NEW YORK — The no-holds-barred competition for television exclusives ratcheted up another level this week as Paris Hilton's representatives told networks bidding for the first post-jail interview with the heiress that NBC was considering paying as much as $1 million for the scoop.
The massive payment -- purportedly a license fee for the use of personal video and images of the 26-year-old -- succeeded in boxing out NBC's competition, according to a person familiar with the negotiations. The deal was first reported Thursday by the New York Post.
However, it remains unclear whether the interview, reportedly to be conducted by "Today's" Meredith Vieira, has been finalized. Allison Gollust, a spokeswoman for NBC News, said the news division has no commitment from Hilton for an interview, adding that "NBC News has not and will not pay for an interview."
But NBC's entertainment division has been in discussions with Hilton's camp, according to network sources, and could compensate Hilton through a development deal, effectively circumventing the news division's policy prohibiting payments for interviews.
Elliot Mintz, Hilton's publicist, said he couldn't comment on whether Hilton had struck a deal with NBC.
"I simply at this moment in time don't know," he said.
The report of the hefty fee -- coming at a time when NBC Universal is undergoing companywide cost-cutting -- spotlights how the television networks regularly skirt their own ban on checkbook journalism. The practice, a badly kept secret in the industry, takes many forms: free hotel rooms and entertainment while interview subjects are in New York, payment for the "licensing" of home videos and photos to illustrate the story, and other incentives, according to industry veterans. If the costs are too egregious, often the project is shifted to a network's entertainment division, which can pay subjects through production contracts.
CBS News offered Jessica Lynch possible movie and book deals through its sister corporate divisions in an effort to land an exclusive with the former U.S. Army private in 2003. ABC News paid Steve Irwin's widow hundreds of thousands of dollars to use footage of the late naturalist in a prime-time interview with Barbara Walters last fall. (ABC executives said the license fee was necessary because Irwin's widow, Terri, owned all the footage of the "Crocodile Hunter," who died in September.)
