The two actors fired from America’s top-rated TV drama in a pay dispute have won back their jobs on “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” but lost their high-stakes bid for pay raises.
Production on “CSI,” halted by their widely publicized salary tiff with CBS last week, is set to resume Wednesday with both Jorja Fox and George Eads reinstated to the ensemble cast, the Viacom Inc.-owned network said Monday.
A source close to the situation said both Fox and Eads were rehired at their original salaries of $100,000 an episode, foregoing earlier CBS offers that would have extended their contracts by a year with a pay raise of about $20,000 per episode each.
“We are thrilled that both Jorja and George could work things out with CBS and return to the show,” producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Carol Mendelsohn said in a statement.
Settlement of the dispute at “CSI,” the most watched scripted show in prime time, comes nearly a year after ”Everybody Loves Raymond” co-star Brad Garrett and three fellow cast members won better deals in a highly publicized salary revolt at CBS.
Fox was dismissed July 14 after missing a deadline to provide written assurance that she planned to show up for work as scheduled. Eads was let go the next day when he failed to show up for the start of production on the series’ upcoming fifth season.
Viacom co-president Leslie Moonves told reporters days later that CBS was responding to “veiled threats” from the actors to skip work to press their demands for more money.
The two were hired back after offering conciliatory statements explaining their predicaments as the result of misunderstanding.
Moonves suggested CBS had taken a hard line in their disagreement in order to set an example. “There comes a point where we feel a contract is a contract,” Moonves said last week. “There comes a time when we all have to look out for the future of the network television business.”