How Much Money Is Here Comes Honey Boo Boo Cast Earning Per Episode?
September 5, 2012 by Hollywoodite
Here Comes Honey Boo Boo is the surprisingly successful spin-off of Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson from Toddlers and Tiaras.
The new show is mostly about the family’s bond, the family’s recreational time, and the women of the family frittering away the day by getting pregnant. Occasionally Honey Boo Boo will enter a pageant or two, ahead of which her blended family will subsist on expired food bought at auction and hoarded processed food bought with coupons.
The show premiered August 8, 2012 to 2.253 million viewers. This week’s ratings reaching 2.992 million.
In addition to the question of paternity and the question of what the parents do for a living, people want to know what TLC is paying the cast per episode (for example: compared to Jersey Shore, and compared to Real Housewives, and compared to Teen Mom).
According to The Hollywood Reporter’s sources, the family is one of the lowest earners in reality television when you take into account the show’s huge viewership. It’s only the first season, sure, but the family is paid comparable money to the newer/ less-popular Teen Moms… HCHBB’s viewer numbers could eventually justify the pay of the more-popular Real Housewives (the former is in the low four figures whereas the latter is in the high six figures per season). A base figure for HCHBB is “between $2,000 and $4,000 an episode, possibly seeing as much as $40,000 for the 10-episode debut season,” which doesn’t include a “small location fee… to film in the family home.”
TMZ.com asked Mama whether The Hollywood Reporter’s story was correct and she reportedly ”laughed out loud” and refused to offer specifics. She didn’t confirm, she didn’t deny, she laughed at the reported $2-4,000 per-episode and said: ”We’re making memories to last a lifetime.”
Alana Thompson, the 7-year-old star of TLC’s surprise hit Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, raised eyebrows by announcing on the show that “a dollar makes me holler.”
But what would $40,000 make her do? Apparently, just about anything. The series follows the outspoken pageant contestant, a breakout from the network’s popular docuseries Toddlers & Tiaras, and her family through the world of child beauty contests and their self-proclaimed “redneck” life in McIntyre, Ga.
When Thompson’s Toddlers interview containing her reference to Honey Boo Boo Child went viral this year (the clip has more than 4.5 million views on YouTube), the cable network offered the beauty queen and her family their own spinoff series.
Sources tell THR that the family of six (which recently expanded when Thompson’s older sister, 18-year-old Anna Shannon, gave birth to daughter Kaitlyn on July 26) earns merely between $2,000 and $4,000 an episode; possibly seeing as much as $40,000 for the 10-episode debut season. (A small “location fee” might also be paid to film in the family home.)
TLC’s modest investment in the Thompsons has turned out to be lucrative. The series scored nearly 3 million viewers for its Aug. 29 installment (which followed the family at a water park), up 30 percent from the previous week and topping every network’s coverage of the Republican National Convention. A TLC rep says the network does not comment on salaries. – via The Hollywood Reporter.