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Timby posted:Ad sales, selling off their content for streaming and syndication. International rights, merchandise, IP licensing (comics, games, novels, etc) It depends on how they bought the rights to the show and how much the showrunner retains, all negotiated As we've seen some of these showrunners don't actually own poo poo and couldn't take the property elsewhere once the studios axed them.
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May 3, 2023 23:46
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Timby posted:Ad sales, selling off their content for streaming and syndication. One of the issues, I'm not sure if it's being highlighted here though, is how a studio handles a show and it's various sales. Example: Universal Television made Brooklyn 99, initially sold the show to Fox for a set licensing deal, then NBC after Fox passed following Season 5. Universal Television then sold the show's back catalogue to Peacock. Peacock has world wide streaming rights for the show. In effect an NBC unit (UT) sold an NBC property (B99) to another NBC subunit (Peacock), but because there wasn't an open competition for the show's catalogue there is an air of monopolistic practices at play here artificially lowering the price paid and thus impacting residuals of all parties involved. This strike isn't going to change that, but they are the best way to highlight the practice and how shady it is.
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May 4, 2023 15:44
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Important to note that streamers have different goals. Amazon wants people to subscribe to watch their stuff so people buy more things with Prime on their website. Disney cares about IP boosts in movies, toys, theme parks, and a billion other merchandising. I have no loving clue what Hulu wants, to be fair.
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May 4, 2023 20:48
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Narcissus1916 posted:Important to note that streamers have different goals. Amazon wants people to subscribe to watch their stuff so people buy more things with Prime on their website. Disney cares about IP boosts in movies, toys, theme parks, and a billion other merchandising. you could say that about most of them that don't show ads, e.g. max: just show off WBD properties...? paramount+: just show off paramount properties...? netflix: ...just stream stuff and license it? apple: ...sell apple stuff? i mean, we don't really know what their ultimate motives are, even if some of them are easy to guess (like disney or amazon). i don't think they necessarily know either, and that's a big part of the problem
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May 4, 2023 21:12
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Narcissus1916 posted:Important to note that streamers have different goals. Amazon wants people to subscribe to watch their stuff so people buy more things with Prime on their website. Disney cares about IP boosts in movies, toys, theme parks, and a billion other merchandising. Which is so strange to me, because I only watch Prime stuff because I already have Prime for free shipping on the stuff I buy from them. And, anecdotal I know, but everyone I talk to who has Prime is the same way. I have no idea why they spend so much money on their streaming stuff, because I've never thought about it bringing people in so they buy stuff from Amazon until you just said it now. I'd be curious to see numbers on if that actually happens, but I know they would never release them.
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May 4, 2023 21:17
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give amazon some credit, there has to be at least a little bit of money-laundering to justify this https://twitter.com/sepinwall/status/1651596852142260224
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May 4, 2023 21:24
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Most streaming services these days, are just owned by their parent cable company / network. Peacock is just NBCUniversal's catalog (and owned by Comcast). Paramount Plus is just Paramount & their catalog. HBO Max and Discovery Plus are both under WB. HBO Max currently has the streaming rights for South Park, but they got that license before Paramount Plus launched, and pretty sure Paramount Plus is getting the catalog in 2024 after the license ends. Hulu is currently 75% owned by Disney and 25% by Comcast, so there's shows from both companies in there. But I think Disney has the option to buy out Comcast next year. Netflix still holds on to a lot of licensing deals before the cable companies started their own streaming services, so they still have a lot of shows but I'm not sure if they have successfully held on to any streaming rights from shows where the contract has come up for renewal.
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May 4, 2023 21:35
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kliras posted:give amazon some credit, there has to be at least a little bit of money-laundering to justify this Yeeeeesh. Why the hell does Amazon keep giving these HUGE budget shows to showrunners with little (or lovely) experience? They did it with Wheel of Time, Rings of Powerbottom, and soon to be God of War.
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May 4, 2023 21:44
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https://twitter.com/DiscussingFilm/status/1654217853212532736
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May 4, 2023 22:01
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Apparently only 19 days left of filming, so not that big of an impact.Hughmoris posted:Yeeeeesh. Why the hell does Amazon keep giving these HUGE budget shows to showrunners with little (or lovely) experience? They did it with Wheel of Time, Rings of Powerbottom, and soon to be God of War. Because tech companies are bad at making media, plain and simple. For Rings of Power, they fielded pitches for their very expensive license and picked the one they liked the most. By all accounts, it was the best idea of the bunch, and a clever take on the limited rights they had access to. So they moved forward with it regardless of the talent involved, regardless of who the guys who came up with the idea were. And then they just let them make a show they were wildly unqualified to make. It probably sounded like a good idea because Peter Jackson wasn't a AAA director either. They missed the part where he was an incredibly talented and capable director beforehand, though. feedmyleg fucked around with this message at 22:11 on May 4, 2023 |
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May 4, 2023 22:08
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1. this is bad 2. the show honestly couldn't get any worse though So this is a dilemma
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May 4, 2023 22:43
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Hughmoris posted:Yeeeeesh. Why the hell does Amazon keep giving these HUGE budget shows to showrunners with little (or lovely) experience? They did it with Wheel of Time, Rings of Powerbottom, and soon to be God of War. Presumably the same reason Marvel does it, namely that it's easier to maintain control over the final product with an inexperienced person with less connections who is probably just glad to be there.
