The writers that were paid $3000 in the story wrote 11/134 episodes or 8.2%
The episodes are 42 minutes each, round down 2 minutes for skipped credits, divide 3x10^9 by 40 we get:
75 million episodes streamed (approx)
If they wrote 8.2 % of those streamed, then they wrote 6.15 million individually streamed episodes.
So writers got 0.049c per episode streamed or 0.00012c per minute streamed.
The average American watches 160 minutes of TV Video a day, so round that up to 5000 minutes a month, and say $10 a month per sub on that, we get $10 of revenue for 5000 minutes streamed, or 0.2c per minute.
So streaming revenue (using the above math and assumptions) would be 0.2c per minute of which the writers of the content that was streamed got 0.00012c or 0.06%.
Netflix 2023Q2 revenue was 8.18B and expenses were 6.36B.
Thanks for sharing this story. That TV host sounds like an unbelievable asshole, no wonder it stuck with your friend for so long. I can’t fathom what would make a person act like that.
That reminds me: I have a cassette of parody songs from a local radio station (Fox 97’s Shower Stall Singers) somewhere that might end up lost to history if I don’t find it and upload it.
Fwiw, the title is intentionally skewed and wrong. I’m not saying writers shouldn’t be upset because they should, but it is making the situation look much worse than it is.
The six original writers were paid $3K each in streaming residuals last quarter for Season 1.
Suits was added to Netflix on June 17th where it streamed for three billion minutes in a single week, June 26 to July 2. Using Nielsen numbers, it streamed for about five billion minutes on Netflix during Q2. Previously it was on Peacock and we don’t have the streaming data for that, but we can assume that it wasn’t anywhere as much. Using the most recent data through July 16, it was seen for a total of 12.8 billion minutes.
Streaming services also doesn’t pay residuals based on minutes watched, but based on a complicated formula.
Suits episodes are 42 minutes long, meaning the base annual residual is $10,034. Netflix US has more than 150M subscribers, so the subscriber factor is 150%. Their initial streaming residual payment would be $15K per episode.
However, that is just the initial payment Netflix needs to make. Subsequent payments for the actual streaming rights per year are adjusted down. This is the first year on Netflix so the residual factor is 45%. This makes the base annual payment $7,448.
Now, the show was on Netflix for 14 days during the last quarter, making their Q2 residual $286. WGA also imposes a 1.5% union due plus $25 per quarter. This brings the payment per episode down to $256.
Another factor that needs to be factored in is the pay that the writer got for doing their writing job in the first place. It’s not like they are working for residuals only.
Considering how few of the episodes they wrote, this seems almost reasonable. It would be a better comparison of we could see how much they make compared to TV reruns or home media sales.
But we’re not talking about salary here. We’re talking residuals, per quarter, paid on top of the salary they received for the original work.
For a show that is 13 years old. Collecting $6k per quarter for work you did 13 years ago and that you have to do absolutely nothing for anymore seems pretty good to me?
There’s a hell of a lot of working class people who would absolutely love to be getting paid like that. Trying to frame this as the working class vs the rich seems really dishonest. Do TV writers even understand what the working class is, or how much we make? I sure as hell don’t collect $6k per quarter for work I did 13 years ago. If I did, I’d be rich.
Not that I’m trying to still for the corpo here, but this is a per quarter payment. ~$270 per episode from this single quarter just based on viewers from 2 streaming services. We don’t know how much they’ve got paid in aggregate for this single episode.
Presumably they got something upfront/hourly initially and they’ve been paid residuals for many years, as they did the work in 2011 and episodes have been rerun alot on network tv.
Idk how much is reasonable for the work they did do but it’s certainly been alot more than this small payment.
they’re probably going to make 5k a year for 6 months a work for 30 years from 11 episodes of 1 show. they might be owed more, but there is a ton of missing context around this that passing judgment on what could be a simply outdated contract from before streaming was a major consideration. if this is just a fraction of what an equivalent contribution to a show would have made from TV reruns or home media sales, then there is a conversation to be had, but no one has brought that up.
It’s 3k to a few of many writers for 11 total episodes. We don’t know the actual streaming numbers of those exact episodes either. Could they be paid better? Maybe, but no one has compared this to the traditional residuals they did get.
Doing some math:
The writers that were paid $3000 in the story wrote 11/134 episodes or 8.2%
The episodes are 42 minutes each, round down 2 minutes for skipped credits, divide 3x10^9 by 40 we get:
75 million episodes streamed (approx)
If they wrote 8.2 % of those streamed, then they wrote 6.15 million individually streamed episodes.
So writers got 0.049c per episode streamed or 0.00012c per minute streamed.
The average American watches 160 minutes of TV Video a day, so round that up to 5000 minutes a month, and say $10 a month per sub on that, we get $10 of revenue for 5000 minutes streamed, or 0.2c per minute.
