Tuesday, June 08, 2010

How Much Scrillah Has Seinfeld Made Since Leaving the Air?

The answer, which was buried in a Time Warner investor report late last month, is $2.7 billion. According to the New York Post:

    The numbers indicate that reruns on regular TV have grossed $2.3 billion since 1998.

    Revenues from cable were about $380 million, execs reported.

    “Seinfeld” made 180 episodes during its nine-year run — which means that each half-hour     episode has earned more than $14 million so far.

While Jerry Seinfeld and Seinfeld co-creator Larry David have made fortunes off of their stakes in the series, co-stars Jason Alexander, Michael Richards and Julia Louis-Dreyfus get nothing but a cut of the Seinfeld DVD sales — not to mention the occasional Curb Your Enthusiasm reunion paycheck. Giddyup.

Not too shabby. Especially considering most of the first dozen or so episodes are pretty unwatchable. But what's the difference between "regular tv' and "cable" now? I mean, the only reruns I ever see are on TBS. Which I thought was "cable," but what do I know.Are they re-running on NBC or something?

Tho I'm surprised they never cut the other three in for more of the pie. Hell, even John & Paul gave George & Ringo a slice of each Lennon/McCartney song back in the day.

3 comments:

rrthur said...

they did sort of. the cast complained about that fact and their salaries ballooned the last couple of seasons

Kiko Jones said...

Fox5, here in NY, reruns Seinfeld.

Alexander, Louis-Dreyfuss, and Richards were making $1m per episode each during the later seasons, which amounts to $22m each per season. If they did 3 seasons at that rate, that's more than $60m each. Sure, it's not the $220m and $200m Jerry and Larry made, respectively, when the show was licensed into syndication but it's not chickenfeed either.

It was John that lobbied to get George and Ringo a cut of the royalties. Lennon was said to have been miffed at George for supposedly never appreciating nor acknowledging that.

Xmastime said...

ah yes, FOX. thats true.