What will Santa bring us in the new contract?
Negotiations start in May, so if the WGA were Santa, what's in our letter?
ANDY BOBROW: Hi everyone and welcome to the blogcast. This week we all got the email from the WGA announcing the Negotiating Committee, so I guess we can say this is the official start of “MBA Season.” Between now and May, I know the Guild will be studying issues and talking to members. I assume there will be a survey at some point. So in this article, given the approaching time of year, we thought we would ask ourselves, if we could ask Santa for one thing in our new contract with the studios, what would it be?
MATT NIX: One of the biggest issues right now is that, for streamers, there is very little opportunity for writers to participate in the success of a show. It used to be that residuals took care of that. Writers for shows that did very well and re-ran a lot were well compensated. Now, we find ourselves in a world where there’s very little difference, on the writer side, between the wild success, middling success, and outright failure of a show. Yes, you get to keep working if a show continues and (maybe) get your negotiated bumps, but basically you’re going to see your salary, the standard “streaming residual” check and that’s it.
We talk about how the answer to this is data, essentially demanding viewership numbers so we can re-create the old residual model. I agree this would be ideal. I see real obstacles, however. The fact is, not all viewers are equally valuable on a streamer. This is true of broadcast viewers as well, of course – viewers in the demo are more valuable – but it’s vastly more complicated on streamers. A show with a million viewers who all signed up for the service to watch that show is VASTLY more valuable than a show with a million viewers who also watch tons of other stuff on the streaming service. One could argue that a little-watched show winning awards has a value to a streaming service that goes way beyond viewership numbers, since the goal of the streamer is to promote the service overall (we have Emmy-winning shows!) rather than a single show (watch this Emmy-winning show!). I’m skeptical that we’ll get much data, and even if we do, I’m skeptical that we’ll get the data we really need to participate in success.
That said, there is a model that already exists for writers to participate in success on streamers – specifically, writers who are also profit participants. As a profit participant on a streaming show, there is a whole negotiated list of bonuses and payouts for hitting certain benchmarks. The payouts are based on the number of “points” a profit participant has, which are divided up from a limited pool. These bonuses and benchmarks are there as an imperfect replacement of the profits that used to be generated by studios and shared (and hidden from) their producing partners. The first benchmark, of course, is longevity of the show. It varies from outlet to outlet, but typically there is a per-point bonus paid out starting in year two that rises each year up to a ceiling. There are many other benchmarks, though, including: 1. Awards – bonuses for nominations and wins, 2. Re-viewing and library value – bonuses for being in the top echelon of shows watched after their initial release, 3. Popularity – bonuses for being in the top tier on the service or the top tier across services. There are others as well.
The point here is that while many on the company side will claim that there’s no way to define success on a streamer and thus no way to reward it, there is a mechanism that already exists to do just that. It seems to me that what works for rewarding profit participants could be a basis for rewarding all writers. It couldn’t be precisely the same, of course, because it would be on a per-episode basis rather than a per-season basis, but it would be relatively straightforward to come up with a formula to account for that. Basically, the WGA would just be saying “when profit participants on a streamer get X, writers of the individual episodes get Y.”
It's not exactly the same as the old residual formula, of course, but I think it’s a decent substitute. Residuals tracked profitability for broadcast shows in a general sort of way – more airings equaled more profits and also more residuals. This proposal would do something similar. One of the biggest issues with negotiating higher “residuals” in streaming is that we’re negotiating something that is paid more or less equally in success and in failure. That’s a tough sell. It’s always going to be easier to push through a proposal that essentially says “when you make money, we make money; when the show succeeds, we all succeed.”
CHAP TAYLOR: That is an excellent idea. We are looking for a way to participate in the ongoing value of our work. If studios are able to define what that looks like for showrunners/creators/non-writing producers, it gives us a way to scale that definition to lower level writers working on those series.
