![]() The simplest and most obvious solution here, besides adding tiered provisions for international subscribers, is to base residual payments on a show’s total hours or minutes streamed, the viewership metric used by both Nielsen and Netflix’s Top 10 charts to quantify streaming content’s performance.īut simply basing payments off an entire season’s or series’ performance wouldn’t make sense either. High on the DGA’s published list of priorities for negotiations with the AMPTP is securing “meaningful increases and structural changes to streaming residual formulas that account for the global growth of the audience.” ![]() Hence the guilds’ drive to revise the numbers. The residual bases noted below are multiplied by the corresponding “subscriber tier” percentage as well as another percentage based on how many years it’s been since the content in question was released. That’s because streaming residuals are currently calculated based on a service’s domestic subscriber totals, with a sliding scale of five tiers determining the amount writers and other talent will be paid. Simply increasing the amount paid out in these residuals, furthermore, is not going to be enough, for the current residuals formula is not only outdated for the current era of streaming, it’s absurdly simplistic considering the complexity of streaming viewership data. This is a vital economic issue for entertainment industry workers, one that will form the backbone of their compensation as Hollywood’s principal business model shifts inexorably toward streaming. That said, if there’s one issue in particular on which the three guilds should not budge easily, and on which they should absolutely show inter-union solidarity, it’s success-based streaming residuals. ![]() First, let’s state the obvious: Some level of compromise is going to be needed to end the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike and to prevent further labor unrest as the Directors Guild and SAG-AFTRA enter their own tense negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP).
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