Residual resentment slows Hollywood talks. Writers and actors want more.

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fi-residuals16oct16,1,850035.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage&track=crosspromo

Studios want to revamp pay for reruns. Writers and actors want more.
By Richard Verrier, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 16, 2007

As a young writer, Marc Cherry found early success on NBC's hit show "The Golden Girls," then toiled in obscurity for the next 12 years.

Two shows he created for Fox and CBS were canceled. None of the TV pilots he developed clicked. In debt $30,000, he sold his Hancock Park home, moved into a small condo in Studio City and even borrowed money from his mother.

What sustained him in the fallow years, before his desperation inspired ABC's 2004 hit "Desperate Housewives," were the little green envelopes that showed up in his mailbox. Reruns of "The Golden Girls," which got a second life on the Lifetime cable channel, brought residual checks that one year totaled $75,000.

Residual fees are at the center of labor talks underway between the Hollywood studios and the union that represents movie and TV writers. The major studios want to revamp the decades-old system, citing soaring production costs and fragmented audiences amid today's digital revolution.

But the writers say these payments help them weather Hollywood's feast-and-famine work cycles. Without residuals, Cherry said, he might have been forced to "get a real job."

TV viewers might never have had "Desperate Housewives," the darkly comic tale of suburbia that helped lift ABC out of the doldrums.

FULL story at link.

[Deja Q]

1. Only $75,000?

I recall the days when residuals were as much science fiction as Mr. Spock.

But should things go too far the other way?


Mind you, "The Golden Girls" is one of those not-often cases of universal success.

And what's wrong with having smaller, more devout audiences inclined to enjoy a solidly written and made program than a large audience that says "Lame" 13 episodes into the season, regardless how glossy it looks?

And what defines a job anyway? a many splintered definition, I must say...