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May 4, 2023 22:47
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You could tell me that Citadel's script was AI generated and I'd believe you.. Its staggeringly bad. And I'm a guy who took enjoyment from the critically panned Terminal List
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May 4, 2023 23:16
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feedmyleg posted:Apparently only 19 days left of filming, so not that big of an impact. House of the Dragon is gearing up to shoot an entire season without writers to tweek the scripts as they go
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May 4, 2023 23:48
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feedmyleg posted:Apparently only 19 days left of filming, so not that big of an impact. honestly this is pretty close to how they operate with tech services or software too. since that makes them a ton of money they probably figured it would work (and tech people, particularly in management, think they know better than anyone else anyway). it's the same reason why teslas are insanely lovely cars
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May 4, 2023 23:52
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There was a really good thread I saw that linked this whole situation pretty directly to the 'infinite growth' grift of late stage capitalism. Here: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1653280876753719296.html
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May 5, 2023 00:56
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kliras posted:give amazon some credit, there has to be at least a little bit of money-laundering to justify this It might be the old standard tax write off also. They spend all that on a show, if it's a huge hit and gets them some awards or makes them money, great, but if it loses money (and they can use the cliched Hollywood accounting for this) they get a tax write off. Think of all the Amazon boxes that get branded with their newest show on them, congrats, now they're marketing they had to pay for. Hell, the guy who wrote Men in Black gets yearly reports from the studio saying how they still are in the red on it so they don't have to pay him back end percentages he negotiated in his contract. At those amounts of money it's probably a little bit of money laundering, a little bit of tax fuckery, a little bit of dumping failsons somewhere, a little bit of getting to hang out with movie stars, maybe say you're a producer and can be the big break that a young actor or actress is looking for, there's a million reasons. None of them are really ethical,
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May 5, 2023 02:08
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The gently caress https://twitter.com/cogman_bryan/status/1654148618444521478
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May 5, 2023 03:11
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That's straight up bad cartoon villain evil scheming, Jesus Christ 
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May 5, 2023 03:23
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2008 writer's strike late night monologues are starting to show up on my youtube recommendations. I forgot that lots of people that came back grew solidarity beards. What's the over/under on how many beards we'll see this time? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzx3raap3hQ
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May 5, 2023 04:16
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Narcissus1916 posted:I have no loving clue what Hulu wants, to be fair. It just survives mow but Huluween is good stuff!
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May 5, 2023 05:39
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feedmyleg posted:Apparently only 19 days left of filming, so not that big of an impact. I'd have to go digging for the tweets and Google's not helping, but I remember that supposedly all the Amazon people also put in an absurd amount of notes for each scene. Something like a short minute scene having hundreds of notes they had to thumb through from idiot producers who had opinions about props, lighting, reads, etc. They said at some point they just stopped reviewing and fighting because how can you deal with that kind of micro management.
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May 5, 2023 08:15
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seaborgium posted:It might be the old standard tax write off also. They spend all that on a show, if it's a huge hit and gets them some awards or makes them money, great, but if it loses money (and they can use the cliched Hollywood accounting for this) they get a tax write off. Think of all the Amazon boxes that get branded with their newest show on them, congrats, now they're marketing they had to pay for. Hell, the guy who wrote Men in Black gets yearly reports from the studio saying how they still are in the red on it so they don't have to pay him back end percentages he negotiated in his contract. The tax write off thing never makes sense. You spend $100 million on something, okay sure you lower your taxes owed by 15 million, but you're still down 85 million!
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May 5, 2023 14:02
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Pinterest Mom posted:The tax write off thing never makes sense. You spend $100 million on something, okay sure you lower your taxes owed by 15 million, but you're still down 85 million! It's a function of dipshit goons quoting other dipshit goons neither of which know anything beyond the twitter prompt. basically.