HOLLY SORENSEN: I too think that is interesting thinking, Matt. We’ve talked about what a big problem the lack of transparency is in streaming before, and maybe if there was more transparency earlier there wouldn’t have been this boom and bust. But further to that, I have almost come to think of transparency as an artist's rights issue. I think people who create have the right to know what the response to that is. I think when you enter into business with someone, you have the right to know their criteria for success. Fundamentally, creators have the right to know if what they are doing as writers is working for an audience. Beyond that, being rewarded for success in a myriad of ways has always been part of the whole compensation package for TV writers that must be replaced.
CT: Let me start by saying that I still believe in Santa, so take what follows in that spirit of undying optimism. First, here’s what I would not ask for… doubling minimums. Everyone in the Guild wants more writers to make more money. But asking for an across-the-board doubling of minimums is both unrealistic and a perfect example of trying to put a genie back in a bottle with all kinds of unintended consequences.
Most people know that each season of a television series has a budget for writers. It’s a fixed number, determined by the studio financing the series. A very powerful showrunner may be able to move that number slightly, but not by much. For the Guild to demand that studios double minimums does nothing to change the amount of money budgeted for writers. If the Guild could force studios to increase writer budgets, there would be a lot more jobs for writers. Instead, successfully forcing the studios to double minimums just means each individual writer would become twice as expensive. And obviously, the studios would respond by hiring less of them.
For writers who currently earn more than scale, raising minimums would offer little benefit. But it would dramatically impact lower level writers and writers just starting out in their careers. It seems obvious that studios will take fewer chances on new writers, or writers from traditionally underrepresented groups, if they can get a more experienced writer for the same amount of money. The same is true in features. The current Guild minimum for a studio feature is around $150,000. Doubling that to $300,000 means twice the investment in a project. $300,000 can buy them an experienced feature writer with produced credits. Each film studio also has an annual development budget and the same financial realities apply; if the Guild succeeds in doubling feature minimums, feature studios will put fewer projects into development and tend to hire more experienced writers.
I want to be clear that I respect the attempt to find a solution to the systemic pressures impacting writers. If we can’t do anything to save residuals, or if the drawn-out development cycle of streamer series means over-scale writers are essentially working for scale, I understand the attraction of just doubling everything. But I haven’t given up on saving residuals, I don’t believe it’s something we’ll ever get and if we did get it, it might leave many writers worse off.
So what would I ask for from Santa? Information. One of the primary obstacles to getting a fair formula for streamer residuals is the fact that streamers refuse to tell anyone how many people actually watch their programs. Since the beginning of the entertainment business, film studios, broadcast networks and cable networks have reported the general level of engagement with the films and series we write. While they still engage in all kinds of financial chicanery, everyone at least knows whether something is popular. I would ask Santa to force Amazon, Apple, Netflix and all the other streamers to deliver clear, honest numbers about how many people watched each film and episode. They have the information. Getting it from them would be a big first step toward establishing fair residuals in streaming.
I would also ask Santa to extend that clarity to the feature film development process. Feature screenwriters competing for Open Writing Assignments are often forced to participate in mass “bake-offs” with multiple writers spending enormous efforts on projects that might not even be a studio priority. I would ask Santa to require film studios to notify each writer or their representatives how many writers were competing for any given project, and how many steps would be required before a decision was made.
AB: I’m gonna cheat and ask for a single thing that is a package of things. I want to suggest a package of rules that would fix mini-rooms. For me one of the more frustrating things is when we try to make the business look like it did 10 years ago. So I would love to see us say yes, mini-rooms are a new paradigm, and we want to shape that new paradigm rather than pretend we can go back in time.
So the rules to fix mini-rooms would be:
Set strict limits on exclusivity. They can’t fuck around making you wait while they decide if they want you back. And they can’t take you out of the market just because they gave you 10 weeks of work. The new paradigm is that many of us are now more like temp workers than ever before. And temp work is only doable if you can string together a few gigs a year. So every week-by-week contract has to be non-exclusive. And when it ends, if they want you sitting by the phone, there has to be a holding fee.
