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Simpsons Actors on Strike
ameoba writes "The next season of The Simpsons is in doubt as the voice talent is on strike due to a pay dispute. Fifteen seasons of some of the greatest prime-time TV around seems worth the money to me. ."
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It would really suck for the Simpsons to disappear, like so many other great cartoons (e.g., Family Guy & Futurama) because of Fox's short-sight
<wik>/bin/finger that girl in the back row of machines.
These guys claim that $350,000 per episode isn't enough and THEN they'll complain about Bush's tax breaks because they "benefit the rich". Stupid, foolish hypocrites. The Simpsons peaked in 1992 anyway, does anybody really still watch it?
I think a lot of us forget that the simpson's, in many other's opinions is what saved fox. They are the reason Fox is still on today.
Has the show gotten worse? No! It has only got better and wittier with time. They deserve every penny of the raise they are asking for.
-- johntracy.com, because everybody else is wrong.
Huh? They make how much. That's right they make MILLIONS a year.
How much does an avarage person make, NOT EVEN CLOSE TO THAT. Why the hell do you want to reward the greed of some washed up voice actors (Let's face it Simpsons ain't what they used to be).
Man, I'd rather feed the poor and hungry or something, but that's just me.
*8D~
Please tell me that this is supposed to be funny. These guys make more in a half hour (6-8 hours of real work according to one of the articles) then I do 2 1/2 years. Not to mention the residuals they get from syndication, which I'm sure add up to a pretty penny. I think $125,000 an episode is plenty back.
Two Minus Three Equals Negative Fun -Troy McClure
he believes the $125,000 he earns for each 30-minute episode does not reflect the true value of the characters.
it only represents the true value of the voice?
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
It never ceases to amaze me that we allow people who are paid millions to collectively strike. I mean come on your being paid for 1 day of work (ok maybe it even takes a month to prepare, but still) more then I get paid in a year... Maybe us high tech workers should start unionizing.. Oh wait, if that happened in our industry they'd probably just fire us and get new people or just go out of business. I've never figured out why out society is willing to pay huge amounts of money on entertainment. Sports stars, actors, etc. I mean are pro baseball games that much better then your local college or high school game? But those criminals (well some of them anyway), get paid millions and who pays for it? The average Joe and his family end up paying $300 to see the game (ok it can be done cheaper but think of the cost of those beers and hot dogs)... One of my pet peeves... There goes my Karma
>I understand about wanting a fair share of the pie, but where does it cross over into greed?
Is it greed because its a large absolute dollar value or becuase its a large dollar value compaired to what the producers/network make from the Simpsons?
Why is it greedy to ask for more money? Just because they can ask or just because someone says "Thats enough for you"?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
More than 300000$ per episode? are you kidding?
there is people hungry out there(READ: Asia , Africa, Latin America,etc) and these "persons"
complain about earning 300000$ per episode????
WTH is going on with them?
And the Americans continue wondering "why everybody hate US??"
Face it, for these actors, this is it. None of them are break-out stars. None have any real expectation of much of a career after this.
Most actors are in a position of having one shot at making enough to live off of for the rest of their lives. There isn't any pension plan for most of them from their acting work.
They don't get a large cut of the spin-off merchandizing as their images are not being used. And, it's hard to say what their cut is on the syndication, which is where the money is for the Simpsons.
How many people out there would sit back in a situation where they have 10 years, or so, to make every penny they need to live on for the rest of their lives and then work at a base scale? Wouldn't most people try to maximize it? Face it, we're talking about Fox here. It isn't like any show is assurred renewal. Fox is raking more money off the canned shows with no new expenditure than on new shows and it's just a matter of time before the Simpson's gets axed for "Who Wants to Marry and American Idol Millionare on Temptation Island".
In terms of greed, I put them a lot further down any list than a lot of people I knew in San Jose in 1997. And, these guys actually are producing something of value.
I agree. I used to be a die hard Simpsons fan. I was so die hard that when I slowly stopped watching new episodes, I actually felt guilty. Like I was giving up on an old friend. But now, I just don't care, the show has lost almost all of the subtle humor that made it great (in my eyes).
Troy McClure: Yes, the Simpsons have come a long way since an old drunk made humans out of his rabbit characters to pay off his gambling debts. Who knows what adventures they'll have between now and the time the show becomes unprofitable?
Forty-eight million dollars a season, for six voice actors? Give me a break. Their entire work-week is driving to a studio, and talking for three hours on a Saturday afternoon. Given the quality of today's episodes, $360,000 each is just unreasonable.
It's time for FOX to take a chance, and let another cartoon step up to the coveted 8PM Sunday night timeslot. My vote would be for Family Guy. They shafted it last time by moving it to a bad timeslot, and now, with The X-Files gone and The Simpsons waning, FOX's prime real estate is opening up again.
