This is bizarre way to look at someone’s salary. I mean, I get paid per-page for the freelance work that I do, and depending on how quickly I work, I can make around $50-60/hr. Wow, $50/hr! At 40 hours per week, that’s like $100k/yr! I’m rich! Except I don’t work at that rate for 40 hours per week. Even if I had sufficient clients to support that amount of work, which I don’t, I wouldn’t be capable of working at that rate for that number of hours, so that’s a meaningless number for me. The meaningful number is how much I actually bring in, which I assure you is significantly less than $100k. And your “$228mil/yr” number is equally meaningless.
If the cast is already offering to take 30 percent less, I suspect they’ll work something out. If the show ends, the cast doesn’t get paid to work and Fox doesn’t get money from new episodes. If the show continues, they do. There’s no denying that the Simpsons has made Fox fantastic amounts of money for 20-odd years and that the cast is also paid a lot of money.
The last couple of years seems to me to have seen a marked improvement in the episodes. It seems to be gentler, a little bit less zany, actually quite like it was in its first couple of series. There have been a lot of wojus episodes though over the last dozen years or so.
I’d like to see the voice actors keep raking in the bucks with no heavy lifting, stickin’ it to The Man, but… c’mon. The show’s best days really are behind it. I have fewer and fewer belly laughs when I watch. Much as I’ve loved it over the years, I wouldn’t shed many tears if it was cancelled now.
Well, they’re falling in rank, too, not just absolute viewers. Something is getting more viewers, in spite of the additional channels and entertainment options, and it ain’t the Simpsons.
If I happen to discover a mine on my property that can provide $440k of product for a half day of my labor, should I not be allowed to get that money for that labor?
That’s what these folks have, they wound up part of a franchise that is incredibly profitable, and are an important component to that continued profitability. They deserve what they can negotiate, because I can guarantee that Fox is not giving any of their advertisers a price break due to a show being cheaper to produce.
Prove to me that future Simpson’s episodes are “incredibly profitable”. If we can assume that the #'s in this article is correct, and that the ratings in post 12 are correct, then we’re looking at per-first run episode revenues of (a maximum) $300,000 ($40 * 7,500). This doesn’t cover even 1 of the four principal voice actors in the show, much less the line talent, the production costs, etc.
I think it’s a great opportunity for the show to end - they can go down as righteous contrarians, instead of quietly going down until nobody remembers they’re one.
Fox is providing them a great excuse to go out on their own terms.
And how much does Fox make on the DVD sales?
The way I see it: Dan Castellaneta makes $8 million a year. Either:
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Take the 45% pay cut and make “only” $3.6 million a year, or
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Quit and let ME do the voice of Homer Simpson for 1/16th that much.
That depends – what percentage Rasta is your voice?
The trick is getting Fox to pay you that amount. 
When the voice actors went on strike for the first time, in 1998 - before their first major bump in salary - Fox, of course, said they could find thousands of kids who could do the voices for a fraction of what the actors wanted. They paid up anyway. The salaries went from $30,000 an episode to $125,000 and have continue to rise, arguably to an unsustainable point.
I’m afraid that my crystal ball is in the shop, so I’m currently unable to prove anything about future events. However, I strongly suspect that the Simpsons are currently profitable, and suspect that in the future they would be profitable if the voice actors made in excess of $4M each per year.
What supports my suspicions? The fact that the show is currently on the air, and the fact that Fox wanted to keep the show on the air with the actors paid over $4M each per year. Fox does a great many stupid things with its shows, being slow to cancel them when they lose money is not what they’re known for.
And from networks all over the world showing it too?
I think Fox is seeing the writing on the wall. While they lose money on the first run showings, they have been making it up on syndication, DVD sales, etc.
But all of these are declining.
E.g., for a long while in our area (a top-ten market) there were only sporadic Simpsons episodes on weekends. Then nothing. No Simpsons at all. Now they are back weeknights but only newer episodes. I think the syndication packages were too costly and they had to drop the price.
