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Normally I ignore the "rich and famous" obits, however Grant's passing is really quite upsetting. MythBusters meant a great deal to me during my college years,

Normally I ignore the "rich and famous" obits, however Grant's passing is really quite upsetting. MythBusters meant a great deal to me during my college years, right as I was trying to figure out where I wanted to go in life. The build team was always the best. With the loss of Jessie in 2019, it's been a hard year for Mythbusters.

pininja 6y ago
I also rewatched all of Mythbusters early in college as I was struggling to figure out what I wanted to be. They really showed the fun to be had building wacky projects!
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
See with the Mythbusters (sidekicks), I can't really see them as rich; I mean I'm sure they made some decent money off of it, but I doubt it set them up for life and I wouldn't be surprised if they got screwed over in that show in favor of Jamie / Adam. I never heard why they were let go / quit the show, although I've always suspected it was because the show just wasn't as popular anymore.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- bena 6y ago
  Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage have a reported net worth of about $8 million. Grant and Tory have reported net worths of $2 million. And Kari is about $1.5 million. Not bad, but both Jamie and Adam were well respected visual effects artists, builders, and model makers before Mythbusters. Mythbusters primarily shot at Jamie's shop. Grant and Tory both worked at ILM. Kari was an employee of M5, Jamie's company, when she was put on the show. So, not terribly rich, but about what you would expect. $1 - $2 million "net worth" is more attainable than you might think. As net worth includes assets and what not. They have enough money to take substantial risks that might not pay off.
  - mywittyname 6y ago
    That's peanuts compared to a similarly popular sitcom. I honestly expected Jamie and Adam to each have net worth in the $50-100MM range because of the syndication potential of that show, which will absolutely be on TV in 30 years. Being engineering types, maybe they all didn't really understand how to negotiate. Given the net worth of Grant, Tori and Kari, I'm guessing they didn't have huge salaries from the show, maybe $200k/yr on average.
    - throwaway287391 6y ago
      > That's peanuts compared to a similarly popular sitcom. Is it actually? Do you have particular sitcom(s) in mind? I tried to look for this myself and couldn't find much (beyond ratings for anything beyond the top ~20 highest rated shows in a given year). I know very little about this, but I'm a little skeptical because I feel people tend to vastly overestimate how much money the average person they see on TV makes. The stories of the outliers (like the Friends stars making $1M per episode) really skew the perceptions of this -- the vast majority of professional actors (if not regular TV actors, but maybe even then) make less than the median Bay Area software engineer. A salary on the order of $200K a year for a non-headliner regular actor in a sitcom with viewership around 1M people (which I think is more than a typical episode of Mythbusters would've gotten) doesn't sound that far out of the ballpark to me.
      - mywittyname 6y ago
        Jerry Seinfeld is almost a billionaire due to his eponymous sitcom. The starring cast of Big Bang Theory fame were earning nearly a million dollars an episode by the end of the series. Similar story with Two and a Half Men, Gilmore Girls. Jamie and Adam were stars of a wildly popular television show that ran for 14 seasons, spawn numerous spin offs and runs in syndication even today. I'd expect them to have hit at least $500k per episode.
        throwaway287391 6y ago
        You said "similarly popular sitcom". I loved Mythbusters but it's a geeky Discovery Channel (cable) show, it never came anywhere close to Seinfeld ratings...
robertoandred 6y ago
I don't understand this smug "normally I don't care about celeb deaths, except the ones I care about."
- pixelatedindex 6y ago
  I understand the gist of the message. Grant is an engineer, and we relate to him in more ways than we do to a singer or a movie star. So a singer or a movie star's death might not have as big of an impact as someone who is "our own".
  - throwaway287391 6y ago
    Sure, the question is why one would feel the need to point that out and explicitly compare this death to others, other than to feel a bit of smug self-satisfaction. It kind of goes without saying that it will affect you more when someone you care about dies (whether you know them or not) than when someone you don't care about dies. For any given death, most people on earth are going to be in the latter camp, and in polite society those people keep their mouths shut out of respect to those in the former camp. All the rhetoric about how artists (singers and actors) are "vapid" and the like is also pretty emblematic of the worst of "arrogant engineer" thinking.

pininja 6y ago

I also rewatched all of Mythbusters early in college as I was struggling to figure out what I wanted to be. They really showed the fun to be had building wacky projects!

