130% of those fees, producers have 4 years to milk as much profit in as many markets worldwide, with as many uses, as they can before they have to start sharing it with the cast. Some theatrical productions will opt for a smaller % buyout, your negotiated fee + an additional 50%, as an advance against a greater percentage of distribution grosses.
The producer's had a field day when VCR's first came out. They started selling video-cassettes of classics, for which the performers never made a dime. The same happened with musicians and compact discs. Now we make sure it never happens again. TV will never be as effective, and the revenues will never be as good as they were during the "Golden Age of Television" when there was really only 1 market with 3 stations, a few shows in the evening and all eyeballs were on them. You competed with maybe 2 other programs and of course 'Uncle Miltie' was King, and 'Lucy' was Queen. Now a days we've got hundreds of channels (cable, specialty, free, pay-per-view, subscription etc.,) international satellite programming, videos, DVDs, xBox, Tivo, internet programming, etc. The markets are fractured beyond anything ever anticipated, and the reality is it's harder & harder for producer's to turn a profit in such a fragmented market using the traditional distribution model and compensation structure. Advertising is spread out across too many channels. Even though the focus is tighter, and hits more precise, for the traditional TV producer it's harder to make a dime in TV. Ad buys aren't as great. The majority of the profit comes from repackaging copywrites in auxiliary markets or overseas. Right now India has the world's fastest growing middle class, but when China hits, ...it is going to be CRAZY!
BTW - When you hear about a TV star receiving a Ferrarri as a gift from a network executive, ...where do you think the executive gets the money for such an extravagant gift? Obviously it comes from his employers at the network, ...but where do you think the network gets the money to pay it's employees so well? Of course, ...from the Ad agencies, and the ad agencies get it from, ...their clients, ...and the clients get it from... padding the cost of their products that they sell to the public. That's right guys, ...they get it from me & you. With so much of the product cost going into advertising, ...how much do you think is left over to ensure product quality? With enough spaced repetition, a product doesn't have to be all that good to sell well. It just has to appear often enough, in enough commercials, on enough billboards, in enough scenes in a TV show, in enough magazines, with cool, sexy looking models, for people to feel compelled to buy it. If it was so good, why would they have to spend so much money telling you it was, couldn't they just let word-of-mouth do it? It works so well for everything else? There's a funny scene in "Thank You For Smoking" where the tobacco lobbyist is taking a meeting with a product placement agent. They're discussing the launch of a new cigarette. It was to co-incide with the release of a new futuristic space movie wherein Brad Pitt & Catherine Zeta-Jones make wild passionate monkey love, afterwhich they roll over ...and light up a smoke. Sure-fire guarantee to sell cigarettes.
And that's why actors make so much money.
You are right about the 13 week pay period I think but I had as many as 4 Nationals playing at one time and was getting checks monthly. I got my last check in 1995. I do have 11 years of residual checks stockpiling at SAG. I went on their website and you can check. There are 2 pages of froms you have to fill out and mail in.
SAGs jurisdiction is so large, and membership requirements so miniscule, that it would be impossible for them to print all the shows, as well as all the actors for whom residuals are accruing in a newsletter or on a webpage. Under SAG, you get 1 union job and you can join the union, whereas in Canada, you have to successfully compete against union actors and land 6 union jobs within a fixed time period before you can gain membership. We have something like 18,000 members and that's including everyone ...extras, voice-overs, and stunts alike. A while back we did a huge recruiting drive, lowered the membership qualifications and our numbers doubled over night. More importantly tho, we dried up the non-union talent pool, forcing producers to become union signatory if they wanted product made by pros, that didn't look like it was cast with a bunch of amateurs and wannabes
Still we're only 18,000 across Canada. SAG has at least that many members just along 5 blocks of Wilshire Blvd. alone. {lol}
The French performers have their own union in Quebec, and most of our bi-lingual actors have dual membership in 'ACTRA' and it's Quebec equivalent 'Union des Artiste'. And you're at quite an advantage to land a national spot in Canada if you are bi-lingual and hold dual membership. Advertisers can simply hire one spokeperson, and shoot both versions of the commercial at the same time, one in English, the other in French. The beauty is, the shoot days are inevitably longer, and you make 2 session fees for the same work. The resid split on the commercials are obviously different though. If you're not bi-lingual, with dual membership chances are you're looking at regional or wildcard spots, but they can be pretty good too, ...especially if they start airing south of the border. You can instantly multiply your resids tenfold then. The only exception to the bi-lingual rule is if you're shooting MOS or SOC. You don't have to know English, French or any other language for that matter, let alone be fluent in it. You could be a deaf mute and still make bank
Normally for Film & TV, what ACTRA does is to quarterly publish the list of names of the shows (including working titles) for which residuals have arrived. That simply alerts those of us in residual attracting job categories to be on the lookout for the cheques. PRS calculates and sends them out from there. Commercials are a bit more labour intensive for checking the accuracy of the resids cause there are so many factors involved, but those are sent out too. The problem comes in when people don't even anticipate they are going to get paid anymore and neglect to keep their information current with the union. The cheque is there, but the union doesn't know where to send it.
Keith, I know this sounds like a morbid thought, but considering your ordeal with the spider, and the fact that you have kids and grandkids, it might be a good idea to let your family know that your resids continue... even after death. To this day, I continue to receive 15% of gross income from former clients who are no longer with us. Residual cheques for performers who pass still go to "The Estate of..." And you never know... the nostalgia channel is always looking for programming. They routinely resurrect shows that no longer air. You could wake up one day and find a monster cheque waiting for you. As well too, sometimes industrials are repurposed and sold to the public, which is always a very nice & pleasant surprise. $$$ Every once in a while I'll pop into a store and ask the store mgrs. how the sales are of one of my re-purposed industrials. It gives me a good indicator of how long the residuals on it are going to last. If sales continue to be brisk enough, when the renewal comes up, I know they're gonna pony up another cheque for another 4 years use + % of sales. The best part of this one is, other than myself, there is only one other actor, so the residuals are split only 2 ways. 50/50 between myself and the other guy, instead of the usual norm of having to share resids split with 150 others on a film, or 1500 others in the case of a TV series. The downside is the distribution isn't as wide, ...but that's ok. Sometimes a larger piece of a smaller pie can be far more lucrative than a smaller piece of a bigger pie.
I am going to do that just to see how much. I'll be pissed if it is 11 years of Aaron Spelling checks for Dynasty. Even thought with the Soap Channel they are playing General Hospital and Knotts Landing I think too. I know Dangerous Curves plays a few times a year on the USA channel. Back in 1997 they were thinking about re-releasing my Gatorade commercial. And at one time even the Apple one with updated systems. So who knows I may have $100 waiting for me. I'm just glad I paid back my loan from the SAG credit union. Or I may not get anything and still owe
Can they do that, ...attach resids against debts owed to the union?
Wouldn't they be two separate and autonomous branches independant of each other?
