Is writer pay up or down? Depends how you look at it
variety.com
variety.com
On one hand, writer compensation has always been structured around residuals -- and it seems like pay for writers on streaming shows has stayed the same, even though residuals haven't. That seems unfair.
On the other hand, "residuals" as a concept make less sense for shows that live on subscription streaming platforms.
Each view of a Stranger Things episode generates exactly zero dollars. Obviously there is a lot of value in Netflix having good, popular shows -- but the marginal cost/revenue structure is very different from cable TV, where you can actually map viewers to income whenever you air an episode.
Clearly the writers want to capture some of the possible upside of a super-popular show, much like residuals did in the past (and like startup equity does in SV). I just wonder if the industry is ready for a new structure to try and express that upside-value.
This gives you a rough approximation of revenue that can be attributed to each program. From this some proportion could sensible be allowed to the writers of the programming. This might be a percentage of the revenue after certain overheads have been first subtracted, or whatever. There are plenty of possible details to work out, but the basic concept seems sound.
Obviously this applies to subscription streaming without ads. Non-subscription streaming with ads seems perfectly amenable to traditional residuals, although if such ads pay less than TV ones (which i suspect is true), a smaller residual may make sense.
Subscription streaming with ads could sensibly be be either pure residual, of a hybrid of both approaches. The hybrid makes more sense for services that offer no ads if consumers pay more.
Sure, they won't want to negotiate to allow this... but what's the difficult here besides unwillingness? It's basically the same thing as now, except that as rights to Friends and Seinfeld are bandied about, the value proposition for those is a little more clear (some network paid $1.1 billion to be able to air reruns for the next 14 years or whatever).
You'd think if there was some neutral arbitrator, they might settle what the format/pattern of that residuals clause would be, so that the two parties could just sit down and haggle out the actual numbers.
Some streaming platforms do have ads shown alongside their shows. So a residual structure could make sense.
Some shows will air on both kinds of streaming platforms - Community is on both Hulu and Netflix.
Some shows will start on linear television and then come to streaming, or vice versa -- Abbott Elementary is a recent, popular example.
I think you're generally right, though -- smart people could figure this out if they sat down and talked about it. It seems like the talking is the hard part right now.
Are residuals closely tied to how well the ad dollars flow? If someone buys a sitcom for re-runs, and the dish detergent manufacturers and Chrysler refuse to put ads on during those re-runs, do the writers get less (or no) residuals?
I stopped watching shows on Netflix and subsequently cancelled my subscription. The value isn't in Netflix having content. Rather, the value is in viewers' consuming of content. Surely each view of an episode contributes to the revenue generated by the viewers' subscription fees.
The value of each show on Netflix is that it gives users one more reason not to cancel their subscription. The value is in Netflix always having more content for you to watch.
More precisely it's, as you said, in Netflix always having more can't miss content for you to watch. If you subscribe to Netflix for one or two shows that you absolutely must watch they are perfectly fine with that.
I could imagine a version of this being adapted to other "unlimited consumption" model platforms like video streaming. That leaves room for the contract to negotiate the royalty percentage, maybe with some kind of a fixed floor, and to discuss how views are "normalized." Does minutes watched make sense? Should it be normalized by account, rather than overall time? etc ...
And then incentivize people to leave their netflix accounts watching shows while they are away or whatever for pennies to recoup some of their monthly sub fees. If the royalties are enough, it would seem possible to instead just farm views for profit at netflix expense, on top of royalties, who then passes on the cost. Seems like a losing game all around
One way or another, it's clear that there are existing, practical models for distributing revenue in this way. Seems like TV / streaming video is just behind the times.
Of course this is a change to how it's been done in the past, but not that big a change - this is basically already how the producers for movies get paid, essentially you'd just have a much larger number of "producers" with much lower individual equity stakes. And ultimately a new medium with a new business model was always going to require a new compensation strategy.
Interesting that adjusted for inflation however, writing pays roughly what it does in the mid 1990s per the article.
That's a little surprising.
It's also probably a more competitive industry however, and the median pay (which is what's measured) doesn't account for the best writers probably doing better than ever. And then maybe more part time people trying to break into the field but not getting much.
If there's a pretty large middle ground buoyed by union pay scales and contracts, then both ends (high/low) will not really be accounted for in the statistics.
Average writer earnings in 2021: $260,000.
Average earnings do not account for the sizable number of WGA members who, in any given year, earn nothing from writing. The WGA has not released a median annual figure since 2014, when it was $140,000 (in 2021 dollars, for the sake of consistency).
I'm not actually surprised. So writing is actually a pretty good gig (even if you're not a showrunner/executive producer) if you have a real gig. But the median WGA member is probably waiting tables or has some other job. And that's WGA members. The typical writer submitting scripts to studios on spec is earning almost nothing.
ADDED: And this is in the context of writing, perhaps other than some corporate content job, being an increasingly terrible way to earn a living on average.
