The station put us on staff at $35 a week... and I mean every week.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
If you think about $7.25 an hour, that's $290 a week. It's inhumane to have that kind of wage.
The total station economy is about $800 million dollars a year, and about $90 million comes from the government. In the long run, we would be better off without federal funding.
By working hard we could make an average of about $5 a week. We would have made more but had to provide our own machines, which cost us $45, we paying for them on the installment plan. We paid $5 down and $1 a month after that.
The booking agent had the audacity to take 10 percent, so we wound up with about $100 a week apiece.
They're paying me an outrageous sum of money; $40,000 a week, which is totally silly.
Everyone has a budget, I don't care who you are. But they said if we are in a pennant race in the middle of the summer they are going to get some help with added payroll.
I mean, when I started out I was billing per hour, like a shrink because you would sit with somebody and work. But most of it, if it's for a live show it's usually a buy-out. A flat fee.
People can't live on $7.50 an hour.
Yeah, well when I first started working, it was $5 a show; it was probably a little higher by the time I got to my own show, but I remember that they put me under contract at $100 a week, which to me was really an astronomical price.
I got as little as a $75 a week when I started.