The sorry state of streaming residuals shows why SAG and the WGA are striking.
Damn. That payout is a disgrace.
To clarify, this is how much “residual” the writers got out of the show being streamed after production. Imagine being a writer on one the biggest shows on a platform, and all you get for it being successful is like a tenth of a months rent.
The truth is these companies won’t give in unless the strike starts hitting their revenue… there needs to be a lot of shows on hold and garbage movies produced over time due to lack of good writers, only then something will happen… which i think is going to be a long fight. I’m hopeful that some good comes out of this strike for the labour.
The old days of “one syndicated sitcom” setting people up for life have been gone for a while. But this is just particularly egregious and is a big part of why (last I checked) the studios were willing to concede on AI (revisit that in a few years) but not streaming residuals.
And I do understand there is at least some concern over people being able to game the system. The cast of Friends are loaded because TBS will never stop showing reruns of that show. Same with the cast of Cheers and so forth. And a lot of that is because “hollywood” likes the crew and writers of those shows and are basically doing kickbacks. Seriously, look up the production crew for Friends. Hell, look at Fran Drescher. She is an anti-vax nutjob but is also a straight up G in terms of negotiating power for SAG. And The Nanny (or whatever god awful show she was on) was never good but she had enough friends and connections that it gets the rerun treatment.
So under the tv model? The “right people” are getting paid.
Under streaming? People might suddenly realize how incredibly good season 1 of Human Target was (let’s not talk about Season 2… aside from the rather problematic but still appreciated Janet Montgomery eye candy. And the final sequence where Chance rushes to rescue Indira Varma was good) and suddenly Mark, Chi, and Jackie are wondering if someone is scamming them because of the residuals checks that showed up in their mailboxes. Or a social media aware actor or writer runs a campaign to encourage people to “just leave whatever shitty USA spy show Sarah Shahi was on before POI on in the background”.
And now the “wrong people” might actually get paid.
This is also a big part of why it is being normalized for shows to be taken off of streaming services. Because this is a losing battle for the studios. But they will be “fine” with paying residuals… if it goes to the people they want it to. So rather than run the risk of the wrong shows or movies being watched too often? Just get rid of them after their “run”.
All that being said: Really, Suits? For fuck’s sake there are so many better shows out there.
Yeah Suits wasn’t even good. Boring ass people watching that shit man.
I hope the writers get what they want. The problem is that the strikes are actually saving the studios money so it won’t be soon.
Could you elaborate on this?
Daily Mail isn’t journalism. They’re complete trash. Trust them like you would a used car sales in man in a cheap suit.
Furthering your point
For me it’s any salesman wearing whatever.
Yeah… never trust any budgetary data coming out of “hollywood”. Hollywood Accounting is a thing and it mostly boils down to shifting expenditures and cooking the books to maximize profits for the studios while minimizing payouts for the talent.
Just apply a bit of common sense here: Studios make money off of film releases. They have a few in the can, as it were, but are rapidly running out. The SAG+WGA strike means they can’t make any new releases (unless they were already set up to mostly be overseas production companies). You can argue that you are saving money for Q2 but Q3 is going to be a bloodbath.
I’m taking that one with a grain of salt; it’s coming from the mouth of one ceo, with little to no apparent fact-checking, through a paper that has been widely criticized for sensationalism and unreliability in its reporting.
If people aren’t doing work you aren’t paying them wages. So yes, sure, some company probably saved 100m in wages, benefits, etc. This is what they call bottom line savings. What i’d like to hear is how this affects their top line e.g. revenue. Only the combination matters and odds are this will have impacts on the top line in the next 18-36 months.
You can’t take the company at their word on that. They’re in the middle of a labour action, of course they’re not going to go on about how much effect the strike is having on them, that’s counter to the goals of starving the other side out.
And anyways, this is saving money in the sense that burning down one’s house will save money on rent.
Saving money, according to the studios. That’s the studio bullshitting to intimidate people.
Saving them money now for massively reduced future revenue though.
Now that is a stat that puts into perspective why the actors and writers are striking.
