Advertisement

Opinion: How much does a how-hot-was-it joke cost?

Share

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

In the other Times, Bill Carter takes a look at gabshow hosts who are keeping their [non-writing staffers] off the public dole. But he leaves what looks to me like a major variable out of his equation:

David Letterman of CBS’s “Late Show” (who has to support two CBS shows because his company, Worldwide Pants, also owns “Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson”), Conan O’Brien of NBC’s “Late Night,” Jay Leno of NBC’s “Tonight,” and most recently Jimmy Kimmel of ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show” and Stephen Colbert of “The Colbert Report,” have all committed to pay their staffs out of their own funds. Estimates of what it is costing the hosts range from about $150,000 a week to as high as $250,000 a week, depending on the size of the staffs. The question the hosts are struggling with is how long they can continue to stay off the air and subsidize their staffs, and what happens when they decide they cannot do it any longer.

Advertisement

It’s not the main focus of the story, but since we’re getting the weekly price range for this largess, shouldn’t we also get some indication of the size of the staff in question ?

We can make some interesting extrapolations from these numbers.

Assuming the actual weekly payroll throughout the year is somewhere in Carter’s range, it appears you could maintain a staff of 250 making an average of $52,000 a year, a staff of one making $13,000,000 a year, or something between these two.

If you maintain a staff of 20, and you are at the cheapest end of this scale ($150,000 per week), that means your average [staffer] is making $390,000 per year. If you’re at the generous end ($250,000 per week) with the same-sized staff your average [staffer’s] making $650,000 per year. That’s the average, not the top-performers. (If Carter’s figure is counting all staff, including support, clerical, stagehands, etc., that’s another story of course.)

Can these figures possibly be right? Is the world wrong or is Bill Carter?

Update: NO, I can be wrong! Thanks to reader Sam for reading the paragraph I skipped, which explains that the chat shows are in fact paying their nonwriting staffs some figure between $7.8 million and $13 million per year.

What a second, their non-writing staffs? These numbers are getting screwier by the minute. So let’s say it takes, not counting the gag writers, the labors of 50 people to fob Craig Ferguson or Jimmy Kimmel off on the insomniacs every night. To get to that roster I think you’d have to include all the artistics, technical staff, clerical, janitorial, security, food prep, etc. and I still think you’d come up short. But let’s figure they need that large a non-writing staff. This would put the average salary somewhere between $156,000 a year and $260,000 a year. Something still doesn’t make sense here, though it seems more likely to be explained by personnel bloat than by Bill Carter’s numbers. Jay, talk to your accountant; you’re getting hosed by your own employees.

Advertisement