@SeinfeldFriend said:

Hi guys, As I'm sure you've seen all over the Internet, they are renegotiating their pay amounts! What are people's thoughts?

I personally think it's a scandal that Mayim and Melissa are getting so much less than the others. They came in at season 3, and we're at season 10 now. Whether you like their characters or not, they are in the show pretty much equal time as the others are at this point, and their presence has kept the show full of storylines.

Reports are stating that the main cast are giving up $100k per episode towards Mayim and Melissa's pay cheque, bringing them up to $450 per episode. Even though that's lovely, I would hope that the show runners could see their with and bring them up to the same ball park as their costars. Not saying it has to be the same, but getting half is not fair either.

And, I know that we are talking ridiculous numbers here, that even on the $200k per episode they have made so far, they are looking at big figures. I just find it an interesting topic.

People always compare this to Friends, but there is no comparison. Friends kept to their key 6, and additions stayed as guest stars. And, when they renegotiated their contracts, they did so a single entity. This is not what happened with this cast.

Anyway, let the games begin!

The networks got wise after Friends. A lot of shows tried the "all or none" approach, but the networks pulled a little divide-and-conquer on them, no doubt in the same way they kept Jim's, Johnny's, and Kaley's salaries separate from Simon's and Kunal's (Mayim and Melissa were on different timelines).

As for this go-round, I'd expect the big negotiations will be on the back end: royalties and bigger shares of the syndication/online deals. AFAIK, nobody has ever been paid more than $1M per ep just for acting. Kelsey Grammer got $1.25M per for Frasier but he was also an executive producer. They could also negotiate funding for whatever their next projects might be, and obviously most of the cast is already thinking about this (Jim, Johnny, Simon, and Melissa all have projects in the pipeline).

CBS is likely willing to pony up the $9-10M per ep the show will cost in the final two seasons. At around $350,000 per commercial right now (and assume sixteen commercials per ep), they'd make $134M off the commercials and an additional $120M off the syndication deal already in place with TBS. And that's not counting local syndication, any future syndication deals (Friends is making a mint off of these right now) or online revenues.

And even if you move everybody up to $1M per ep, that's still only an increase of about $2.3M in salary per ep altogether. And if Mayim and Melissa are happy with $450K per ep, shave another $1.1M off of that.