No windfall for school in ‘Two-A-Days’

updated 2:06 p.m. ET Oct. 19, 2006

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - “Two-A-Days” is a winner for MTV, but the reality show about Southern football isn’t reaping much of a financial windfall for the Alabama high school featured in the series.

Film company Remote Productions Inc. paid $20,000 for the rights to film at Hoover High School for the first season, which ended Wednesday, and a contract shows the second season will mean a maximum of $21,000 for the school system.

Relatively speaking, MTV got quite a bang for its bucks. The network said the show averaged nearly 1.9 million viewers per episode through its first five weeks.

Hoover athletic director Jerry Browning said he’d “absolutely” like for the school system to make more from the show, but “Two-A-Days” was never really about making money for the Buccaneers, the nation’s top-ranked high school team until a recent loss.

“The money was never a factor because I knew it wouldn’t be significant going in,” said Browning, who has negotiated past TV deals for the school. “The whole purpose was to show a high school football team, the work and what all the players go through ... the pressure of being in a successful program.”

Still, Browning said, education officials and producers are in talks about the exact amount of compensation for the second year of the show, which followed the story of the Hoover football team through the 2005 season, ending in the Bucs’ fourth straight state championship.

“I’m not saying we’re trying to renegotiate the contract, but there are some expenses that they may be willing to cover for us,” said Browning. “I can’t really say much about that.”

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Executive producer Dave Sirulnick has called the show “a success across the board,” but MTV didn’t immediately return calls seeking comment on any discussions with Hoover school officials.

A professor who specializes in entertainment law said it’s hard to set the correct price for such deals, particularly one where the lure of being featured on MTV is in itself so attractive for students and a school.

“In hindsight it’s always easy to say it’s not enough if something does really well. But it’s also hard to say how much of a ‘take it or leave it’ proposition it is for the school,” said law professor Michael Landau of Georgia State University. “It’s a question of what is fair vs. that 15 minutes of fame.”

Browning said neither the high school players featured in the show nor their families were paid to participate because of NCAA rules which prohibit even potential college players from profiting from their sport. The Hoover coaches also didn’t make extra money in the deal, he said.

Aside from the rights payments, Browning said the TV show has helped spur sales of Hoover Bucs wear like T-shirts and hats. The booster club, which raises as much as $350,000 annually for the football team, can’t keep gear in stock, he said.

“There’s now an online store, and we’ve never had that before,” he said.

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