A mini-room writer has to get a script. They can’t have you for a mini room unless they’re putting your name on a script. Or if they don’t want to give you a script, they can just pay a penalty that is the same as a script fee (we can bend that for staff-level).
For the script that your name is on, they have to offer you the option to be part of production. I don’t have total clarity on this one because it’s complicated. But for starters, they have to keep you (or at least bring you back) for the table read and a week of rewrites after the table read. The same way directors’ gigs are a prep week and a production week and an edit, all tied to a single episode, a writer needs some similar definitions and obligations. And everything should be designed to define our work product as episodes, not weeks. Episodes are what WGA writers create.
And of course these obligations could be waived with your permission, or they could be altered for a penalty, but I want us to nail down the baseline definition of what a writer does, and that definition has to be focused around the making of an episode of television. We just can’t let ourselves be in the business of selling our time. What we sell is way bigger than time.
And of course writer’s rights could have different parameters based on job title. Staff writers maybe don’t have to be in all the rewrites but writer/producers have to be involved in production.
And the last thing is you should be able to quit a mini-room with 2-weeks notice, just like any other fucking job. If they’re gonna treat us like temps, fine, but then they can’t expect us to give them more assurances than they give us. Hopefully that creates 1, an incentive for them to treat us decently, 2, a class of manager-level writers - the must-haves, who get enough extra pay to make them stakeholders, and 3, some churn within mini-rooms, which would benefit younger writers.
That’s my Santa wish. A package of rights aimed at making sure mini-rooms are workable, dignified, professional, and fairly compensated.
MARC GUGGENHEIM: I want to chime in on the issue of exclusivity – because I think, if we address it properly, it’s the solution to span protection. First, I don’t think limits should be set on exclusivity. I think exclusivity should be abolished. In television, studios don’t benefit from exclusivity – showrunners do. But what I’d propose is that we treat showrunners and their staffs like the adults they are and let them manage multiple gigs simultaneously. Now, some people are better at multitasking than others, of course. But those people either won’t multitask or they’ll get fired. But in any case, span protection won’t be necessary because writers won’t be waiting around, unpaid, while the show they’re working on is in development hell.
All that being said, however, I don’t think this proposal would fly with the Guild membership as currently constituted. But let’s not kid ourselves: Exclusivity takes more money out of the pockets of writers overall than a exclusivity-free system would. It’s an anchor around the necks of working writers that the studios impose on us for no legitimate good reason except that they can.
AB: I have hope! And the reason I have hope is that in practice, writers do break contracts to take other jobs. It’s not common, but at least in my experience, you tell the showrunner you gotta go, they don’t say ‘no you have to stay and be miserable.’ They might say you’re killing me here, but ultimately they tell the studio and the studio says fine go (or fine fuck off you’re dead to us). It doesn’t happen often, and maybe my experiences haven’t been typical, but I think this might be a matter of telling the studios we’re going to normalize freedom of movement and it has to go in the MBA. SAG pursued it in Sacramento too. It’s in the air.
HS: I agree. I have never ever not let a writer go who wanted and needed to take another job before. But the real span and exclusivity problem is with upper levels and showrunners, who we all know, are now sometimes making less than lower levels are. It is now common not to pay showrunners through post production, which is patently insane.
But I am less delicate than Andy: Eliminate Mini Rooms, Santa. Plow them with your sleigh like they are Toecutter on a Z100 Kow.
This is not going back ten years, it’s more like going back five, and I think its wrong to accuse the guild here of naively wanting to “go back in time” to a place before new technology or advancement. Mini rooms themselves are the apparatus that has caused most of our current problems. The practice got trojan-horsed in because they were called ‘rooms” and I think initially, people thought, “Oh, it's just a different form of a room.’ They are not. It’s a bait and switch. A ‘room’ is and has always been writers working on a show with a production order, writing and also producing it. This is not in any way that, its in fact everything they want it to be EXCEPT that. It's a way to delay decision making, delay commitment, pay writers less, and hold some of them hostage for literally no money.
