THB #420: Can SAG Give AMPTP More Than One Take?

I suppose Newsletter #420 should be about pot.

But it’s not.

But in the name of going high, I’m going to start with a positive idea.

What if SAG/Aftra reset their position on a flat tax of the Streamers to get where they want to get financially overall and propose that there be a Viewership-based Streaming Bonus that is more expansive and varied than the one settled for by the WGA? You remember that one by heart, don’t you?

Viewership-based streaming bonus: The Guild negotiated a new residual based on viewership. Made-for HBSVOD series and films that are viewed by 20% or more of the service’s domestic subscribers in the first 90 days of release, or in the first 90 days in any subsequent exhibition year, get a bonus equal to 50% of the fixed domestic and foreign residual, with views calculated as hours streamed domestically of the season or film divided by runtime.

To simplify what you may or may not have just taken the time to read, WGA negotiated a bonus of 50% of the set residual for any show viewed by 20% or more of a streamer’s subscribing households in the first 90 days of streaming or in the first quarter of each/any year after that first year of streaming.

For Netflix, that would be about 42 million viewers. For Disney+, it would be about 21 million viewers. Everyone else, less.

AMPTP is offering, according to reports, a SAG/Aftra version of the same deal.

So instead of the “pay an amount per sub or a flat % against your total streaming revenue” demand that anyone who isn’t wildly myopic about the negotiation knew was a non-starter months ago, how about an alternative that can actually be negotiated?

For instance…

Any show that gets viewed by 10% on streaming release or in any year after gets a 25% bonus based on residuals… any show getting 20% viewership gets 50%… any show getting 30% viewership gets 75%… and any show with over 40% viewership gets a 100% bonus!!!

Or something like that.

You can take the ol’ slide rule (don’t really remember how those work) and adjust the suggested figures to benefit more actors with less… with more of a bonus or less.

But the negotiation idea is that you take something on the table and find a way to improve it. The insistence on a brand new idea of how to get union workers paid is possible… but the least possible likely outcome.

I don’t know what the precise bottom line is for the AMPTP companies or SAG/Aftra, but I know that the idea is to create added revenue to Actors based on structures that currently exist at the most aggressive level possible.

I have been one of the only people to be writing for the last decade-plus that SAG was getting screwed back in 2008 by the restructuring of reruns, from broadcast to streaming. (I also still blame Aftra for severely softening the ground for AMPTP to undercut SAG by threatening to take more of the union actor business with weaker contracts as all filmed entertainment moved to tape instead of film.) 2008 was SAG’s “writers rooms” moment in this regard. And they didn’t get it. But that was a long time ago.

It is not really reasonable to demand that AMPTP basically make up for the last 5 contracts this time out. It was not right for SAG to get screwed in 2008… but membership voted to let it happen. And then they embraced Aftra as though they were good friends. Fifteen years later, the “militant” SAG members of that period have embraced the current leadership because you live together long enough, people often find a place of grace and shared interest in arranged marriages. But… time does not erase history.

Now… the less pleasant part…