Recurring status is a class of
actor
An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), li ...
s that perform on
U.S.
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
soap opera
A soap opera, or ''soap'' for short, is a typically long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio dramas originally being sponsored ...
s. Recurring status performers consistently act in less than three episodes out of a five-day work week, and receive a certain sum for each episode in which they appear. This is opposed to contract status, where the performers have a
contract
A contract is a legally enforceable agreement between two or more parties that creates, defines, and governs mutual rights and obligations between them. A contract typically involves the transfer of goods, services, money, or a promise to tran ...
to be paid flat fees over time—often multi-year. Contract evaluations are periodically conducted, and actors that don't meet their "
quota
Quota may refer to:
Economics
* Import quota, a trade restriction on the quantity of goods imported into a country
* Market Sharing Quota, an economic system used in Canadian agriculture
* Milk quota, a quota on milk production in Europe
* Indi ...
" may be dropped from their contract to cut costs. The practice has become widespread across the soap opera industry since the 1980s.
Description
In the
U.S.
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
soap opera
A soap opera, or ''soap'' for short, is a typically long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio dramas originally being sponsored ...
industry, actors billed as recurring status are paid a certain sum for each episode in which they appear. Conversely, actors on contract are paid a flat fee over a timeframe—often multi-year. Recurring
performer
The performing arts are arts such as music, dance, and drama which are performed for an audience. They are different from the visual arts, which are the use of paint, canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects. Perfor ...
s consistently perform in less than three episodes out of a five-day work week whereas contract roles are guaranteed to appear in a certain number of episodes each week.
Actors on contract are also committed to working for the show and cannot leave until the contract has expired; recurring roles allow actors to take other jobs.
Contract evaluations are typically done every
fiscal quarter
A fiscal year (or financial year, or sometimes budget year) is used in government accounting, which varies between countries, and for budget purposes. It is also used for financial reporting by businesses and other organizations. Laws in many ju ...
, and the actors that don't meet their "
quota
Quota may refer to:
Economics
* Import quota, a trade restriction on the quantity of goods imported into a country
* Market Sharing Quota, an economic system used in Canadian agriculture
* Milk quota, a quota on milk production in Europe
* Indi ...
" of episodes are in danger of being dropped from their contract to cut costs. Former contract actors may then return as recurring cast members, and recurring actors can be promoted to a contract role.
Dynamics
Almost unheard of from the beginning of television until the 1980s, more and more actors have been placed on "recurring" so the
production company
A production company, production house, production studio, or a production team is a studio that creates works in the fields of performing arts, new media art, film, television, radio, comics, interactive arts, video games, websites, music, and ...
in charge of making the show doesn't go over-budget. Dwindling viewership and economic downturn have led to all U.S. soaps to placing actors (usually veterans who have been with the series in excess of ten years, and who are usually acclimated to higher salary figures) on recurring. Some actors accept the move to recurring status, while other actors balk at the contract cut, instead finding work on
Broadway
Broadway may refer to:
Theatre
* Broadway Theatre (disambiguation)
* Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
** Broadway (Manhattan), the street
**Broadway Theatre (53rd Stree ...
,
prime time
Prime time or the peak time is the block of broadcast programming taking place during the middle of the evening for a television show. It is mostly targeted towards adults (and sometimes families). It is used by the major television networks to ...
television series, or rival soap operas.
Other regions
On
Australian
Australian(s) may refer to:
Australia
* Australia, a country
* Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia
** European Australians
** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists
** Aboriginal A ...
and
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
soap operas, contract negotiations are different, and a term such as "recurring status" does not exist. However, many of those shows have guest stars that appear frequently enough that literally speaking they could be described as "
recurring
Recurring means occurring repeatedly and can refer to several different things:
Mathematics and finance
*Recurring expense, an ongoing (continual) expenditure
*Repeating decimal, or recurring decimal, a real number in the decimal numeral syste ...
".
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Recurring Status
Soap opera terminology