Currently, the 22 new episodes in production are set to run only on Adult Swim. If Family Guy DVD sales are any indication, this is a poor move for FOX. I think their viewers are ready for the kind of edgy, creative humor that The Simpsons just hasn't provided in years.
domain combinatorics
I wish I had their problems, only earning enough money to buy a small house every time I did a voice-over for a single episode.
Why don't you ask Rupert Murdoch how much he makes from the Simpsons for every hour of work he puts into it?
The show has earned over $1 billion for Fox. It will continue to run in syndication for god knows how long, earning billions more. The voice actors are simply exercising their market power, just as Fox does or WalMart does. I wish more workers were in as good a negotiating position.
what makes you think $125k an episode is "plenty"?
if you thought you were making your boss $10 million a year, would you be satisfied being paid $200k a year just because $200k is "plenty"?
So what you're saying is, that even though Fox is making even more millions a year from just advertisements, not to mention syndication and DVD's, marketing of merchandise that the actors that do the voices (many doing multiple voices) should just be making what the average person makes? Sure, that seems fair.
I was going to ask you how much money you donate of your income to feed the poor and hungry...but since you decided to hide behind an Anonymous Coward post, I couldn't.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
This is how I felt about sports celebrities and movie actors until I thought about it. They still may be greedy bastards, but maybe not.
The increase would raise each actor's pay to $US8 million a series. The actors work an average of six to seven hours each episode. However, the cartoon is thought to be worth $US1 billion to its owner, Rupert Murdoch's 20th Century Fox.
So the cartoon is worth $1 Billion and the actors want $48 Million a season, that's about 21% of the "worth" of the cartoon. That leaves 79% for the writing, production, profit, and all the other costs.
I don't know if they're asking too much, but they don't sound so much like jerks when you see how much the executives at Fox are making off their talent.
Your maths are kind of slightly off:
Now to me, for a USD Billion value TV show, spending 4.8% on the actors doesnt seem excessive. How much would the show be valued at without these actors?
"The next season of The Simpsons is in doubt as the voice talent is on strike due to a pay dispute. Fifteen seasons of some of the greatest prime-time TV around seems worth the money to me. ."
Don't you mean 6 and a half seasons of the greatest prime-time TV around?
Or as we lovingly refer to it, the Pax Simpsona.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
It's not really greed though: the series is so successful that it makes a lot of money: if the money doesn't go back to the actors, then where does it go - to the producers/owners ? Even though the figures are extremely high, it's fair that the actors get their fair cut rather than the money going into the fat pockets of execs. Let the actors use that money to do something else: they may pursue some beneficial creative activity as a result.
$125k does sound like a pretty sweet deal, even if you take into consideration that it takes about two weeks to dub an episode (and that's not even considering the time to read the script, practice, etc.).
However, if you really look at this from a different perspective, it's not really that much money, after all.
Each one of the Friend's cast makes $1 million an episode (one season consists of 22-24 eps). On top of that, they retain certain marketing rights, are allowed to do ads and have been signed for a full-time motion picture.
Now, NBC is actually loosing money. That's right - despite the fact that they've been desperately trying to get the cast to do yet another season (twice), been willing to go out of their way (rescheduled shootings, final season is shorter than usual) and that it's their #1 show, they're loosing money. And, this works out for NBC in the end because Friends can be endlessly rerun in syndication (hence, allowing NBC to recoup their losses several times over) and people will still watch it.
I don't have any figures for The Simpsons but since it's been in Fox's prime-time lineup for years now I figure they're getting pretty good ratings. So, in comparision - with the Simpsons being a much-lower cost, yet still very profitable, show asking for a bigger share of the pie isn't all that outrageous, in my humble opinion.
I think voice talent getting half of the profits is a bit unfair. There are writers, producers, artists, all of which deserve a piece of that pie in addition to the fact that fox needs to show signifigant profit for it to be worth promoting. Voice talent in a cartoon is signifigantly less of a contribution to the final product then say acting on a TV series. That's just based on your numbers though. Often the publically released numbers can be somewhat misleading as to the actuall size and direction of cashflow. I would have to see more numbers before I decided if I really thought this was unfair or not.
The darkness... controls the music. The music... controls the soul.
I am a video game localizer for a company in Tokyo, and have often wished that something like this existed. When a game requires voiceover recording, the budget usually only allows for a few professional voice actors (professionals will charge up to $1000 for a few hours work). For this reason we often end up getting amateurs to perform smaller parts. Surprisingly, some of the amateurs do a better job than the professionals when it comes to capturing what the client wants. The reason? Because they're willing to be flexible and spend time getting everything right, unlike professionals who demand extra money for every second they run over their alloted time.
