Hamish & Andy get a big pool

There is an old saying, regarding the high-end talent, that goes: "radio buys the house, and television puts in the pool".

Essentially it refers to the fact for a lot of the top on-air talent the salaries that they earn in radio are generally higher than they can earn in television.

In part, this is due to the consistency of the radio role; Monday to Friday, five days a week for generally around 44 weeks a year, as compared to a run of a finite number of episodes for a television program.

In an article in the Financial Review, which is primarily focused on the poor performance of the TEN Network over the past two years, there is a section that discusses when TEN attempted to sign, and missed out on, Hamish & Andy in early 2012.

You can read the entire article, 'Ten ways to kill a TV network', here.

It notes that H&A were asking for a sign-on fee of $4 million, and were asking for about $1.4 million per episode for ten episodes. History shows that TEN pulled out of negotiations, allowing Nine to sign the radio pair to a 2-year contract.

Not a bad salary. And that's not including the radio earnings, nor any endorsements.

If radio buys the house, then Hamish & Andy have a very big pool.