So streaming revenue (using the above math and assumptions) would be 0.2c per minute of which the writers of the content that was streamed got 0.00012c or 0.06%.
Netflix 2023Q2 revenue was 8.18B and expenses were 6.36B.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NFLX/netflix/revenue
2018 estimate figures the combined Netflix users streamed 164M hours per day
https://www.soda.com/news/netflix-users-stream-164-million-hours-per-day/
14.9Billion hours for that Quarter.
2018 saw 15.8 Billion annual revenue and 14.2Billion in costs. Gives us an estimate of 3.55B in costs for 1 quarter in 2018
894B minutes / 3.55 B in costs = 0.397c in costs per minute streamed.
Out of the 0.397c of costs (0.442c revenue) writers got 0.00012c or 0.0302% of the costs or 0.0272% of the revenue.
/c/theydidthemath
similar numbers to Spotify, but sadly there’s no musicians union
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Thanks for sharing this story. That TV host sounds like an unbelievable asshole, no wonder it stuck with your friend for so long. I can’t fathom what would make a person act like that.
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And upload it to the Internet Archive!
That reminds me: I have a cassette of parody songs from a local radio station (Fox 97’s Shower Stall Singers) somewhere that might end up lost to history if I don’t find it and upload it.
What the fuck would possess someone to do that?
But just like with Netflix, you have alternatives. Either pirate, or use services that pay the artists a little more, like tidal.
I use tidal, and I must say the only thing they are missing is transferring currently listening music to another device.
Podcasts I don’t really care about.
Apart from that, pretty good alternative. And I feel better knowing that I am supporting the artists.
Fwiw, the title is intentionally skewed and wrong. I’m not saying writers shouldn’t be upset because they should, but it is making the situation look much worse than it is.
The six original writers were paid $3K each in streaming residuals last quarter for Season 1.
Suits was added to Netflix on June 17th where it streamed for three billion minutes in a single week, June 26 to July 2. Using Nielsen numbers, it streamed for about five billion minutes on Netflix during Q2. Previously it was on Peacock and we don’t have the streaming data for that, but we can assume that it wasn’t anywhere as much. Using the most recent data through July 16, it was seen for a total of 12.8 billion minutes.
Streaming services also doesn’t pay residuals based on minutes watched, but based on a complicated formula.
Suits episodes are 42 minutes long, meaning the base annual residual is $10,034. Netflix US has more than 150M subscribers, so the subscriber factor is 150%. Their initial streaming residual payment would be $15K per episode.
However, that is just the initial payment Netflix needs to make. Subsequent payments for the actual streaming rights per year are adjusted down. This is the first year on Netflix so the residual factor is 45%. This makes the base annual payment $7,448.
Now, the show was on Netflix for 14 days during the last quarter, making their Q2 residual $286. WGA also imposes a 1.5% union due plus $25 per quarter. This brings the payment per episode down to $256.
It also makes no mention of how much money the writers were paid to actually do their job of writing the episodes.
Another factor that needs to be factored in is the pay that the writer got for doing their writing job in the first place. It’s not like they are working for residuals only.
Considering how few of the episodes they wrote, this seems almost reasonable. It would be a better comparison of we could see how much they make compared to TV reruns or home media sales.
So about $40k shared among all writers seem almost reasonable had they written all of them, and we keep the same ratio…?
6k per person for a full season on a really popular hit show seems absurdly low
But we’re not talking about salary here. We’re talking residuals, per quarter, paid on top of the salary they received for the original work.
For a show that is 13 years old. Collecting $6k per quarter for work you did 13 years ago and that you have to do absolutely nothing for anymore seems pretty good to me?
There’s a hell of a lot of working class people who would absolutely love to be getting paid like that. Trying to frame this as the working class vs the rich seems really dishonest. Do TV writers even understand what the working class is, or how much we make? I sure as hell don’t collect $6k per quarter for work I did 13 years ago. If I did, I’d be rich.
Not that I’m trying to still for the corpo here, but this is a per quarter payment. ~$270 per episode from this single quarter just based on viewers from 2 streaming services. We don’t know how much they’ve got paid in aggregate for this single episode.
Presumably they got something upfront/hourly initially and they’ve been paid residuals for many years, as they did the work in 2011 and episodes have been rerun alot on network tv.
Idk how much is reasonable for the work they did do but it’s certainly been alot more than this small payment.
they’re probably going to make 5k a year for 6 months a work for 30 years from 11 episodes of 1 show. they might be owed more, but there is a ton of missing context around this that passing judgment on what could be a simply outdated contract from before streaming was a major consideration. if this is just a fraction of what an equivalent contribution to a show would have made from TV reruns or home media sales, then there is a conversation to be had, but no one has brought that up.
How much were they paid to do their job in the first place? They didn’t work for free.
It’s 3k to a few of many writers for 11 total episodes. We don’t know the actual streaming numbers of those exact episodes either. Could they be paid better? Maybe, but no one has compared this to the traditional residuals they did get.