DVD sales are also dropping. On Amazon, season 4 ranks in the 2000s in Movies and TV while season 13 ranks far down in the 4000s. The direction is pretty clear.
Fox knows that the chances of making money on future episodes is dropping like a rock. The actors either take a big pay cut (negotiated between the 30-45% numbers mentioned) or they walk away from the show. They have to reason to complain financially.
Season 4 ('92-'93) was released on DVD in 2004 and Season 13 ('01-'02) came out in 2010. That might have a wee bit to do with the rankings, as does the fact that you’re comparing arguably the best season with one of the weakest. That being said, I’m sure the increasing fragmentation of the cable audience isn’t good for DVD sales.
These numbers are absolutely meaningless. They’re snapshots in time, for starters, so you have no idea if Season 13 sold a kajillion in its first week of release (cf. Season 4 selling four copies in its first week of release) and is only now #4000 on Amazon. Secondly, what’s the difference in absolute sales between #2000 and #4000? There could be 20,000 sales of Season 4, 19,999 sales of Season 13, and a two-thousand way tie separating the two.
If you have absolute sales numbers, feel free to share them!
The voice actors are great. The writing staff should be horsewhipped. It hasn’t been funny in 15 years.
Please let it die already. No show should be on the air for 20 years.
There’s a fair number of cites needed to gather this info, and it all boils down to guesswork and spreadsheet work anyway, but here goes:
Cite for # of Simpson’s season DVD’s sales (1.9 million units of S1): New and Upcoming DVD/Blu-ray Releases - Metacritic
Cite for retail price of Simpson’s DVD’s ($35): Amazon.com
Cite for breakdown of CD costs (couldn’t find for DVD - if you can, please let me know): Does a CD have to cost $15.99? – Wizbang
of Simpson’s Episodes (508, including 22 (est) for this year): List of The Simpsons episodes - Wikipedia
$ amount of voice talent per episode: The Simpsons - Wikipedia
of “Main Actors” making top $ amount (6): The Simpsons - Wikipedia
of people watching Simpson’s new episodes: Wiki, by season. Note there is a lack of information about the first 8 or so years, with only 2 of the seasons having actual viewer counts.
Assume the following items (listed in order of (my) certainty):
- All Simpson’s DVD seasons sell for the same price as listed on the Amazon site.
- All Simpson’s DVD seasons have sold as well as season 1.
- DVD and CD cost breakdowns are roughly equivalent.
- The $40/thousand rate cost (based on 7.5 million viewers) adjusted proportionately to the # of viewers (i.e., that 15 million brought in $80/CPM, 30 million brought in $160/cpm)
- All seasons have been released on DVD.
Total DVD revenue is $1.4 billion (less 30% to retailer, leaving FOX with $980 million in revenue).
Total TV revenue is $704 million.
Total TV+DVD revenue $1.6 billion
Total profit (for FOX) on DVD’s: $157 million.
Total profit for Fox on TV Revenue: $70 million.
Total amount paid to 1 actor for lifetime of program: $87 million.
Total amount paid for top 6 actors: $520 million.
(The above figures do not include the movie (DVD or Box Office), nor do they include syndication).
For season 22, by my calculations FOX earned $6 million in commercial sales (revenue), $44 million from season 22 DVD sales (again, revenue) while paying the top 6 voice actors $58 million.
So, for future Simpson’s episodes, my back of the envelope calculations prove that if the actors want the work, they have to take a paycut.
Actors: Hank Azaria, Julie Kavner, Dan Castellana, Nancy Cartwright, Harry Shearer, Yeardly Smith.
It seems to me that the main voice actors are all set for life, but I’d feel pretty bad for the other people working on the show, like the animators and writers and other people who actually need a pay check. They have as much or more to do with the final produce you see, but they have no power compared to the “talent”. The best actor in the world can’t do much with a crappy script. An actor is like a machinist that is building something that someone else designed. A good machinist will have input on a design, but they don’t create the design. A good actor can suggest changes in the script and they certainly control the delivery, but they don’t usually write it. This is a cooperative venture where a lot of people have input in the final product.