[HN Gopher] The Economics of Seinfeld (2010)
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The Economics of Seinfeld (2010)
Author : herbertl
Score : 70 points
Date : 2022-04-30 06:54 UTC (16 hours ago)
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| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _The Economics of Seinfeld_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8673394 - Nov 2014 (23
| comments)
|
| _The Economics of Seinfeld_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1898243 - Nov 2010 (1
| comment)
| manifoldgeo wrote:
| I was hoping this article was going to be about TV show
| syndication. Jerry Seinfeld was worth nearly one billion dollars
| last time I checked, nearly all from royalties paid out for
| reruns of the show. How the hell did broadcast networks like NBC
| afford a payout like that?
| qiskit wrote:
| > Jerry Seinfeld was worth nearly one billion dollars last time
| I checked
|
| I always wondered who made out better from the show - larry
| david or seinfeld?
|
| > nearly all from royalties paid out for reruns of the show.
| How the hell did broadcast networks like NBC afford a payout
| like that?
|
| The royalties aren't just from NBC. It's from everywhere they
| syndicate the show - netflix, amazon, other tv channels, other
| countries, etc.
| psyc wrote:
| At those dollar amounts, they probably made out roughly the
| same. David would also be worth about a billion (similarly,
| mostly from Seinfeld), if he hadn't divorced.
| beerandt wrote:
| Idk the payout by role, but besides only being an actor in a
| few episodes (stienbrener's voice, cape wearing attorney, &
| ?) Larry David left the show (as a writer) after season 7.
|
| I'm sure he still got paid plenty as a co-creator for post-
| season-7, but I'd think not being a writer for the full run,
| or being primary cast, would put him earning less overall
| royalties than Seinfeld, assuming they got paid roughly the
| same as creators.
| gingerlime wrote:
| > Larry David left the show (as a writer) after season 7.
|
| I'm rewatching with my wife, who never watched it before,
| and definitely the latest seasons feel worse. I didn't
| remember it this way. Now I understand why.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Not just Larry leaving, but David Mandel writing and
| running more of it. By accounts a very nice man, easy to
| work with, financially predictable for the network, but
| hardly a brilliant or challenging comedy writer. He also
| took over more of Curb and Veep in their later seasons
| and the corresponding quality drop happened on both of
| those shows as well.
| easton wrote:
| The interesting thing is that two of the most remembered
| jokes from the show, "Serenity Now!" and Festivus, were
| both in Season 9.
| gingerlime wrote:
| honestly fwiw I only vaguely remember festivus and don't
| remember serenity now at all.
|
| I don't think seinfeld was great for jokes as such. if
| anything, I feel like later episodes were a bit trying
| too hard to create jokes and over-the-top silly
| situations (e.g the episode where Kramer sells the real
| Peterman bus tour and Elaine trying to dump the stumps of
| the cupcakes)
| dwighttk wrote:
| Muffins
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The Peterman bus tour was a meta joke because the real
| Kramer was running a Seinfeld bus tour in real life.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| That part always cracks me up, it's literally too absurd,
| verging on farcical, and yet the truth is stranger still
| than fiction.
| beerandt wrote:
| Larry David contributed so much of his trademark
| awkwardness, but also was responsible for tying together
| multiple plot arcs at the end of episodes.
|
| The episodes that all seemed to culminate perfectly on
| multiple levels as the credits rolled where largely his
| doing.
|
| Similar to George learning to walk out on a high note,
| leading to outsized expectations. And that type of
| pressure is largely why David left the show.
|
| ETA: If you've never watched curb your enthusiasm, watch
| a couple of episodes and you'll immediately recognize
| what was largely missing in the episodes once David left.
| oceanghost wrote:
| > but also was responsible for tying together multiple
| plot arcs at the end of episodes.
|
| In writing terms this is called the "Harold format".
| David didn't invent it, but he might have been the first
| person to bring it to TV.
| gingerlime wrote:
| > Similar to George learning to walk out on a high note,
| leading to outsized expectations. And that type of
| pressure is largely why David left the show.
|
| I'm not sure I follow? do you mean that he was worried
| about the show going downhill as it became more popular,
| so he preferred to leave when it was still doing great?
|
| yes, I watched some curb your enthusiasm. it was harder
| to get used to because of the improv style, but I enjoyed
| it a lot. Hope my wife will like it as next step after we
| finish seinfeld.
| longtimelistnr wrote:
| I think to some degree Larry David is more selfish than
| you're describing and I'd argue he cares more about
| himself being embarrassed rather than disappointing fans
| of the show
| beerandt wrote:
| He was so good at ending the episodes on a that multi-
| dimensional high note- it was a hard thing to keep doing.
| At least to his standards.
|
| I think it was more of not wanting to disappoint
| himself/others in that role than any expectation that the
| show would go downhill or was on the verge of getting
| stale.
|
| But that's just my layman's take.
|
| There's plenty of early era blog posts written on the
| topic by people more informed than me, though. As well as
| dead-tree entertainment magazine articles.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Seinfeld was among the last shows that paid no royalty to
| the actors going forward. Seinfeld gets royalties because
| he was a producer.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| > How the hell did broadcast networks like NBC afford a payout
| like that?
|
| Obviously from receiving more than a billion dollars...
| [deleted]
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > How the hell did broadcast networks like NBC afford a payout
| like that?
|
| They have paid it out as a percentage of revenue over many
| years. They raised the offer to $5 million an episode for the
| 10th season (that he refused), so they only had been paying
| like $2 million an episode ($46 million a year) when it was on.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Love this. I never watched the show but majored in economics so
| this is fun.
| morninglight wrote:
| The funniest Seinfeld episode had no actors, but lots of irony.
|
| Jerry Seinfeld owns a an automobile collection of about 150
| cars, including a large Porsche collection. He rented a hangar
| at the Santa Monica Airport in California, for an extended
| period during the 1990s for storage of some of the collection.
| In 2002, Seinfeld purchased property on the Upper West Side of
| Manhattan where he built a $1.4 million two-story garage to
| store part of his Porsche collection on the East Coast. The
| centerpiece of his collection is a $700,000 Porsche 959, one of
| only 337 built.
|
| In 2008, Seinfeld was involved in a car accident when the
| brakes on his 1967 Fiat 500 failed and, to avoid an
| intersection, he pulled the emergency brake while turning
| sharply, ultimately causing the car to flip onto its side. No
| one was hurt.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_959
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_500
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Seinfeld#Automobiles
|
| .
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