'Friends' Return a Decision, Not a Negotiation Wed, Nov 28, 2001 05:19 PM PDT
by Brill Bundy Zap2it.com, TV News
LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - Although the power of six has served the cast of "Friends" well in the past, allowing all of the regular cast members to negotiate salaries of $750,000 per episode, more money won't be in the offing when their contracts come due next spring.
"It's not really a negotiation," says NBC Entertainment President Jeff Zucker, "it's a decision. They know how much money they can make. It's a lot of money and they should have to decide whether they want to come back."
"It's really in their hands now, and obviously their call."
With no signs of slowing down in its eighth season, "Friends" regularly trounces CBS' "Survivor" in the weekly Thursday night showdown. However, cast members David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston have implied that the show might be getting a little long in the tooth and the actors are ready to move on.
On the flip side, there's the just-as-popular theory that the cast members know that a steady paycheck is worth a lot more than an iffy film career and will jump at a chance at signing on for more.
"Let me just add that we would love to have ['Friends'] back," says NBC West Coast President Scott Sassa, who admits some practical considerations, such as scripts and scheduling for the finale, must be taken into account if this is the show's final season.
"But that's really up to the studio and producers."
Whether or not there's a ninth season, the 8:30 spot following "Friends" remains a hard one to fill. This season's attempt, "Inside Schwartz," was pulled during the sweeps period, a sign that the network doesn't have much faith in the show's ability.
"It's hard," says Zucker. "We've created a lot of this ourselves by putting a lot of dogs in that 8:30 time period."
"The fact is that 'Inside Schwartz' has retained 68 percent of the 'Friends' audience at 8:30. We had 'Scrubs' in there one week, it retained 68 percent of the 'Friends' audience. It's interesting to note that 'Becker' over on CBS has retained an average of 72 percent of 'Everybody Loves Raymond's' huge audience, and yet nobody comes down on 'Becker' and gives CBS a hard time."
"That's not to make an excuse for ourselves. We want to do better, we have to do better."
While "Scrubs" has already been picked up for a full season, the fate of "Inside Schwartz" remains up in the air. Zucker says that it will be watched closely in the next couple of weeks when it returns to the schedule before making any decisions.
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