Remembering America’s dad. Bob Saget’s net worth included salaries for the role of Danny Tanner in Full House and its sequel, Fuller House, along with his familiar voice as the narrator of How I Met Your Mother.
Saget—whose full name was Robert Lane Saget—was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on May 17, 1956, to a Jewish family. His dad worked as a supermarket executive, whereas his mom was a hospital administrator. As a child, Saget lived in Encino, California for a time before moving back to Philadelphia with his family. In Philly, he attended Abington Senior High School, where his English teacher recognized his creative potential and inspired him to pursue a career in film. After graduating from high school in 1975, Saget took his teacher’s advice and enrolled at Temple University to study film. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1978 before briefly continuing his education at the University of Southern California—after only a few days of graduate school, however, Saget quit to pursue comedy full-time.
While Saget started his career touring as a stand-up comic, it wasn’t until he set his sights on television that his career really began to take off. He landed his first TV gig as a member of The Morning Program on CBS in 1987, where he briefly hosted alongside Rolland Smith, Mariette Hartley and Mark McEwen. But his real breakthrough came when he was cast in the role of Danny Tanner on the show Full House later that year. The series—which was later rebooted by Netflix under the title of Fuller House, and ran from 2016 to 2020—enjoyed massive popularity upon its release and in the years to come thanks to syndicated reruns.
During the same time period when he starred on Full House, Saget also began working as the host of America’s Funniest Home Videos, a.k.a. AFV. He held the role for eight seasons over nearly a decade until 1997 when he retired from his hosting duties to pursue new opportunities. Around the same time, Saget was working on an ABC made-for-television movie titled For Hope, which he directed in honor of his late sister, Gay Saget, who passed away in 1993 from the rare disease scleroderma. The film was released three years after her death in 1996 and starred actress Dana Delany.
In the late ’90s, Saget continued expanding his repertoire as a director. He worked on his first feature film, Dirty Work, in 1998. The film, which starred Norm Macdonald and Artie Lange, was a flop at the box office but went on to become a cult favorite following Lange’s tenure on The Howard Stern Show from 2001 to 2009. Saget, for his part, went on to star in another sitcom, Raising Dad, during the early 2000s. The show, which premiered on the WB and starred Kat Dennings, Brie Larson and Jerry Adler, lasted only one season. After the series cancelation, Saget pivoted once again and served as the familiar voice of future Ted Mosby and narrator of the CBS sitcom, How I Met Your Mother. The show ran for a whopping nine seasons from September 2005 to March 2014.
Saget went on to work on a series of projects following the late 2000s. These included HBO’s Entourage, where he played a recurring role as a parody of himself from 2005 to 2010, and Surviving Suburbia on ABC, where he starred alongside Cynthia Stevenson for one abbreviated season. In 2016, Saget reprised his role as Danny Tanner in Full House‘s sequel series, Fuller House. Following its series finale in 2020, Saget appeared on Fox’s popular singing competition, The Masked Singer, where he competed as the Squiggly Monster in season four.
What was Bob Saget’s Full House salary?
Image: © Warner Bros. / Courtesy of Everett Collection.
Bob Saget starred on Full House from 1987 to 1995, appearing in all 192 episodes during the series’ eight seasons. In the series, Saget played the role of widowed father Danny Tanner, who raises his three daughters—eldest D.J., middle child Stephanie and youngest Michelle—in his San Francisco home with the help of his brother-in-law Jesse Katsopolis and best friend Joey Gladstone. While the ABC sitcom was initially met with unfavorable reviews by critics, it went on to gain popularity in the ’90s and experience renewed interest throughout the decades thanks to syndicated reruns on NBC, TBS, Nick at Nite, CMT and the Hallmark Channel, among others. The series also began streaming on Hulu in 2017, before moving to HBO Max in October 2021.
All of this success begs the question: How much was Saget paid for his role as Danny Tanner on Full House? Saget’s Full House salary has never been publicly reported, but we do have a ballpark understanding of how much he must have made on the series when looking at some of his other castmate’s salaries. According to the Washington Post, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen—who starred as Michelle Tanner on the series—made a combined $2,400 per episode when Full House began. Their salary was eventually increased to $25,000 per episode, before later being bumped to $80,000 per episode. By the series’ finale, this would have put their Full House salary at around $1.9 million for their final season, which contained 24 episodes in total. Given that the Olsen twins were the youngest members of the cast, it’s likely that their more experienced co-stars like Saget earned substantially more on the series overall.
What was Bob Saget’s America’s Funniest Home Videos salary?
Image: © ABC / Courtesy: of Everett Collection.
After being cast on the ABC sitcom Full House, Bob Saget joined America’s Funniest Home Videos as the show’s host in 1989. The show initially premiered as a special before debuting as a regular weekly series in 1990. Saget continued to serve as host on the comical video clip segment series for eight seasons. Following his exit from the show in 1997, John Fugelsang and Daisy Fuentes took over as co-hosts for its ninth and tenth seasons. As of 2022, the series is hosted by Alfonso Ribeiro.
While details about Bob Saget’s America’s Funniest Home Videos salary have yet to be made public, it’s estimated that current host Ribeiro makes around $150,000 per episode of AFV. Assuming that Ribeiro’s salary has been adjusted for inflation since the ’90s, it’s possible that Saget’s America’s Funniest Home Videos salary was a comparable $70,500 to $86,600 per episode of AFV when he hosted from 1990 to 1997. At an average of 25 episodes per season during the show’s early days, this means Saget may have earned anywhere between $1.7 million to $2.1 million per season.
What was Bob Saget’s net worth?
According to Celebrity Net Worth, Bob Saget’s net worth was $50 million at the time of his death in January 2022. Saget’s net worth is thanks to his career not only as a stand-up comic in the 1980s, but also for his family-friendly roles on series like Full House and America’s Funniest Home Videos throughout the ’90s. Later in life, Saget’s net worth saw an added boost from his voice acting part as the narrator of the CBS sitcom, How I Met Your Mother, along with his comic roles on HBO’s Entourage and the Full House sequel, Fuller House, which streamed from 2016 to 2020.
Image: Courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers.
For more about Bob Saget’s life before his death, read his 2014 memoir Dirty Daddy: The Chronicles of a Family Man Turned Filthy Comedian
. The New York Times’ bestseller recounts Saget’s journey as a butcher’s son born to a family beset by tragedy, through his early days as a stand-up comic, to landing his career-defining gig on Full House and hosting America’s Funniest Home Videos. In his memoir, Saget dishes on what really went on behind the scenes of two of the most successful family shows of all time—from what it was like changing Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen’s diapers, to working with co-stars like John Stamos and Dave Coulier—all before imploding his family-friendly image on projects like HBO’s Entourage and the 2005 documentary, The Aristocrats, with the jokes fans have never heard before from the man known as America’s Dad.
Full House, where Bob Saget starred as Danny Tanner for eight seasons from 1987 to 1995, is available to stream on HBO Max. Here’s how to watch it for free.
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