Writers to Get Viewership Bonuses, but Streamers to Keep Data Quiet
The WGA’s new contract with the AMPTP is a step in the right direction, but it stops far short of full transparency.
As the dust settles around the new deal between the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), the prevailing opinion in Hollywood circles is that the writers got themselves a very good deal. At the very least, they were able to secure concessions that many observers did not think were possible, and many assume that the new contract will provide the basis for resumed negotiations between the AMPTP and the Screen Actors Guild - Alliance of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA).
One of the biggest wins in the new deal for the WGA was the inclusion of streaming-based residuals. Now, a recent hit streaming original on Disney+ or Prime Video will generate a bonus for its writers if 20% of that streamer’s viewership watches 100% of episodes available within the first 90 days. There’s a decent chance that many writers will qualify for these bonuses going forward; Samba TV’s “State of Viewership” report for the first half of 2023 indicates that all but three of the top 50 streaming shows released in that time garnered more than two-thirds of their total viewership in the first 15 days of availability.
But how will writers know if the show they helped create crosses that threshold, especially when streaming platforms are so unwilling to share viewership metrics at times? A new report from Business Insider details how writers will get this information, and how few of them will actually get to see hard numbers from streaming providers.
Insider says that the AMPTP agreed to share the total number of hours streamed for top-performing shows with up to six people at the WGA. Those six people can then share the data with the rest of the guild, but only in aggregated form; in other words, most WGA writers will see numbers not attributable to any one title in particular. That means they won’t really know how well that show or movie is doing until they get their bonus checks.
In some ways, this means that many writers will get more data from streaming top-10 lists than they will from the AMPTP. Still, it’s a win for the guild that it got the data-driven payments, even if they don’t get to see the data in question. Since the expansion of the streaming era, the AMPTP has been wary about sharing any such data, for fear that it will give unions more power to ask for bigger bonuses, as well as the fact that it may reveal some shows aren’t getting much in the way of play.
“Ultimately, the one thing that everyone in the TV landscape has been chasing is transparency, including writers and actors needing to know how many people are watching their work in order to properly value themselves,” Samba TV co-founder and CEO Ashwin Navin told to Insider. “The outcome of the WGA strike is a meaningful step towards a much more level playing field between streaming platforms, studios, and the talent themselves.”
Users who are hoping for more transparency from streamers aren’t likely to get it. Platforms like Prime Video and Apple TV+ don’t even reveal their subscriber totals publicly, and as media companies are forced to share more of their data with the unions responsible for bringing new movies and TV shows to life, they may end up offering less in the way of hard numbers to the public going forward.
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