Weitere Staffel der Serie 'Friends'?
Dies stammt angeblich aus der New York Times, es wird unter anderem darüber gesprochen wie es höchstwahrscheinlich eine zehnte Staffel der Serie geben wird.
'Friends' to Keep Bond Alive for One More Season on NBC
By BILL CARTER
NBC was close to a deal last night that would bring television's biggest hit comedy, "Friends," back to the network for another season, its 10th, executives close to the negotiations said last night.
The talks continued past 9 p.m. in Los Angeles last night, with both sides saying they expected to finish a deal that would reverse a year of expectations that the current season would be the last one for "Friends."
The network is expected to agree to pay the highest price in television history for a 30-minute show, as much as $9 million an episode, to bring the show and all six of its stars back, eclipsing the almost $7 million NBC is paying this season. NBC pays about $10 million a year for the one-hour drama "ER" and has paid as much as $13 million for the show, but the price of "Friends" per half-hour is higher.
The enormous price reflects the importance of the show to NBC, which for most of the last two decades has built a significant portion of its appeal to advertisers around having programmed television's top-rated comedy.
NBC cannot hope to bring in enough advertising revenue from commercials to cover the $9 million it is expected to pay for each episode of "Friends." But the strength of the show at 8 p.m. is integral to the high ratings, and therefore profits, delivered by the rest of NBC's Thursday night lineup.
NBC also has failed for most of the past five years to add any new hit comedies to its schedule, so the extension gives NBC yet one more year to develop a replacement for "Friends."
Keeping "Friends" on the air for one more season, even at so inflated a cost, would be a coup of sorts for Jeff Zucker, the president of NBC Entertainment. The show was given no chance to come back after last year's tough negotiations, which brought the salaries of each of the stars to $1 million an episode.
But Mr. Zucker said as early as last summer that he had not completely given up hope of retaining the show for another season. And the performance of "Friends" in the ratings, where it is the No. 1 show among the young adult audience most prized by advertisers, only intensified Mr. Zucker's desire.
The negotiations have been driven largely by the desire to have things settled before the start of the holiday season. The show's creative team also did not want to extend the talks into next year because they needed to make plans to write the rest of this year's episodes, and had to decide whether to work toward a finale for the series. Now that decision has been put off for yet another year.
As early as the beginning of this season in September, some of the show's cast and creators expressed sadness that the end was drawing near. That sparked a glimmer of hope that the show might defy expectations and return. The cast's future plans remained a factor; for years one or another of the show's stars have made forays into films, hoping to establish new careers there.
None has been fully successful, however, which is one reason the show has been able to keep them all on board. Most recently, Jennifer Aniston, critically lauded for roles in movies like "The Good Girl," has begun to emerge as a potential film star. She has completed one starring role with Jim Carrey and is currently shooting another film with Ben Stiller.
But representatives of the show's stars said this week that the ensemble remained close and wanted to continue working together.
Still, that sentiment did not solve an apparently insurmountable complication: the changes coming in the financial underpinnings of the show. The show's studio, Warner Brothers, a unit of AOL Time Warner, has counted on syndication money — from local television stations that had contracted to buy the show's repeats — to help pay the production costs of $9 million to $10 million an episode, well above the $7 million fee NBC has paid. The local stations had committed to pay about a total of $4 million for each episode produced this season, leaving Warner Brothers with a hefty profit.
That revenue stream, however, was almost certain to reduce significantly at the end of this season as the stations' deals with Warner Brothers came to an end. The stations do not have to buy any of the new episodes, and indeed have a significant incentive not to.
If "Friends" were to end this season, secondary deals for "Friends" repeats would have begun next season. The per-episode price for this so-called "second cycle" drops sharply, as much as 50 per cent for some stations, according to an executive on one side of the deal.
So Warner Brothers could not count on syndication money from stations to cover any shortfall for any additional seasons of "Friends." NBC was going to have to pay for the full cost of next year's episodes.