But all too often, the word “average” will be used without even clarifying if it is mean or median, and I have seen too many cases where it just so happens to support whatever argument the publisher is making.
See even the example ghaff quoted. The union went out of its way to remove information about the earnings distribution because they did not want people to know how the median was moving.
It is if you're going to do it for every statistic. eg. in a story about gen Z skipping college, you could have statistics about tuition rate, student loan amount, time to graduate, graduation rate, earnings after graduation, etc. Add to that, all of the statistics but separated by various demographic factors (eg. geography, age, race), and you can easily have dozens of tables. That's fine if you're writing a 20 page graduate dissertation, but for a daily article on npr.org or whatever that's just overkill.
Not to mention, in many cases the reason why it's being omitted from news stories isn't because of some nefarious motives by the author, it's because the source material only mentions medians. eg. most of the BLS news releases only has medians/averages: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.toc.htm, so any news stories based off them are inevitably going to not have decile level data like you demand, through no nefarious motivation on the part of the writer.
If the publisher is taking on a complicated topic, then it does need all of that information, at least via a link. Otherwise, we have the never ending clickbait of bullshit “articles” with one nebulous average intending to lead people to think something notable has happened, when it really has not.
There is so much propaganda floating around because people accept massaged averages as truth, I cannot imagine it is a benefit to society. Also, in this context, we happen to have wonderful machines and networking that allow us to share data at basically zero marginal cost.
> Not to mention, in many cases the reason why it's being omitted from news stories isn't because of some nefarious motives by the author, it's because the source material only mentions medians.
Yes, it goes without saying that the blame them moves up to the entity that has the data, but chooses not to release it.
Not that the union has any obligation to release the data, but just an example for why I assume I am not getting a clear picture when I am not provided the distribution, when it would be trivial to do so.
But everyone else makes significantly less. While pay scales have increased on a per-episode basis, TV show seasons are less than half as long as they were before, and streamers don't pay royalties, so absolute pay decreased substantially.
For point of comparison: a friend who worked in the writer's room on a FOX broadcast TV show several years ago (5+ years ago) was able to buy a house with the salary from one season and the royalties for writing a single episode broadcast that season (out of approximately 20ish). She currently works on a streaming show for one of the major streaming services and her salary this year as the head writer for that 10-episode show is less than the royalties for that single broadcast episode, despite millions more viewers watching the streaming show.
But if seasons are half as long, can't writers write twice as many seasons, canceling that effect out?
Writing is a very inconsistent job, and stability is really valuable. A contract that guarantees you for half the time, at the same rate, is a lot more uncertainty.
The problem is that everything these days is heavily serialized, and directors and studios are far more willing to demand last-minute script changes. Because of the nature and extent of serialization, this requires significant amounts of work--often more work than the original writing, because changes have to be propagated throughout the season.
this seems to make the case that writers were previously overpaid way beyond normal americans, and perhaps salaries are regressing to what average americans make
Normal Americans don't generate something that generates many millions of dollars.
What does it say about our society that the regression to the average no longer accommodates classic expectations of American life like homeownership.
That's a lot more money than the classic homeowner expectation.
But yes if it's that irregular then the height of the pay spikes is reasonable. And also being that irregular is awful.
The simpler explanation is writers were appropriately paid based on their supply and demand in previous years, and a decrease in pay in future years indicates a shift in supply and demand.
B) Streaming wasn't as big back then, so TV was a much bigger part of the entertainment pie.
C) The show was profitable for FOX (at the time).
C) Truly bizarre that people on a forum bragging about making well into the 6 figures for 30 hours of work a week reinventing yet another wheel are talking shit about other people making 6 figures for 60 hours of work a week on a product regularly enjoyed by millions of people and which contribute to the progression of shared cultural experiences.
She won awards for Killing Eve which is a show that is "mid" in every way.
Sometimes people get large paydays for reasons other than talented writing. If Phoebe Waller-Bridge is getting large paydays for writing its not because of her comprehensive work history and achievements.
This says more about your tastes than your understanding of Hollywood.
Ms. Waller-Bridge wrote 2 critically acclaimed TV shows which were hits for their respective distributors: Fleabag (an Amazon Video launch series), and Killing Eve (BBC). She also wrote several smaller series for the BBC, and co-wrote No Time to Die, and provided uncredited rewrites for Solo, Indiana Jones 5, and is currently working on another TV show for Amazon.
For her work on both Fleabag and Killing Eve, she was nominated for outstanding writing by her peers (and won for Killing Eve). Taking into account the number of episodes she wrote for both of these series, she actually has more writing credits than her 3 credited NTTD co-writers.
doesn't have a story credit unlike the other three writers
A story credit is given to a writer that participated in writing the treatment for the film (i.e., the outline), in situations where a treatment is drafted before the script itself is written. A story credit is a lesser credit in Hollywood. Where there is overlap between the story by and screenplay by credits, it means that the original writers' first draft(s) weren't filmable and another writer had to be brought into salvage the script. Some writers will re-write enough things to get sole credit for the final script; others, like PWB, will make just the changes necessary to get it across the finish while still letting the original screenwriters get credited for their contributions.