That cute name “mini room” is simply a way for studios to get an entire season of TV broken for less than half the price. Mini rooms allow them to replace an entire staff of people who helped create a season, including the creator. Mini rooms add greatly to span and exclusivity problems - once they have that season done, there is no ticking clock. Mini rooms are the reason people often don't get to work multiple seasons on a show, preventing lower levels from truly learning and moving up, they are the reason writers can’t produce episodes, preventing writers from getting skills they need and overseeing episodes, they are the reason writer supremacy on TV is being challenged and why directors can be showrunners.
Part of the reason for the cheap coke binge of the past five years is that studios didn’t have to pay writers commensurate with what this guild has painstakingly fought for. So now that we are all dealing with their bust - excuse me, correction - it makes no sense to start negotiations on the floor of their bad faith detritus. Mini rooms were part of the problem. They have to go.
For those who fear we would be eliminating jobs, I would answer, we are eliminating the shit jobs. And the guild as a whole would have to decide if corporation X has 10 dollars for TV writing, would we like that ten dollars going to good jobs, or shit jobs that also create so many other problems?
TYLER HISEL - What I want from Santa (outside of the residuals and exclusivity for which solutions have been proposed here by those much smarter than I).
I want the per project cap on Health and Pension contributions to be raised or eliminated. Currently, once you reach $225,000 in income on a feature project you no longer receive pension contributions on any new money you are paid on that project. The cap is $250,000 for health contributions. These caps were, I believe, set in place nearly 15 years ago and haven't been raised since. It's no secret that feature projects take time. The work can span years. That means that a writer can spend months of their year on a project but then fail to qualify for healthcare because they passed the 250k cap on the project a year prior. If you are working and being paid, you should make healthcare. This per project limit has to be raised (tie it to inflation or scale increases) or eliminate it outright. (For TV projects, the limits are 275k per project).
And yes, I also want Santa to make the idea of doubling minimums go away. That is, unless we want even smaller, more top-heavy rooms with new writers locked out, and the further acceleration of mini-rooms. Which is worse than a lump of coal if you ask me.
CT: One hundred percent this. Lift or eliminate the P&H cap on feature projects.
ANGELA WORKMAN: I agree with Tyler that it’s an arbitrary (and archaic) amount and needs to be raised or eliminated. And ironically, as a feature writer (primarily), I really wish feature writers had a cap on dues earnings, like TV writers do. It is supremely inequitable that we pay on 100% of our earnings – 100%!!! – while TV earnings are capped. (I know this isn’t an MBA issue, but maybe it should be! Source the revenue somewhere else instead of always, always off the backs of feature writers.)
HS: We have to do everything we can to protect feature writers right now who we have let become so vulnerable. But beating that dead trojan horse? The single biggest thing that is taking TV writers down the exact same road as feature writers is mini rooms, full stop.
CT: That’s a pretty good Santa letter. Some of us have been naughty; some of us have been nice, but all of us work hard to tell stories. What we’re looking for is to participate in the success of what we create, roll back the attitude that writers are a disposable and interchangeable commodity and while we’re at it, correct some of the internal imbalances affecting feature writers in the Guild. That’s a lot to ask, but the season of miracles is approaching. And we are all prepared to do what is necessary to save entertainment writing as a viable career for as many people as possible.
If you are a working writer, what is on your wish list? Let us know if you want to participate in this ongoing column.
Next week we are going to talk about the problem of Time, and how respect for our time, not to mention paying for it, has all but disappeared. Please write to us at writerscollectivesubstack@gmail.com share your stories or if you want to join the roundtable on late pay, span, time it takes for deals to close, no pay for post, or exclusivity - all real problems for us now - or if you receive this via email, simply reply.