Reports that Hamish Blake and Andy Lee will earn a "fee" of between $15 million and $17 million for their rumoured television series for Nine are somewhat misleading.
The full details of the still-unconfirmed deal are unlikely ever to be made public. But whatever the amount they are to be paid, it will cover the cost of making the show as well as the fee the pair can expect to earn directly for their involvement.
Their personal cut ultimately will depend on the type of show they produce, and the number of episodes they make.
Although Nine is rumoured to have signed the comedy duo to a two-year deal, for what is variously said to be 15 episodes or two batches of 10 hours, the network has refused to offer any details or even confirmation of a deal. Any news about what viewers can expect is likely to come via the pair’s Facebook page, which has nearly 1.24 million fans, or on their radio show, which is next on air on Friday.
Assuming there really is a deal, the boys could still do very handsomely out of it despite not earning anything like the "fee" that has been quoted.
Typically, a comedy show that is made using a mix of studio and location settings could be expected to cost between $400,000 and $500,000 an hour to produce.
Based on those figures, the costs of making the show would range from $6 million (for 15 episodes at $400,000 each) to $10 million (for two lots of 10 episodes at $500,000 each).
That would leave Blake and Lee with a fee somewhere between a low of $5 million and a high of $11 million.
At the higher end of the scale, the total cost per episode (based on 15 episodes at $17 million) would be slightly more than $1.13 million.
That is high by Australian standards, but not without precedent: Channel Seven is rumoured to have paid in the region of $1.3 million an episode to lure the Working Dog crew's show Thank God You're Here away from Ten.
As one industry figure points out, given the show rated around the 1.5 million viewer mark in its 2009 season on Seven, that equated to almost a dollar per viewer.
At the lower end of the scale, 20 episodes at $15 million would equate to $750,000 per episode, which is high for a comedy show but about the same as an hour of short-run quality drama.
These are, however, no more than very rough estimates. Depending on the number, nature and location of the shows, the cost per episode could be much higher or slightly lower.
And depending on the deal struck between the pair and Nine Lee and Blake will be smiling quite broadly or extremely broadly. Either way, they’re highly likely to be happy little campers.
Blake and Lee had parlayed their incredibly successful Austereo radio program into a burgeoning television career, with one-off specials and appearances on Ten’s Rove variety program, before last year announcing they would cut back their daily radio commitment to a single weekly show in order to further explore film and TV opportunities.
Blake is currently filming the low-budget comedy Two Little Boys on the south island of New Zealand, with Flight of the Conchords star Bret McKenzie.
Source http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/the-truth-about-hamish-and-andys-tv-deal-20110223-1b4sn.html
