Over three decades, Dick Wolf’s Law & Order has produced several spinoffs that have filled about 60 seasons of television with more than 1,000 episodes. All those figures have added up to a Manhattan-size fortune of more than $550 million. Now comes the news that NBCUniversal is paying at least $300 million for the rights to show his top franchises on its streaming video service, Peacock.
The agreement, which was announced on Thursday, is the latest in a spate of deals that have funneled more than $1 billion for the rights to hits from the past to, among others, Seinfeld creators Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, The Big Bang Theory’s Chuck Lorre and the team behind Friends, Kevin Bright, Marta Kauffman, and David Crane. Coming in rapid succession since September, the deals have put a handful of top creators within reach of becoming billionaires.
But TV economics have changed drastically from when Lennie Briscoe walked the beat. The numbers are still stacked with zeroes: Shonda Rhimes, the producer who created Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal and other hits, signed a nine-figure deal with Netflix in 2017, then followed up with a $300 million package for Pose and American Horror Story’s Ryan Murphy. Other studios followed, including NBCU Content Studios, which this week brought on Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane in a deal reported to be worth $200 million.
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What’s gone missing are the rerun deals, which threw off fat annuity-type payments. Streamers like Netflix and Amazon Prime are here to stay, and they work differently: a big upfront payment, with far more limited potential of more down the line–and only for shows that survive long enough to collect.
That makes the list of TV’s true tycoons a short one. Here’s a look at the lucky few who have hit billionaire status or could possibly get there with a few more monster paychecks.
Oprah Winfrey
Age: 65
Net worth: $2.8 billion
Shows: The Oprah Winfrey Show
Show Her the Money: “On my own I will just create, and if it works, it works, and if it doesn’t, I’ll create something else,” Winfrey told Forbes in 1995. But she didn’t just create, she owned, too. In 1985, she negotiated a new deal with the local ABC affiliate that gave her partial control over the rights of her talk show, meaning she got a piece of the profits whenever her show was sold into a new market. It ended up working: Oprah, who started as a local TV reporter, saw her earnings peak at more than $300 million in 2010, the year before she took her show off the air.
Showing Off: Winfrey, who was born in a house in rural Mississippi that lacked indoor plumbing, has a 40-acre estate in Santa Barbara called The Promised Land, which boasts a 23,000-square-foot mansion, a 60-acre farm in Maui, and properties in Milwaukee, Tennessee, Colorado and Washington State.
John de Mol
Age: 64
Net worth: $1.8 billion
Shows: Big Brother, Fear Factor, Deal or No Deal, The Voice
Show Him the Money: Long before the Kardashians or Real Housewives strutted onto the airwaves, there was de Mol, the Dutch grandfather of reality television. In 1999, Big Brother—named after the character in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four—premiered on television in the Netherlands. Twenty years later, more than 50 franchises of the series have aired worldwide. His production company Endemol went on to develop more reality competition programs like Deal or No Deal and Fear Factor before he sold the company for $5.3 billion to Spanish telecom giant Telefonica in 2000.
He didn’t stop there. In 2005, he created a new production company, Talpa Media, which went on to create reality hit The Voice as well as more obscure programs like Battle of the Choirs and Dating in the Dark. In 2015 he sold the company to U.K. broadcaster ITV for $545 million.
Showing Off: In 2003, de Mol became an investor in Spyker cars, a resurrected luxury automaker. The C8 Aileron Spyker was typical of the company’s lineup, a $252,000 supercar with a V8 engine that topped out at 187 mph. (“Our customer wants a very classic, classy, elegant alternative to the cars he already has, which is so much more exclusive,” Spyker CEO Victor Muller said in 2009.) Spyker’s fortunes faded after it acquired Saab from GM, and it went bankrupt in 2014.
Jerry Bruckheimer
Age: 74
Net worth: More than $750 million
Shows: CSI: Crime Scene Investigates, The Amazing Race, Without a Trace, CSI: Miami, Cold Case, CSI: New York
Show Him the Money: Bruckheimer’s films like Pirates of the Caribbean, Top Gun and National Treasure have gained 41 Oscar nominations and billions at the box office, but it’s his television shows that keep replenishing his wallet year after year. Bruckheimer struck gold with Crime Scene Investigates, the procedural that premiered in 2000, continued for 15 seasons and led to two successful spin-offs. Even after the franchises have wrapped, the show continues to be one of the most popular series worldwide: it’s syndicated in 200 markets and has been dubbed in over 60 different languages.
