As you probably know, the voice actors on The Simpsons are currently holding out for substantial raises. This is upsetting some in the animation community who fear that this will halt production and that the artists who work on that show will suffer. And of course, there's an underlying outrage because when you compare what those artists make per hour to what the actors already make per hour, it seems disproportionate. Over at Cartoon Brew, Amid Amidi addresses some of this.
As I keep saying here, I am wholly on the actors' side. I think the artists also deserve more but that has nothing to do with what the actors receive. Artists' salaries are always set at the lowest level that the hiring entity believes it will take to assemble a crew that can produce the show. Those numbers will not change if the vocal performers receive less.
The Simpsons is an enterprise of staggering success, well on its way to becoming the most profitable thing ever done on television. If you look around, you will see various estimates of its worth. Even those are probably low because they don't take into account things like the overall success of the Fox Network, which is due in part to Marge and Homer and Bart and all the other yellow people. In the grand scheme of this, what the actors are demanding is a pretty tiny percentage.
Some who are upset at these demands are saying, "Look how few hours they work for it." That always strikes me as a silly way to address this kind of thing. On a successful TV show, you have interchangeable, replaceable folks and you have those that aren't so easily replaced, and the compensation for the latter is never based in any way on punching a timeclock. A guy who stars in a flop syndicated sitcom puts in the same kind of hours (or more) that Jerry Seinfeld worked on his show. When their fees are discussed, no one even mentions how hard the two men work; only how much money each show earns, and how impossible it would be to replace the star. For that matter, no one discusses how many hours the various Fox execs and investors put in to "earn" the share of Simpsons profits they take home. I'll bet that even if the Simpsons actors get every dime they're demanding — which they won't, and which they certainly don't expect — there will still be people who've contributed a lot less to the show's success but who earn ten times more.
I understand why artists resent how little they get out of this, but anger at the voice actors is misdirected and even self-destructive. If we start basing everyone's compensation on how many hours they put in, as opposed to the value of their contribution, that's a wonderful argument for paying artists even less. I mean, do you know how much more they get per hour than someone who flips burgers at Burger King? That's not the way the worth of a creative person should ever be measured. If one of the Simpsons artists goes home, does a painting in ten hours and offers it for sale in a gallery, its price tag will not say, "10 hours @ X dollars per hour." The price will be based on the quality of the work and, more significantly, the demand for it. If that same Simpsons artist goes home and creates a comic strip, his compensation will be based on the success of it, not on how many hours it requires to draw. I don't know why creative folks are ever eager to reduce what they do to the terminology and fee scales that apply to someone you hire to mow your lawn.
One of three things will happen regarding the Simpsons actors' demands. The most likely is that there will be some compromise and everyone will scurry back to work. Another is that Fox will decide not to share any more of its vast profits with the actors and will hire sound-alikes. They're probably reticent to do this because (a) it might harm a show that is bringing in oceans of cash and (b) it might trigger lawsuits. The legal situation if you fire Nancy Cartwright and hire someone else to imitate Nancy Cartwright is unexplored territory, which many cartoon producers have strenuously avoided in the past. Usually, there has not been enough money involved to warrant a displaced actor going to court over it but this time, it's possible.
The third scenario is that Fox decides they have enough of a library that they don't need any more episodes of The Simpsons. This also seems unlikely but it's a decision that they might make at any time, regardless of the actors' fees. A number of cartoon studios have shut down production on the premise (which is often proven incorrect) that they can stop investing in new product and just make money off perpetual reruns. Fox might choose this moment to try that with The Simpsons so they can blame it on the actors. If they do, it will be a shame because that's a great show and its success-to-date has been based in large part on its remaining fresh and current. If the Golden Goose gets slaughtered here, it won't be because the actors wanted a larger piece of the success they helped create. It'll be because Fox wants it all.