I tried to watch them.
My opinion is that they were critically acclaimed because the subject matter was popular or outrageous not necessarily because they were good. There aren't any sympathetic characters in fleabag - its a tale of a mentally unstable desperate neurotic woman as she goes from revolting situation to revolting situation through bad decisions she's mostly at fault for. It isn't funny. If you giggle when unlikable people talk about anal sex this may be for you.
Killing eve was a tv show that embodies "mid" in every way, except its about lesbian/bisexual bait so it wins awards.
>Solo, Indiana Jones 5,
Solo was a bad movie and the first star wars film to actually lose money, and indiana jones 5 hasn't been released yet so I'm withholding judgement.
>Taking into account the number of episodes she wrote for both of these series, she actually has more writing credits than her 3 credited NTTD co-writers.
Writing 1000 episodes of those shows isn't comparable to a single good bond film. This is why quantity and quality are not the same.
>A story credit is given to a writer that participated in writing the treatment for the film (i.e., the outline), in situations where a treatment is drafted before the script itself is written. A story credit is a lesser credit in Hollywood.
Ya, the other writers have writing credits, and story credits, and 20 years of history writing bond movies.
>Where there is overlap between the story by and screenplay by credits, it means that the original writers' first draft(s) weren't filmable and another writer had to be brought into salvage the script.
https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/heres-how-phoebe-...
>“[I was asked to do] dialogue polishes and to offer things really,” she said. “It’s about just offering different alternatives.”
>She went on to say “they did give me some scenes and then be like, can you write some alternatives for this or have another idea about where it could go in the middle or how it would end. And then I would just give them options and various scenes and then they would take what they want. But there was a lot people writing — the director [Cary Fukunaga] was a writer on it as well. And there’d been a few writers before.”
They didn't bring her in to salvage the script at all. They brought her in to do polishes of dialogue and to give them some ideas about how things could go and they'd take what they wanted. What about this reads salvaging?
She got the invited because one of the film's producers, Barbara Brocolli, invited her to contribute. in my opinion because they were looking to add female writing credits to the movie as the academy awards had suddenly introduced diversity requirements to be considered for awards and all the writers up to that point were men.
So if you are a producer that wants "critically acclaimed" and "wins awards", author , hire her ? Maybe that answers why she is getting paid that much.
> Writing 1000 episodes of those shows isn't comparable to a single good bond film. This is why quantity and quality are not the same.
That's debatable. Personally I wasn't impressed with neither her work or last few James Bond (with the last one being the best of the lot.)
For me the best and most consistent author of past decade has been Randall Munroe of https://xkcd.com/ fame. Does he count ?
For all of the Craig Bond films, other writers had to be brought into to make their scripts filmable (Oscar winner Paul Haggis for Casino Royale and QoS and multiple Oscar nominee John Logan for Skyfall and Spectre, Emmy winners PWB and Fukunaga for NTTD).
Notably, Purvis and Wade have never been nominated for screenwriting awards, and the average RT score for the films they wrote without other screenwriters is...38 (the audience scores aren't much better, at 46). PWB's average is 85. Fukunaga's average for his screenplays is 87. PH and JL have won or been nominated for multiple Oscars.
They didn't bring her in to salvage the script at all. They brought her in to do polishes of dialogue and to give them some ideas about how things could go and they'd take what they wanted. What about this reads salvaging?
The WGA has strict rules about screenwriting credits. If she got screenwriting credit for a major blockbuster, she didn't just "polish" a little bit of the script, she wrote significant portions of the script that made it into production. And given their historical backgrounds, it's clear that she and Fukunaga were responsible for the serious elements of the film, since that's not a capability that Purvis and Wade have demonstrated in any of their prior films.)
except its about lesbian/bisexual bait so it wins awards. in my opinion because they were looking to add female writing credits
And suddenly your agenda becomes clear...Most people aren't so open about being misogynists.
I feel for my friends in the industry but AI is going to wreck workers in entertainment.
I don't know how to describe it, but the WGA had a form of collective action in 2019 - they fired all of their agents. Not exactly a strike, but maybe more like a boycott?
I seriously doubt that, but I imagine this is exactly the point where one needs to renegotiate to make sure terms are fair.
Strikes are common when labour is at a relative disadvantage, because that's when they tend to be exploited the most.
I don't think it's terrible timing due to ChatGPT and AI. Rather, it is timing that is specifically because of ChatGPT and AI.
For example:
-An actor has to maintain a physical appearance
-at higher risk of losing income due to an accident since it could change their appearance
-has to travel and generally do more physically strenuous tasks
I am not saying actors should be getting paid more either. But prices are best determined by supply and demand curves, not by people’s “feelings” on fair and unfair.
By comparison, replacing an actor is much more of a headache, and requires writing out or recasting a character. In some circumstances this could potentially ruin the show. That gives actors much better leverage for salary negotiation, particularly once the show has become established.