Show us your residuals!
HOLLY SORENSEN: If there is one issue in the current dystopian streaming landscape we can all agree needs fixing, it’s residuals. Many writers will never see residuals, and many have seen just one kind of residual, so the bulk of us might not know the extent of the problem that has emerged in the last ten years or so. Even most of us on ‘the stack’ didn’t.
One thing that we need to clear up - residuals are not a “bonus” - they are compensation, full stop. We are not talking extra anything here, in fact, there was a time when writers sent kids to college with residuals. But it’s bizarre and patently unfair how the exact same project, aired by one outlet instead of another, can have an entirely different compensatory outcome for the writer.
So to help paint the picture of exactly how bad it is, we decided we’d each ask some of our friends to anonymously SHOW US YOUR RESIDUALS! And what we found was pretty amazing.
ANDY BOBROW: Right, we all know that things used to be better, but it’s hard to get a handle on the real-world issues without real-world examples. I want to start by doing a primer using comparable shows made for network, cable, and streaming. These are the numbers you would get for one episode of a high-budget hour-long show, so let’s say it’s like Blue Bloods on network, American Horror Story on cable, and Stranger Things on streaming.
The first payment you get, the script fee, used to pay for the first airing on broadcast TV. And then when streaming started, we agreed to a 7-day window on their ad-supported platform (CBS.com, Paramount+, FX.com, etc). So for Blue Bloods and AHS, the script fee buys them one night of broadcast and one week of streaming.
But the fee for Stranger Things buys them 90-days, not a week. That 90-day window feels out of whack. To be fair, it would be rare for CBS to rerun a Blue Bloods episode within 90 days. So realistically, over a 90-day period, the writer of the Blue Bloods episode will get the same as the writer of a Stranger Things. But the Stranger Things episode is available to watch during that whole time, and the Blue Bloods isn’t.
Here’s a much bigger heartbreak: what happens to Blue Bloods and AHS after the 7-day window.
After a network or cable show first airs, and after that first 7-day free window on their ad-supported platform, they then get 26 more weeks for 5.5% of the non-prime-time minimum, which for Blue Bloods comes out to $1,666. That 26-week deal is available during the first year after an episode airs. That’s why you can see whole seasons of network shows on the network website.
Now onto reruns. Here’s a master chart of all the ways each show makes money. One thing to keep in mind with the cable reruns is how often cable networks pump reruns - running episodes of a show all night or in weekend marathons.
The reuse for streaming has two problems. One is you get paid for years instead of airings, and the other is there’s no resale. An episode of Stranger Things has to run continuously for more than two years on Netflix in order to equal one rerun of Blue Bloods. And during those two years, Blue Bloods would have pulled in syndication money too.
So that’s why, if you get a job working on the most popular streaming series of all time, you won’t see the kind of money you used to see working on any relatively popular network show.
FLINT WAINESS: No matter how many times I’ve looked at the residual formula I’ve struggled to understand what that means for writers in practice (there’s a reason I dropped out of grad school after one stats class). Who’s winning? Who’s losing? How badly exactly are the streamers screwing us? I really wasn’t sure, and a deep dive into the residuals of every writer who was willing to share with me has been really eye opening.
I’ll start with one of mine, for transparency, then walk through the residuals that a few other writers were generous enough to share (keeping them and the shows anonymous).
For an episode of the second season of CW’s In The Dark, “Sex Money Feelings Die,” which never re-ran on the network but streams on Netflix, I’ve gotten $21,512.72 in residuals, with $9,968 of that coming from “foreign TV” and $9,008.98 from “new media” aka Netflix.
Not great, but if the CW had re-run the show (it’s possible they agreed not to re-run their shows as part of their now expired deal with Netflix, but not sure) then it would have totaled a solid residual payday…though that payday still would pale in comparison to most network drama residuals. For instance, a friend who wrote an episode of a network primetime drama that premiered that same year has received $76,994.84 (nearly 50K of that coming from network domestic TV re-airs). That’s on the high end for a show that first aired so recently, but if you’re on a successful network drama not that high.
Now, contrast that with a writer working on a very successful half hour streaming show, who has received a total amount of $4610.32 for her episode of a massive hit show (she’s part of a writing team, so this is half of full amount). That’s an amount I think we can all agree is absolute bullshit.
A staff writer on another, older show on the same streamer has received a sum total of $20,983 in residuals for his one episode. And most residuals I’ve seen from streamers fall in that very low end category.
Now here’s where my mind got a little blown. A writer who worked on an obscure, short-lived half hour cable show made over $51,000 per episode in residuals with most of that money ($33,500) coming from “new media.”
And that trend played out across most writer’s residuals I looked at. If you wrote an episode of a broadcast or cable show that then sold to a streamer, you made a nice residual. But if you wrote an episode of a straight for streaming show your residuals were much lower.
AB: Right. That’s it in a nutshell. I was pleasantly surprised to see how well Community does for me in streaming. It’s currently on Hulu and Netflix, so that’s one big reason why. But the biggest reason is that I’m getting a percentage of what Sony got. Here’s a typical Community episode.
And even though I’m not complaining, and Community is one of the best-case scenarios out there, it’s still worth noting that a few airings of a Community episode on NBC and Comedy Central in 2012 have paid more money than 9 years of continuous availability on Hulu and 3 years on Netflix.
For the sake of contrast, here’s an absolute flop of a show called “Save Me,” which NBC burned off in the summer of 2013. Even this show made money overseas, thanks to the international recognition of Anne Heche (rest her soul, a truly nice, smart, talented person).
I got some other numbers from friends. This next one, we can consider this one of the best possible residual scenarios you can get, because it’s a Law and Order episode.
