Tammy Crotty has this to ask…
I've been wondering about this since the Bill Cosby scandals, but I was wondering how royalties work. Whenever I hear about people boycotting a tv show/movie/book, I wonder who else receives royalties from that work and so who might be getting more screwed than the creator/star/author. When The Cosby Show was pulled from networks, did that hurt, say, Keisha Knight Pulliam? Would she still be earning some kind of royalties when the show airs? What about production crews and such?
Well, just to be nit-picky, you're mainly asking about residuals, not royalties…but the answer is yes. There are various folks who are compensated when a TV show is rerun and when it isn't, they don't get the money they'd have received when it was. Some folks get residuals and some get royalties or various forms of back-end compensation and profit participation.
Keisha Knight Pulliam gets less…probably way less, and so does the company that owns the show and wishes to use it as a continuing source of revenue. That also happens when the star doesn't disgrace himself and go to prison but the series just plain fails to attract enough viewers for a healthy life in syndication. Some once-popular shows don't.
This may not seem fair. After all, it's not Keisha's fault that so much of America no longer wishes to watch Mr. Cosby scold others for doing the wrong thing. But that's how these things work. Producers, writers, directors, actors and folks in a few more categories share in the ongoing profitability of a show.
I just got a residual check — one of those tiny ones that cost them more to process and mail than the face value of the check — for an episode I wrote of Bob, one of Mr. Newhart's shorter-run sitcoms. If it runs, I get these checks. If it doesn't, I don't. If it's revealed that Bob Newhart has long been a serial rapist and he goes to jail and no one wants to watch this show, I stand to lose over the next few decades, maybe thirty-five dollars. I sure hope that doesn't happen.
