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South Park creator’s 2007 digital ad revenue sharing clause
- Imustaskforhelp 1y agoSouth park is one of my favourite shows. I think that matt and trey aren't the usual billionaires but it would still be cool if they actually donate some of that money since they feel like the guys who don't need a billion dollars and feel humble imo.
- do_not_redeem 1y agoOne of the downsides of people knowing you have money is everyone on earth will judge you for what you do with it. I say let them enjoy it. If you must pressure someone to donate, pressure one of the "usual billionaires" who's funding their torment nexus with it.
- shazbotter 1y agoThere is no human alive who can ethically enjoy a billion dollars. Give them each a hundred million and say, you've hit your cap, everything else goes towards the public good. A hundred million dollars buys you a life of comfort and luxury. Anyone with a billion has too much influence, imo.
- k1t 1y agoOne hundred million dollars? My yacht cost more than that...
- graeme 1y agoThe South Park owners don't have a billion dollars in liquid wealth each. They have ownership of south park, which is worth billions. If you make them cut their assets down to $100 million each then they don't own South Park. And someone else gets to tell them what to write. Or they retire.
- saulpw 1y agoThe capital gains tax could be 90%+ on any gains over $10m (and 99% over $100m), so they can still sell out, but it would cap liquid wealth at $100m dollars. However, they would still have a billion dollars of ownership, and the societal power that comes with being a billionaire, as they can leverage those assets to great effect without selling them. (As Elon Musk didn't actually pay $44b for Twitter.) So I wonder if the government could levy a stock tax, in which every public stock was diluted by 1% per year, with non-voting stock going into a sovereign wealth fund. This would make for a gradual transition of companies from capitalist-owned to public-owned.
- Imustaskforhelp 1y agoOh I thought that they had that much money in liquid wealth. My bad.
- nurumaik 1y agoI can live a life of comfort and luxury with $10k. Can you please donate everything above $10k of your networth right now?
- Quarrelsome 1y agohardly, but there's a cut off point somewhere where additional earnings do so very little but would be life changing if fragmented into the hands of many.
- 2muchcoffeeman 1y agoSure you can. I have no problem with billionaires as long as they are enjoying their money without hurting people in the process. Having the money doesn’t mean you actively abuse your influence. But once you have that kind of fuck off money and insist on abusing your power, or kowtowing to other people to get more power, and other BS, then you are an evil asshole. There’s a good reason why Bezos, Zuckerberg, Musk etc rub people the wrong way. It’s not their wealth.
- shazbotter 1y agoWhich billionaires haven't hurt anyone in the process? To accumulate a billion dollars, don't you necessarily have to hurt people in the process?
- usrusr 1y agoYeah, the things is, ownership isn't a natural concept. It's just a social construct. Without that, you own what's in your stomach, what you can hold in your hands and what you can sit on, until the moment you walk away. I believe that the best amount of processes for revoking ownership not zero. Revoking not as in "we take n money from you because...", but as in "we stop respecting any of your accumulated ownership rights, but you are free to accumulate new ones". A reset like the one called bankruptcy, just for positives. Currently, in countries that do have the death sentence, ownership is even more untouchable than life. A (hypothetical..) rich person on death row you could still write their will and it would be respected. People will argue "don't punish the children!", but where's the difference really, between "don't gamble it all away, for the sake of your children" and "don't end up on death row, for the sake of your children"? Apparently, ownership is more sacred than life itself and I find that quite hard to stomach. Note that I'm not advocating for a world where it's common for rich persons to get stripped whenever the masses get a little envious, or whenever redistribution seems convenient. Just for ac world where there is some last resort process defined and accepted that's less bloody than an all-out revolution. Ancient Rome had certain forms of exilation that went with complete property forfeitment as punishment (in reality: as the price for losing a power struggle I guess)
- skybrian 1y agoI think it’s pretty cool that they bought Casa Bonita.
- Imustaskforhelp 1y agoYeah I agree.
- rswail 1y agoThe article quoted that they take $10m salaries each and the business invests in more production (eg movies, Book of Mormon musical etc). So whether they donate or not personally, their billionaire status is based on owning their company (ie that is their total worth, not liquid assets).
