76 Million Americans Watched the Seinfeld Finale Together. Today’s Biggest Comedy Gets 5 Million.

Jerry Seinfeld was reportedly offered $5 million per episode for a 10th season.

He turned it down. Seinfeld and Larry David each earn an estimated $110 million a year from syndication. All 6 Friends leads negotiated together to reach $1 million per episode across 18 to 24 episode seasons. Their syndication and streaming deals still pay each of them roughly $20 million a year, 22 years after the show ended.

The Seinfeld finale had 76 million viewers. The Friends finale had 52.5 million. The Big Bang Theory finale in 2019 had 23.4 million. Abbott Elementary, the biggest comedy on television right now, averages 5 to 7 million.

Abbott Elementary is the highest-paid network comedy cast working today. Quinta Brunson makes $350,000 to $400,000 per episode as creator and star. Tyler James Williams and Sheryl Lee Ralph make $250,000 each. Janelle James, Lisa Ann Walter, and Chris Perfetti make $200,000 each. William Stanford Davis makes $100,000. On a full 22-episode season, Brunson takes home roughly $7.7 to $8.8 million before producer fees. It’s the best deal in comedy right now and it’s still less than half of what the Friends cast made per episode before adjusting for inflation.

Residuals used to be the real money. Network reruns paid actors for decades after a show ended. Streaming pays flat fees or close to nothing. During the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, actors shared residual checks from streaming hits that came to $0.03 to $27. The Friends cast earns more per year right now from a show that’s been off the air for 22 years than most current streaming comedy casts will earn in their entire runs.

Network sitcoms ran 22 to 24 episodes a year. Characters lived in your house for 6 months. Streaming comedies get 8 to 10 episodes. You watch them in a weekend. Fewer episodes means lower total pay even when the per-episode rate looks decent. Fewer episodes also means less time to build the kind of attachment that made Friends and Seinfeld part of American life.

The 2023 writers’ and actors’ strikes shut down comedy development for months. The WGA strike lasted 148 days. SAG-AFTRA lasted 118. Comedy was hit hardest because comedies depend on writers’ rooms more than any other genre. An entire year of pilots was delayed or canceled.

3 new comedies are trying to establish themselves right now.

• Adults (FX/Hulu). 20-somethings in Queens. Ensemble of mostly unknowns. 8 to 10 episodes. Renewed for Season 2.
• Overcompensating (Prime Video). Created by and starring Benito Skinner, who broke out on TikTok. 8 episodes. 93% on Rotten Tomatoes. Renewed for Season 2. A24 production.
• I Love LA (HBO). Created by and starring Rachel Sennott. Influencer-culture satire. 8 to 10 episodes.

Salaries for these 3 haven’t been reported. Industry benchmarks for new streaming comedies with emerging casts put per-episode pay in the range of scale to $50,000 for series regulars. Creator-stars like Skinner and Sennott likely earn more through producer deals. None of them will see syndication money. Streaming doesn’t syndicate.

TikTok replaced the 22-minute episode with an infinite feed of 60-second clips. The sitcom’s job as the default source of everyday humor moved to an algorithm.

Monoculture is gone. Seinfeld had 76 million people watching one episode on one night. No show will do that again.