I know that actors are paid repeat fees for a show being aired. I’ve been wondering a couple of things for a while.
First, do they get paid for shows repeated outside the US. For example Stargate SG-1 is on constant rotation here in the Uk on Sky 1. Do their contracts cover that?
Second, i was wondering what sort of money that equated too. Leaving aside the mega-franchises like Friends or CSI. Let’s say your a fairly important (but not the lead) member of the ensemble in a genre show. Say Dr Bashir in Deep Space Nine or perhaps the Janitor in Scrubs. Your show ends, it goes into syndication in the US and abroad. What would that equate to in repeat fees for that person? A couple of hundred dollars extra towards paying for Xmas. Thousands? A second generous income for life? Six-figure sums?
A friend of mine appeared in a local commercial that runs every Christmas season. She gets “a couple of hundred dollars extra towards paying for Christmas” each year it runs.
I don’t know what national residuals are for either commericals or shows, but I think they’d fall closer to the generous second income category.
It can vary, not only from show-to-show, but from actor-to-actor within a show. Also, the kind of show can determine how much you get, and I think that there’s some variation if the show airs on a broadcast network, or if it airs on a cable/satellite channel.
If you scroll down on this page, you can see how much a writer on a couple of game shows got paid for when repeats aired on cable. (It wasn’t much.)
Under the US Screen Actors Guild contract, performers do get payments for repeat runs outside of the US.
In general, the performers you mention have acheived a level of success that puts them well above the contract minimums. Although they may not be ‘stars’, they are ‘regulars’ in very successful shows. So, they should be making good money for a number of years after they complete their initial runs. Through lifestyle and investment choices they may continue to live well, or not.
For successful ‘working actors’ - they are not regulars in a series but they work regularly - once you work enough then you may be able live off of residuals during the down times.
Check out the SAG contract (warning PDF) for details, page 17-18. SAG Contract
Here is an article from the LA Times about how well actors can survive LA Times.
Are the grandchildren of the THREE STOOGES still receivinf resduals? These old shorts are on TV constantly-imagine the money they have made , over the years (for whoever owns them).
No. Residuals for things like TV broadcasts didn’t show up in contracts until the 1970s. People starring in things before then generally get bupkis, which is one of the reasons why they’re reran so frequently, as its cheap to do.
To expand on Icarus’ excellent response: SAG and AFTRA set minimums. There are *many *factors involved in which minimum applies to your particular case, most prominently including how much screen time you have and where/when/how often the show is rebroadcast.
However, if you are in a successful show like the examples mentioned in the OP, you probably have an agent. Your agent is responsible for negotiating the exact terms of your contract above the applicable minimums. Your agent is responsible for other things that are important to you, particularly getting you auditions and the like, but negotiating your contract is up there.
IIRC, it varied from contract to contract. ISTR, that Audrey Meadows was one of the first actors to get residuals for being on a TV show, and she wound up being worth more money than anyone else who starred on The Honeymooners.
I remember Ernest Borgnine talking about how 60s shows only paid residuals for a few showings. He was trying to get that changed but I guess it stayed the same.
Lucille Ball made a ton of money because she and Desi Arnaz owned I Love Lucy. Back then it was not common for actors to own their shows. Their Desilu studio produced the original Star Trek series. The studio eventually got taken over by Paramount.
The actors that played the Howells (along with many other actors from that time) sued repeatedly trying to get it changed, so that they could make money from the endless repeats, but lost every time. That’s one of the reasons why they, and others from that era would agree to do reunion shows, no matter what kind of dreck the script was, because they desperately needed the money.
They also shot their show on the same kind of film that movies use rather than whatever was used at the time for TV. So the storage - rerun capacity was much greater, hence, I love Lucy being on the air everywhere in the world.
CBS didn’t realize people would want to watch reruns so that’s why Lucy and Desi owned the shows after the 1st showing. Reminds me of IBM letting Microsoft own the rights to MS-DOS because IBM didn’t think they would sell it to other companies.
Any working actor (at least in NY and LA) has an agent, and in New York kids have managers also, who do the negotiating. The way it worked in NY was that the casting director called a bunch of agents to get people for the audition, the agent looked through her head shots, picked out some, called the manager, and the manager called us. In NY a kid would have one manager and multiple agents.
Residuals are freakin’ complicated. They depend on the size of the market, if the show was network or cable, and how many times the show had been repeated. The success of the show I think is less important than the status of the actor. You get residuals for commercials also. Since they run a lot, and don’t take long to shoot, most actors make a lot more on residuals than on day rates for them. The people in those commercials that run every second on the network are making a fortune.
There are definitely international residuals. My daughter had a bit role in a soap, and when it showed in Italy she got something like 60 cents.
Cartoon I saw in an agent’s office: Starlet type lolling on a couch, talking to a director type: Tell me about residuals again.