To drag this back into vaguely on-topic territory, I feel that the value some professionals put on their talent is often exaggerated, and when money becomes more important than doing a good job, something is lost.
I'm not saying the Simpsons voice actors are doing a bad job, but when I read about their money demands like this it takes something away from what makes the Simpsons special to me. I feel that the writers for the show are who make it what it is, so perhaps it is time the Simpsons moved out of Springfield, and the Sampsons moved in instead?
This calculation is also absurdly low because they show each episode more than just once. You can't just count the commercials run during the first airing of an episode. There are re-runs and endless syndication. They're making a hell of a lot more than $77M a year off the show.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
ayottesoftware.com
Other than Nancy Cartwright - who else is a Scientologist?
Let's think about this. Do they? They estimate that Simpsons merchandising and syndication value is 1 billion. They earned 30k per episode for the first ten years and 125k per episode for the last five. That's 660k(10)+2.75m(5)=13.875m+6.6m=20.475m per actor for the last 15 years. At 6 actors, that's around 120m FOX has paid out with these actors having helped generated a billion dollars in value. Say the animation costs and writing costs are double this, which they probably are not since animators and writers are paid relatively poorly, then the total cost of production is 360m for FOX with an asset worth 1 billion. Out of all the players in the production only the voice actors have any bargaining chips. All the other people are even more easily replaceable. The market value of their services is clearly more than they are getting paid, so they should fight for more.
This is not an issue of they already get paid enough. If they don't get paid the money, it doesn't stay in the consumer's pocket, it stays in FOX's pocket. FOX by refusing to pay is being just as greedy if not more than the voice-actors.
I swear, Fox doesn't know good shows if they spanked 'em on their asses. Fox constantly pre-empts the Simpsons for all kinds of crap. It's gotten to the point where only about 1/2 of the time I turn to Fox on a Sunday night a 8 I'm actually going to see the Simpsons. Yet the midget wedding show was right on time; and all their other wedding crap shows right on time. If Fox doesn't want the simpsons, they should sell it. From the way they treat it, it would seem they don't want it.
Let's face it, The Simpsons is not what it used to be and I can not see it going anywhere but down in the future. You just can't keep thinking up episode ideas forever.
Comments like these have been flying around for the last 10 years about the simpsons, and countless great episodes have been made since. Your problem is that you remember the good ones from the early seasons, and not the bad ones. So when you see an average one air you go : "It's not as funny as the first Sideshow Bob episode! Simpsons is dying".
well, but the 1 billion value is not what fox earned with the simpsons in the past, it's merely its current market value if they were gonna sell it to cnn.
The figure you want to calculate with is (TOTAL REVENUE OF ADVERTISING + 1 BILLION) - (TOTAL COSTS OF PRODUCTION + VALUE OF AIRTIME).
Fleur de Sel
The problem with spin-offs is that many of the minor characters are voiced by the same people who are wanting the pay bump. For instance, Hank Azaria does the voices of Apu, Moe, Chief Wiggum, Carl, Comic Book Guy, Dr. Nick Riviera, Prof. Frink, Cletus and more.
And since I don't forsee the actors saying "oh, it's a new show, then I guess I should be content making less now," it'd be hard to create a solid authentic spin-off.
Agreed. In fact, giving the voice actors more money will probably result in more charitable donations than giving it back to execs.
Voice actors deserve a large cut, because they MAKE the show happen. Writers can only do so much to make a hit show. You need good voice actors to give the scripts life. The same outlook can be applied to regular movies: you could have the greatest plot in the world, but if your actors suck, your movie will suck.
Fox has options: they can pay what the voice actors want (which will lower profits, but keep the show at the same quality and retain viewers) or not pay what the voice actors want and either lose actors or find out the voice actors were bluffing (if no one defects there's no loss for Fox, if some defect the show becomes lower quality and they could lose viewers, if everyone defects they could have no show and have 0 viewers). It's a buisness decision - do they make more money with no show or by paying actors the demanded wages?
espo
You know, the RIAA uses this same argument to justify paying the musicians squat. It's the studio's job to evaluate the risk and worth of a new series. If they're bad at it, then they should lose money. But don't punish the actors of a sucessful series because your other shows, which they had no involvement with or control over, were crap.
The failure of your other projects in no way lessens the value of the project I'm working on.
That being said, I have no idea what the voice talent of the Simpson's is worth, not being in the business myself. I just want it resolved. Personally, I think it would be funny if, next season, everybody aged 15 years over night.
People's desire to believe they are right is much stronger than their desire to be right.