Showing Off: He purchased a $23 million Beverly Hills home in 2013 and also has pads in Venice and Hollywood Hills. Across the country, he and wife Linda own a 1,600-acre ranch outside Bloomfield, Kentucky (population: 1,038).
Jerry Seinfeld
Age: 65
Net Worth: More than $700 million
Shows: Seinfeld, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee
Show Him the Money: When Seinfeld premiered in 1989, its title character and co-creator was only getting $880,000 per season. Fast forward to the show’s final ninth season, and he was earning $22 million. But that’s nothing compared to the payout from his 15% stake in the show’s profits: Thanks to deals with cable and broadcast networks and streaming services, he’s earned over half a billion dollars (before taxes) from the show’s syndication. (Larry David, who also had a 15% stake, is worth significantly less after he gave up half his take in a divorce.) They’ll both continue to cash out: Last September, Netflix paid over $500 million for rights to air the series for five years.
Showing Off: In 2016, Seinfeld sold a portion of his car collection at an Amelia Island, Florida auction that brought in $22.2 million for 17 vehicles. The sale’s highlight: a 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder, which fetched $5.3 million. Two years later, he told The New York Times Magazine what would happen to the cars after he died. “My wife’s going to liquidate it, and that’s fine with me. I want people like me to enjoy them. It should be like blowing on a dandelion.”
Dick Wolf
Age: 73
Net Worth: More than $550 million
Shows: Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Chicago Med, Chicago P.D., Chicago Fire
Show Him the Money: He spent seven years churning out ad copy for Procter & Gamble and tried his hand at screenwriting before falling under the sway of Hill Street Blues creator Steven Bochco, one of the seminal figures who shaped television in the 1980s. Wolf worked as a writer or producer on Hill Street Blues, Miami Vice and New York Undercover, refining his skills in a genre that would become his calling card: police procedural dramas. He learned his craft well. Last year, Law & Order: SVU became the longest-running prime-time live-action series ever, its 21st season eclipsing the record held by Gunsmoke and the original Law & Order, which both had 20 seasons.
Law & Order and its spin-offs, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Law & Order: Criminal Intent, once dominated the NBC prime-time lineup, commanding as many as 90 million viewers a week. In 2003, Wolf landed what was described as the most lucrative TV deal in history—an estimated $1.6 billion over three years for his trio of cop shows.
Showing Off: His $10.5 million purchase of an estate on Mount Desert Island in Maine reportedly set a state record in 2003. He joined other famous neighbors, including Martha Stewart and billionaire David Rockefeller.
Chuck Lorre
Age: 67
Net Worth: More than $400 million
Shows: Cybill, Dharma & Greg, Two and a Half Men, The Big Bang Theory, Mike & Molly
Show Him the Money: As the mastermind behind CBS’ biggest sitcoms, Lorre will reap the syndication benefits for years to come. While his early ’90s hits Cybill and Dharma & Greg haven’t had immense staying power, the Lorre lineup that followed certainly has: The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men. The Big Bang Theory fetched $1.5 million per episode in 2011 to run on TBS and brought in more than 23 million viewers for its finale last May, the largest audience for a non-sporting program in 2019.
That popularity continues to pay dividends. In September, AT&T’s WarnerMedia paid $490 million to put The Big Bang Theory on HBO Max. That’s good news for Lorre, who gets a 25% cut of syndication profits. He joined Wolf in collecting a payday from Peacock for the streaming rights to Two and a Half Men, already a rerun standard on network and cable television.
Showing Off: CBS lets Lorre insert “vanity cards” into his shows’ credits—mini essays on topics ranging from male promiscuity to Buddhism. One ran afoul of the network: a 2008 treatise about divorce (Lorre was going through his second as was CBS’ majority shareholder Sumner Redstone) that CBS made Lorre shorten. He published the full thing, in which he refers to himself and Redstone as “Prenup Chuck and the Endless Sumner,” on his personal website.
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