Faced with this crap economy, CBS Paramount wants the stars of its series to forego their raises next year, EW reports. This doesn't apply to a few shows produced by outside studios - The Mentalist, Ghost Whisperer, Without A Trace. But it does affect all fourty-three CSIs, NCIS, and all their other programs with acronyms. This has never been done before, and puts the stars in a tough spot - if leads like Caruso say they won't take a pay freeze, then the studio can come back and say they've got a hard cap on the budget for these shows, which means other people on these shows will be fired. And nobody wants to be responsible for people getting fired. A CBS exec, who wanted to remain nameless, admitted as much:
In fact, one exec producer at a CBS Paramount drama is already
preparing for such a worst-case scenario. "If our lead doesn't accept
the freeze, we will have no choice but to let one of our supporting
actors go," says the exec. "There's no question that it's the
second-tier actors who are most vulnerable."
Blah. Stupid economy. Interesting to see how this shakes out, and if CBS really holds firm on this, or concedes to the NBC-ish solution: cheaper programming.