The amount of money it takes to get by is irrelevant. These voice actors are essentially partners in a business venture with Fox. Their increasing demands shouldn't be framed as "I need this much money to get by". It's more like this - when actors of any type ask for increases like this, it reflects the fact that they know Fox is making more money than ever on the show, and they'd like to share in the growing wealth that the show produces. I wouldn't be suprised if they modeled what they were asking on based off of a percentage of total revenues from the show.
To say that these guys shouldn't ask for a raise is like saying that they're simply paid help. They're not. They're the life of the show. If fox manages to shoot the golden goose and refuse their demands, the show will go on with new voice actors, but the show will likely be a shadow of itself.
These actors aren't stupid. They aren't going to ask for a salary that they know would cause Fox to lose money, since if they did so, Fox would be guaranteed to reject their offer. Looks to me like the simpson's overall take has increased, and te actors are just requesting their fair share. I don't see any problem with that.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
How much did the writers, the real geniuses behind all 15 years of laughs, get paid over that same 15 years. Apart from Matt Groening himself, I bet it was a hell of a lot less than $20 Million dollars each.
The core cast of the Simpsons are just homely-looking actors who were capable of doing funny voices. They are a remarkably talented voice cast, but that's all they are. They don't even ever appear on camera.
Did you know that, for large chucks of The Muppet Show and the associated movies, Kermit was actually being voiced by Jim Henson's understudy? If nobody could tell the difference then, what makes you think these people are so damned impossible to replace? Watch season 1 again and then watch a new episode. The Simpsons already sound different from how they originally sounded, especially Marge and Homer, even without changing cast members.
They signed the contracts they signed. Work at the rate you signed for, or leave. It pisses me off when millionaire entertainers and athletes say they are going on "strike." News flash guys: You are not exploited steel workers. You are pampered millionaires. Get over yourselves.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Work at the rate you signed for, or leave.
They have worked at the rate they signed for. Now it's time to sign again, and they've decided they want more money. I don't want to see the Simpsons go off the air any more than you do, but they still have the right to negotiate for more money when it comes time to sign a new contract. It pisses me off when people that entertainers or athletes make so much money that they no longer have the right to bargain with their employers (who, in many cases, make a whole lot more money than the actor or athlete). Sometimes, entertainers or athletes who go on strike are being stupid, because they end up destroying their livelihood in the process of trying to get more money. In this case, though, I think the Simpsons voice actors see a show that may not last too much longer, and they're just trying to get what they can before it goes away (remember, for a lot of them, this may be the last significant job they ever have).
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
looking at the responses.
Typically, readers will be complaining about how the members of the RIAA rarely pay its fair share to music artists.
How is this any different than if they were an enourmously succesful rock band? If band members wanted more than just a small percentage of what their publisher was making, would slashdotters tell them to "Get over it!" and "Get used to it!"
Part of me is inclined to agree, but then the other part of me realises that they've been doing this for more than 15 years. It's quite possibly a lot more of a tedious chore than it is interesting.
They've identified a figure for which they'll be satisfied to put up with the job in future times, no matter how boring or frustrating it gets. The alternative is that Fox may decide it's too much --- the show will end, and the voice actors can go and spend their time doing something that they find much more interesting. It's quite possible that they may be more than happy to go and do another show for much less, simply because it's different.
I suppose that just because the show is popular doesn't mean that the voice actors should be required to do it forever at a wage set by the studio. The raise is what they're claiming will be needed in order to keep them satisfied to continue doing it... perhaps they won't get it and they will no longer work on the show, but I'm sure they won't mind.
It pisses me off when people that entertainers or athletes make so much money that they no longer have the right to bargain with their employers
Well, it pisses me off when atheletes get together and decide that they deserve so much money that half the teams in the league will go bankrupt. Remember, this is collective bargaining, not pure capitalism.
Likewise, with the Simpsons. Not all the voice actors are worth the same amount of money, and any one of them could probably be replaced (how many people out there can do Simpsons impressions). But if they all hold out at the same time and ask for the same amount of money then the show is probably toast.
remember, for a lot of them, this may be the last significant job they ever have
Yeah right. No one's every going to hire Hank Azaria again. Poor, poor millionaires.
-a
People attend college to get a degree, to get a better job, to make more money, etc. The point is that people are paid for what they are WORTH ... or should be at any rate.
... but who am I to judge, I would probably want more too.
If I made my company billions, I would probably feel justified in asking for a raise.
I would also like to quote an instructor of mine, "If you were offered $20 million, would you only take $1 million? People always want more. Thats why Bill Gates is still active with Microsoft. He will never want for anything due to a lack of money but he still wants more."
This is not to say that Bill Gates is a bad person (I will refrain from any opinions about Microsoft, good or bad) but only that he is a person. Just like the actors that do the voices of the Simpsons characters I grew up watching. I do not have that kind of money at my disposal so there is a certain amount of disgust in the thought that an amount of money that large is not enough for any person