(Credit: Netflix)

Even those who don’t consider themselves to be big fans of television have heard of Seinfeld at one point or another. Created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld and first released on NBC in 1989, the show saw Seinfeld play a fictionalised version of himself with a focus on his personal life and those of his three best friends, George, Elaine and Kramer.

The latter three characters were played by Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Michael Richards, who each played a significant part in the success of the show. And boy, was Seinfeld successful because, across nine seasons and 180 episodes, Seinfeld and David’s creation soon became incredibly popular and even more profitable.

However, in the hands of NBC, the people who were being made the most rich were the owners of the network, especially when they started loaning the show out via syndication. As the show grew more popular, though, the support actors started to feel like they were being taken advantage of, and Jason Alexander had once told Charlie Rose of how they managed to change the landscape of television forever by confronting the network.

According to Alexander, Louis-Dreyfus, Richards, and himself demanded $1million per episode of Seinfeld, which sounds like a lot, but it was per their proper research. “We knew that for the network alone, every episode of Seinfeld generated $14million of profit, of sheer profit, for the network alone, let alone the [other] participants,” Alexander said.

He went on to explain that at the time, there seemed to be “no upside” in the three actors performing in Seinfeld once it had reached maximum profitability, certainly if they hoped to ever escape from their increasingly iconic roles. “It had made us celebrities, it had made us some money,” he added, “but if we were going to be actors with careers that extended, continuing to put out the image of George, Elaine and Kramer was actually detrimental to our long run careers.”

What followed was the acting trio asking the network to make staying on Seinfeld “extremely profitable” by earning “syndication points”. At first, though, NBC told Alexander, Louis-Dreyfus and Richards to “take a hike”, but when they appeared “desperate” for a new season, the actors decided to figure out what percentage of the show’s success they were contributing to.

“Our salaries are fine, but you’re making such massive profits in syndication,” Alexander explained. “Profits of three to four million dollars per show. And you don’t want to give us any of that? In order for us to feel good about doing this show, I wanted to leave the most successful half hour in the history of television knowing that I would never have to work again.”

After figuring out that alongside David, Seinfeld, the writers, and “everything else”, Alexander, Louis-Dreyfus and Richards were responsible for a fifth of Seinfeld’s success and off the back of that they came up with “the number”, i.e. $1million per episode. By the time Seinfeld wrapped, the trio were earning $600,000 per episode, and it was this that largely broke the television industry.

Broken because, suddenly, sitcom actors started demanding huge paychecks to offset the syndication profits of the networks, even when those very syndication profits could not be guaranteed in certain shows. Sure, the cast members of wildly popular Friends had also each commanded a huge per-episode fee, with NBC again making big bucks from syndication, but less successful shows could perhaps not really afford such exorbitant salaries.

Signing off on the damaging effect of the Seinfeld deals, Alexander explained, “I knew that it was detrimental to television if they made the deal with us. It is outrageous up-front money, outrageous. It is bad for television. Thirteen million dollars an episode for E.R.? A million dollars for a show that’s number 25 to 30 in the ratings? These are bad prices. And I personally feel that we damaged the economics of television and that NBC was foolish to give us what they gave us.”