ANONYMOUS: Two shows, same budget levels, roughly the same size audience/profile, written/shot/aired within six months of each other in 2016. Residuals on the Amazon Studios show for Amazon have added up to $14,100 per episode. Residuals on the Legendary/UCP show for USA (second window on Netflix) have added up to 61-64k per episode.
ANONYMOUS WRITERS:
CBS half-hour, 2021: $20,790
Hulu half-hour, 2021: $9,220
CW one-hour, 2020: $21,512
HBO half-hour 2014: $34,602
Youtube Premium, 2018: $27,718
Netflix half-hour, 2017: $14,186
Starz half-hour, 2016: $40,752
HBO one-hour, 2013: $15,807
ABC half-hour, 2016: $50,028
Netflix half-hour, 2018: $0
Amazon one-hour, 2018: $25,784
AB: Here are a bunch of other anonymous ones where we have more detail.
USA Cable show, ran 7 years, 2012
10,290 – Domestic Network TV
46,190 – Basic cable
2,913 – Home video
11,502 – Pay TV
1,743 – New Media
85,518 – Total
Fox Network show, ran two years, 2017
28,314 – Domestic TV
16,824 – Foreign TV
82 – Home Video
5,504 – Pay TV
3,395 – new Media
54,160 – Total
USA Cable show, ran a year, 2011
5,640 – Foreign TV
12,812 – Basic Cable
467 – Pay TV
490 – New Media
19,419 – Total
Disney+ Streaming show, ran a year 2021
15,590 – New Media
15,590 – Total
Fox Network show, ran a year, 2016
6,537 – Foreign TV
28 – Home video
665 – Pay TV
652- New Media
7,883 – Total
AB: Here’s a big chart of those that attempts to show the disparity between the different types of reruns for the same shows. Just in case you like charts. I had fun making it, but ultimately it doesn’t prove much.
It doesn’t prove much because each show is a different age. If we were to show a one-year average for these, the Disney+ show would look like the winner because it’s only in its first year of reuse. One good thing about the Disney+ show is that the green line will keep growing as long as they keep it on the platform. For that matter, every show on Disney+ will get that green line, regardless of popularity. All it has to do is stay on the platform (and this is one of the reasons why streamers have deleted so many shows recently). The one thing I guess I can say is those network and cable examples show a huge range of success, and they are the model of the past. The Disney+ example is the future.
FW: I’m not so sure it is the future. The days of endless syndication might be over, and I’m not sure if there ever will be a resale market for streaming shows, but the guild did make very nice gains on this in the 2020 negotiation, a 26 percent increase. As can be seen in the chart below from the WGA page.
Maybe we just keep chipping away at it and over a few cycles people start to see streaming residuals looking more classic broadcast ones (minus the ones that endlessly syndicated, of course). Also, I don’t have data for this, only personal experience and anecdotes, but I feel like writers have been getting upfront deals lately to compensate for this backend loss. Not enough, but there’s definitely been movement in the right direction.
Side note: having worked in both half hour and one hour I have no idea why the disparity is so great in residuals. I’m sure someone has an answer to this (one that I’ll find deeply dissatisfying), but it’s not more work to write a one hour than it is to write a half hour and it’s just not reasonable that drama writers make so much more.
AB: It would be more work for me to write an hour, sadly. I only have the one muscle. But to your other point, yes exactly. Our negotiators have done really well to get those numbers where they are. But with the old system, we had this huge advantage, which was, ironically, the studios. Studios fought hard against distributors to get as much revenue as they could, and we got a share of it. We’re moving to a system where every three years now, we’re gonna have to argue with people about the market value of a show instead of just knowing it empirically.
MATT NIX: Looking over my own residuals what I saw was an old universe where residuals could be a strike out (show fails, never re-airs), a single (show goes a year, some re-airs), a double or triple (show goes multiple years with re-airs and a life on streaming but no huge success), and a home run (show is a success, many re-airs on many platforms). On streaming there are only strike outs (show never streams, written off for taxes) and singles (show streams, you get your streaming residual flat rate, that’s it). Is it uniformly worse? No. Better to have a one year streaming show than half a season on NBC, residuals-wise. But it’s worse in most cases and it eliminates all the best-case scenarios.
FW: Yeah, Matt’s obviously getting at the most important point: the days of the home run are over, and I’m not sure that ever comes back. Certainly we’re not going to win a syndication market back in negotiations. Still, if the fixed streaming residual numbers were better they would GUARANTEE a double, whereas in the current broadcast/cable world there are still shows that never re-air and won’t fetch a streaming deal, eg zero residuals.
So if we can win another round of solid gains on streaming residuals plus increases in minimums, suddenly we’re looking at a real economic gain for writers.
One additional issue a lot of people don’t know about is that streaming residuals are based on the size of the platform, not the amount of streams. You could make an argument that that’s the wrong way to do this, that more streams should mean more residuals. But there are pros and cons to that, and I’m not sure a war to get the companies to release those numbers is really worth it when the primary beneficiaries of that change would be writers on massive hits, eg the writers who mostly are already doing very well.
The last thing I want to say is, as someone who’s been critical of certain WGA actions, contracts are one thing but enforcement is another. And the guild does an amazing job at enforcing these contracts and collecting for writers when the companies try to shortchange us on what we’re owed.
AB: Yes to that, and the residuals department was incredibly helpful in answering my questions as we wrote this article.
I have to say, this exercise didn’t show me exactly what I expected, which is good. I expected to see streaming residuals close to zero, but they’re not, at least for the examples we have. If you make a high-budget show for a large streamer, you will get more than some network shows get in their first year. But of course, that’s the best case scenario.
Anyway that’s it for this one. If you would like to participate in a future discussion, just respond to this email or write us at writerscollectivesubstack@gmail.com.