Recognizeable voiceover artists are expensive as hell. I hired Shadoe Stevens to do a a qucik 30 second commercial for a 900 prog I was going to be running on MTV.
This was the first time I decided to spring for a real pro voice guy on a commercial and I was thinking OK this guy will probably hit us for something crazy like $100 a second for 30 seconds, $3,000 or so, because I knew he'd get it nailed in 1 or 2 takes (which he did indeed end up doing).
So, when I asked him how much the bill was going to be for his services, he goes $25,000. Of course I instantly said, "Say what? I don't think I heard that right."
He didn't realize that our company was paying the bill and thought MTV was so he figured no one would bitch. After I enlightened him to the normal voice over fees of the 900 biz I chiseled him down to $2,500. Took him 5 minutes so it ended up being $500 a minute which works out to an hourly rate of $30,000, which is still outrageous. But it was worth every penny in the long run.
