Tonya Harding reportedly got $375,000 from “Inside Edition.”
John Wayne Bobbitt allegedly got $70,000 from “American Journal.”
And word is Joey Buttafuoco got $500,000 from “A Current Affair.”
And just about anybody who had something to say about Michael Jackson cashed checks from “Hard Copy.”
But nowadays, if you off a competitor, lose a body part, sleep with a minor or work for a celeb, it might be more difficult to cash in.
Last week, “A Current Affair” executive producers John Tomlin and Bob Young–who also created the competing shows “Inside Edition” and “American Journal”–announced that, starting next season, the vet newsmag won’t be flipping open the checkbook to lure marquee newsmakers onto the show.
But, if for some reason they do feel the need to hand out cash, they’ll go public with the payment.
So how is this going to affect the pay-for-say show?
“It probably will hurt them from a competitive point of view,” said former “Inside Edition” anchor Bill O’Reilly, who during his reign with the once top-rated show publicly admitted that his show paid for stories.
Newsmags are a lucrative business, and competition’s fierce. In its heydey, “A Current Affair” reportedly pulled in $75 million, two-thirds of which was pure profit.
And the show’s success is probably what hurt it the most.
Once the networks saw “A Current Affair” and the other syndicated cash cows grazing on those green, green advertising dollars, they also began liberally peppering their prime-time schedules with money-making newsmagazine programing. Suddenly, syndicated shows like “Hard Copy” and “Inside Edition” found themselves competing with the likes of “PrimeTime Live” and “Dateline NBC,” which could offer their subjects network prestige and prime-time exposure.
That’s when checkbooks started to slap open, O’Reilly says.
Now, he believes, the trend is reversing. Newsmags are beginning to slip off the schedules, and syndicate ratings are dropping. “Tomlin and Young,” he says, “obviously feel they can compete in this climate without direct payment.”
But don’t start applauding “A Current Affair’s” new-found journalistic integrity just yet.
As O’Reilly points out, there are several other ways story subjects and sources can be compensated without outright payment, including promises of telemovies and book deals, and trips to interview sites that double as all-expense-paid vacations.
Shows can also promise to compensate for lost wages, and offer healthy per-diem payments.
All the above allow shows, syndicated and network, to tiptoe around the direct-payment issue, if they so desire.