Cthulhu_ 6y ago

See with the Mythbusters (sidekicks), I can't really see them as rich; I mean I'm sure they made some decent money off of it, but I doubt it set them up for life and I wouldn't be surprised if they got screwed over in that show in favor of Jamie / Adam. I never heard why they were let go / quit the show, although I've always suspected it was because the show just wasn't as popular anymore.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
bena 6y ago
Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage have a reported net worth of about $8 million. Grant and Tory have reported net worths of $2 million. And Kari is about $1.5 million. Not bad, but both Jamie and Adam were well respected visual effects artists, builders, and model makers before Mythbusters. Mythbusters primarily shot at Jamie's shop. Grant and Tory both worked at ILM. Kari was an employee of M5, Jamie's company, when she was put on the show. So, not terribly rich, but about what you would expect. $1 - $2 million "net worth" is more attainable than you might think. As net worth includes assets and what not. They have enough money to take substantial risks that might not pay off.
- mywittyname 6y ago
  That's peanuts compared to a similarly popular sitcom. I honestly expected Jamie and Adam to each have net worth in the $50-100MM range because of the syndication potential of that show, which will absolutely be on TV in 30 years. Being engineering types, maybe they all didn't really understand how to negotiate. Given the net worth of Grant, Tori and Kari, I'm guessing they didn't have huge salaries from the show, maybe $200k/yr on average.
  - throwaway287391 6y ago
    > That's peanuts compared to a similarly popular sitcom. Is it actually? Do you have particular sitcom(s) in mind? I tried to look for this myself and couldn't find much (beyond ratings for anything beyond the top ~20 highest rated shows in a given year). I know very little about this, but I'm a little skeptical because I feel people tend to vastly overestimate how much money the average person they see on TV makes. The stories of the outliers (like the Friends stars making $1M per episode) really skew the perceptions of this -- the vast majority of professional actors (if not regular TV actors, but maybe even then) make less than the median Bay Area software engineer. A salary on the order of $200K a year for a non-headliner regular actor in a sitcom with viewership around 1M people (which I think is more than a typical episode of Mythbusters would've gotten) doesn't sound that far out of the ballpark to me.
    - mywittyname 6y ago
      Jerry Seinfeld is almost a billionaire due to his eponymous sitcom. The starring cast of Big Bang Theory fame were earning nearly a million dollars an episode by the end of the series. Similar story with Two and a Half Men, Gilmore Girls. Jamie and Adam were stars of a wildly popular television show that ran for 14 seasons, spawn numerous spin offs and runs in syndication even today. I'd expect them to have hit at least $500k per episode.
      - throwaway287391 6y ago
        You said "similarly popular sitcom". I loved Mythbusters but it's a geeky Discovery Channel (cable) show, it never came anywhere close to Seinfeld ratings...

robertoandred 6y ago

I don't understand this smug "normally I don't care about celeb deaths, except the ones I care about."

pixelatedindex 6y ago
I understand the gist of the message. Grant is an engineer, and we relate to him in more ways than we do to a singer or a movie star. So a singer or a movie star's death might not have as big of an impact as someone who is "our own".
- throwaway287391 6y ago
  Sure, the question is why one would feel the need to point that out and explicitly compare this death to others, other than to feel a bit of smug self-satisfaction. It kind of goes without saying that it will affect you more when someone you care about dies (whether you know them or not) than when someone you don't care about dies. For any given death, most people on earth are going to be in the latter camp, and in polite society those people keep their mouths shut out of respect to those in the former camp. All the rhetoric about how artists (singers and actors) are "vapid" and the like is also pretty emblematic of the worst of "arrogant engineer" thinking.