Big Check or Reality Check?

Many have no doubt long suspected this, but actors--along with their agents and attorneys--are apparently delivered a special kind of newspaper that comes without a front page or business section.

Indeed, in an age when so-called reality television has spread across prime time like a California brush fire, one might think that Hollywood’s talent and their representatives would be ready for their own reality check, recognizing that the U.S. economy is slowing, the advertising market is drying up and the major networks--for the first time in memory--actually have some compelling data to support them when presenting their usual pleas of poverty.

There are few signs, however, that such a wake-up call has reached the private-trailer set. In fact, about the only person connected with show business less in touch with the current economic climate is Viacom President and Chief Operating Officer Mel Karmazin, who has steadfastly proclaimed that the advertising market will be just swell this year, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

Perhaps there’s some poetic justice, then, in the fact that co-stars from Viacom’s Paramount-produced CBS series “Becker”--a comedy starring Ted Danson that, most assume, would fall flat on its face were “Everybody Loves Raymond” not funneling viewers in its direction every Monday--recently held out for more money before settling their dispute with the studio Friday.

To be fair, gauging the value of a star or athlete is always a tricky proposition, based not only on what the market will bear but the perceived needs of the buyer, which bring a little word called “leverage” into play. While “Becker” is hardly a breakout hit, it’s not like Paramount has been churning out hit comedies since giving birth to “Frasier” eight years ago. In similar fashion, if the staggering salaries paid to the co-stars on “Seinfeld” or “Friends” sounded absurd when the deals were negotiated, the importance of those franchises to NBC and the respective studios made them assets worth having even at such a price.

That was then, however, and this is now. Many of the dot-com outfits that kept the networks fat and sassy through the latter part of the 1990s no longer exist, and more traditional companies are in some instances slashing advertising budgets as part of their cost-cutting regimens. Foreign territories have also become less reliable in terms of anteing up big bucks for U.S.-produced programming, preferring when possible to stock their shelves with home-grown product.

While the major conglomerates that own the networks remain somewhat insulated from this economic cold shower because of their bulk and far-flung holdings, the networks themselves are feeling the chill, as demonstrated by the mid-to little-sized people who have been pink-slipped, downsized, early-retired and nickel-and-dimed in regard to raises during the last several months.

Taking these factors into account, the “Becker” brouhaha became particularly hard to swallow--coming, as it did, on the heels of a similar strategy employed by four supporting players on NBC’s “The West Wing,” who banded together and walked away with raises that more than doubled their previous salaries to roughly $70,000 an episode, or more than $1.6 million for the coming year.

Deserving as actors Allison Janney, Richard Schiff, John Spencer and Bradley Whitford are, it’s worth remembering that they received these generous raises despite the fact that their existing contracts governed the current year.

And while honoring a contract may sound like a trifling matter when at the center of a show generating such adulation, let’s not forget that “The West Wing” was one of 33 series to premiere in the fall of 1999, only nine of which were renewed for a second season.

In other words, the networks gambled and lost on three out of four shows introduced that fall, yet to the best of anyone’s knowledge none of the actors in those two dozen failures were forced to tear up a binding agreement and return their salaries.

The networks and studios, of course, hardly engender much sympathy in that they regularly squander money themselves in appalling ways.

Paramount and “Moonlighting” producer Glenn Gordon Caron, for example, produced a series this year for Fox that the network opted to cancel--without the public ever getting sight of it--after producing seven episodes, essentially flushing several million dollars down the drain. Then again, Fox has scuttled a series after beginning production, at a cost of several million dollars, each of the last four years.

In similar fashion, Paramount and CBS collaborated on “Big Apple”--an expensive crime drama from “NYPD Blue” co-creator David Milch--that was axed after just a handful of episodes last spring.

None of these properties exists in a vacuum, and Hollywood’s maxim has always been that its few winners finance its numerous flops. Series such as “Home Improvement,” “Seinfeld” and “Frasier” have long settled accounts and balanced the scales for studios that turned out an astonishing array of failures in their wake. Stars clearly have a right to share in the booty created by such a franchise, especially if they are vital to its popularity. History suggests that few of them will be associated with another hit. Yet they must also realize that while the well has not run dry, it no longer appears to be bottomless either, and they cannot draw from it wantonly without potentially making others go thirsty.

Labor Day may seem an odd time to make such an obvious point, but these are sobering thoughts that the cast of “Becker,” as well as other supporting players and their handlers, apparently need to hear.

If nothing else, it’s something worth considering the next time they deign to pick up the business section and read about what’s happening outside their trailers.