HOLLYWOOD Q&A

Q: “Little House on the Prairie,” “Two and a Half Men” and “Last Man Standing” are rerunning on several channels. How are the actors in those series paid for the reruns?

A: As the old joke says: very carefully.

It’s a complicated system of scales and percentages governed by a 400-page contract. But basically, when actors sign on to appear in TV shows, they’re paid a fee that covers the first airing of the show. When that show is used again, whether as a rerun, in a DVD boxed set or on a streaming website, the actors are paid what’s called a residual.

The minimum amount of the residual is set out by the collective agreement between the actors union (SAG-AFTRA — the Screen Actors Guild/American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), an association that negotiates on behalf of TV and film production companies. The details vary for major stars, but the basic formula is that actors are paid a declining percentage of their original paycheck each time an episode is rerun until the 13th time it airs — at that point, actors earn five per cent of their original pay, and it stays at that level.

Q: What came first, the Muppets, the Fraggles or the “Sesame Street” group?

A: That’s harder to answer than it sounds. The Muppets came first — at least some of them — and indeed, technically they’re all Muppets. However, “Sesame Street” was Jim Henson’s first major series.

The name Muppets refers to the pioneering kind of puppet Henson created along with his wife and early collaborator, Jane Nebel (the two incorporated under the name Muppets Inc. in 1958). However, “The Muppet Show” didn’t debut until 1976, seven years after “Sesame Street.”

But actually, by the time “Sesame Street” debuted in 1969, with now-legendary puppeteer Henson guiding his fabric-and-foam-rubber creations across the screen, he was already an established TV entertainer. And here’s where it gets confusing.

He’d been doing guest appearances on the great ‘60s variety shows hosted by Steve Allen, Ed Sullivan and their ilk. It was while working this circuit that he introduced his first recurring character, Rowlf the Dog, in 1963, on “The Jimmy Dean Show.”

Thus, a “Muppet Show” character was Henson’s first famous creation, too. But he was born 13 years before the show.

“Fraggle Rock” debuted in 1983, and unlike the other two programs, the characters didn’t really appear anywhere else first.