- 4gotunameagain 1y agoWhat the hell does do with almost a million per month ?! I'm not judging, I'm wondering.
- not_your_vase 1y agoIt's very long, and seems to be stuffed with a copy of wikipedia, I ain't reading all that. What's that clause? Like Lucas had with Star Wars, they kept the monetization rights for some (at the time) dumb looking stuff, and they struck gold with it?
- JustExAWS 1y agoThey would get profit sharing for any income that didn’t come from airing on Comedy Central. This was in 1997 before online streaming was really a thing
- em-bee 1y agoit is disappointing and almost surprising that this is not the default. not doing this is how creators are get taken advantage of. more futuristic, i think any profit that is not reinvested into the business, that is, any profit that the owners decide to keep for themselves should be shared in some form with all employees, like a tax.
- extraduder_ire 1y agoIt was directly in the era of home video though, and the show got picked up in the first place from people sharing tapes. This is what enabled them to stream it online themselves from a dedicated website for years though.
- waterhouse 1y agoLooks to be (1269 words into the article according to wc): > [Parker and Stone]’s lawyer, Kevin Morris, insisted that any South Park revenue not derived specifically from broadcast on the cable channel would go into the pot for calculating the men’s share of back-end profits. Though that might be a precursor to enabling this (400 words later): > With negotiating leverage, Parker and Stone agreed to a 4-year $75 million deal and, separately, a 50/50 cut of advertising revenue for any digital property…in perpetuity.
- quietbritishjim 1y ago
- blkhawk 1y agoTLDR: “A cut of revenue not derived specifically from broadcast on the cable channel” went from “meaningless” to “huge significance” to “boner-inducing” arguably the greatest clause ever in TV contract history…at a minimum, it’s one of the most improbable all things considered.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- more_corn 1y agoWhat the fuck kind of writing is that? Ge to the damned point.
- dmazin 1y agoAs much I loved this show growing up, an interesting thing about South Park is that they essentially defined the alt right (in the sense of a disenfranchised young man, often lashing out at marginalized groups and political correctness etc). Am I wrong or did there use to be an article called “South Park conservative” that basically described what eventually became “alt-right”? Edit: found it at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park_Republican https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park_Republican
- righthand 1y agoYou aren’t wrong that there is/was a group of people that consider themselves South Park Conservative but the creators reject the notion that South Park is specifically liberal or conservative, because their intent is to parody any people they can. The creators dislike political correctness but they also dislike the forceful nature of conservatives applying their beliefs on other people. Read the South Park wikipedia page, it explains it pretty well. Insinuating that South Park conservatives evolved into the alt-right is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Trey and Matt didn’t invent disliking political correctness.
- elefanten 1y agoI concur with this take. Like many facets of culture, some people/groups will project what they want onto a given cultural entity (South Park, in this case), but that doesn’t mean one should assume they speak for it. For example, the “men’s rights activists” group appropriated the idea of “the red pill” from The Matrix. They certainly differ wildly in worldview from the Wachowski siblings.
- ChocolateGod 1y agoDisliking political correctness isn't even limited to the right on the political scale. Bill Maher has spoken out against it for example.
- JustExAWS 1y agoI consider myself liberal on most issues - strong social safety, universal healthcare , pro vax, strong separation between church and state, and hate the demonization of other. But this is political correctness gone crazy. https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/08/25/politics/democrats-gender-nonbinary-charter https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/08/25/politics/democrats-gender... I as a Black guy was also put off by the forced indoctrination that BigTech did post 2020 (when I worked there) with all of the “ally ship”, “DEI” crap I had to endure. I just wanted to do my job, get my money, get my RSUs and bounce after 4 years.
- hsbauauvhabzb 1y ago@dang can we change the title on this one, it’s clickbait mixed with an ai generated ramble.
- scarface_74 1y agoCan you think of another case where the creators got as rich from a TV production deal?
- kolla 1y agoSeinfeld
- hsbauauvhabzb 1y agoNot the point, the title has now been changed.
- extraduder_ire 1y agoYou have to email him. @dang is a no-op. The title isn't the original one though.
- Peteragain 1y agoI'm tied and bored, and read the whole thing. The sponsor is an AI service provider - did I get that right? So, is the article AI generated? It certainly has all the hall marks.