• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, June 15, 2011

Low salaries for well-known actors? How should the average TV viewer feel about this?

The answer depends on the current sentiment -- which can change swiftly.

Viewers love TV actors - and also love to hate them. Charlie Sheen's fun bad-boy image went into the nastier, fast lane a couple of months ago in the eyes of some viewers -- in part because they didn't want to hear about highly paid performers complaining about anything regarding their TV work.

When we find out how much money actors make -- or what they turn down -- we can get angry, especially if actors don't seem grateful. PR executives do all they can to persuade actors not to talk about the less-romantic, less-comedic financial issues that come with big-time stardom.

"Modern Family"'s Ed O'Neill moaned about being offered "scale" to work on an HBO project with Al Pacino and Bette Midler. Turns out that six weeks worth of work would only mean $40,000.

Some bloggers didn't think this was right. For many viewers -- who might not be able to afford an HBO subscription -- that's a whole year's salary. But it's all relative. Anyone offered work for one-fifth, one-sixth, or one-tenth of their usual fee should feel slighted.

This kind of story is somewhat unusual for TV and movie stars. Other performers -- professional athletes -- always get the brunt of abuse by fans when it comes to how much they get paid. How many times do we wonder why a shortstop batting .250 is making $11 million a year?

In other comparisons, I guess we could wonder why an actor making $1 million an episode for a comedy doesn't deliver better jokes and better entertainment.

We aren't exactly efficient entertainment consumers. Then again, Hollywood studios don't have the same kind of salary disclosure as major professional sports teams and organizations.

There is no universal metric when it comes to entertainment value for every consumer. With more content available, perhaps we need not only weekly program ratings, but weekly actor salary standings.