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May 5, 2023 14:30
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SLICK GOKU BABY posted:
Not really. It's 66% own by Disney and 33% owned by Comcast. Both sides can force the sale of the Comcast stake of Hulu with a minimum valuation of ~$28B (meaning ROUGHLY Comcast's share is worth $9B) in Jan 2024. Following that magical date in Jan 2024 Hulu's value will be assessed by an an independent third party, and given Hulu is second only to Netflix it's likely that $28B valuation will only go up. In 2020 and 2021 Disney tried to exercise the sale, however valuation could not be agreed upon between the companies. Rumor have it that Comcast wanted ESPN in lieu of a full cash payout. And that's kind of the crux of the issue, come Jan 2024 Disney either comes up with $9B - after laying off 7K workers and targeting $5.5B in savings - or risks watching Comcast pull their content and sell to someone else. Pinterest Mom posted:The tax write off thing never makes sense. You spend $100 million on something, okay sure you lower your taxes owed by 15 million, but you're still down 85 million! Sort of... two equally plausible scenarios that come to mind based on my limited recollection of College Finance / Accounting course: 1) you an carry those losses forward for x years, so that $100M write off can be carried forward like 5 (???) years against future profits. 2) you can write off a subsidiary's losses against the parent company's profits. So Bad Movie Co is wholly owned by Major Studio. That $100M Bad Movie Co production can be used against revenue of Major Studio But it's been forever since I thought about it, but this is largely what CPAs and the like get paid to do. Maybe we need a Business of TV thread? I think the 2008 strike had something similar and it was very enlightening to me about the economic realities of the business at the time - things like a season 3 renewal is also in effect a season 4 renewal as well due to how syndication worked at the time.
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May 5, 2023 16:08
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Nystral posted:two equally plausible scenarios that come to mind based on my limited recollection of College Finance / Accounting course: Right but even in those two cases you're only "saving" whatever the corporate tax rate you pay is. It's worse to lose money than to not lose money, and making a vague hand-wave about "tax writeoffs" doesn't change that. (There are some weird exceptions like when you cancel something, like the Batgirl movie, you get to "move up" all the costs that would otherwise have been amortized over time, so if you *really* care about getting the ~15% lump-sum today instead of spread out over ten years, you can do that, but you're still only ever getting back a tiny portion of the money spent.)
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May 5, 2023 16:25
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Pinterest Mom posted:Right but even in those two cases you're only "saving" whatever the corporate tax rate you pay is. It's worse to lose money than to not lose money, and making a vague hand-wave about "tax writeoffs" doesn't change that. We're both over simplifying the tax code quote a bit, however my understanding is that the big numbers being tossed about largely go against corps with revenue in the Billions so it can be realized immediately / near term. Amazon spending $300M on a TV show likely encompasses internal transfers such as marketing costs to amazon.com for ads / FireTV placement / boxes and AWS for whatever production technical infrastructure is required and therefore not a "real" loss. But even if if it's a total loss - $300M against $500B in 2022 revenue likely means it will all be realized in year 1.
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May 5, 2023 16:42
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Nystral posted:Not really. It's 66% own by Disney and 33% owned by Comcast. Both sides can force the sale of the Comcast stake of Hulu with a minimum valuation of ~$28B (meaning ROUGHLY Comcast's share is worth $9B) in Jan 2024. Following that magical date in Jan 2024 Hulu's value will be assessed by an an independent third party, and given Hulu is second only to Netflix it's likely that $28B valuation will only go up. Is Hulu really second only to Netflix? The widely-available numbers only give worldwide subscribers, but it doesn't FEEL like Hulu is number two in the U.S.
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May 5, 2023 18:02
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Nystral posted:We're both over simplifying the tax code quote a bit, however my understanding is that the big numbers being tossed about largely go against corps with revenue in the Billions so it can be realized immediately / near term. Somewhat this, the $300M isn't real money but includes a large amount Amazon that 'pays' to itself. So for example a company is going to make a $200M movie. It creates a subsidiary to handle production and 'loans' the subsidiary the $200M at a 25% interest rate. The movie finishes production, and then the subsidiary agrees to give all rights back to the parent company in exchange for forgiving the debt. The company then gets to write off what is now much closer to $300M + any marketing expenses. So if a company has a vertical structure, they also own the advertising firm and the marketing expenses to write off have ballooned absurdly because internal rates tend to be 2-3x higher than external.
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May 5, 2023 18:29
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I'm super curious what this situation of having no scripts is going to mean for these streamers that have been pumping out a colossal amount of content for years, now. It's going to be a real debacle.
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May 5, 2023 20:03
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Rental Sting posted:I'm super curious what this situation of having no scripts is going to mean for these streamers that have been pumping out a colossal amount of content for years, now. It's going to be a real debacle. It's almost certainly going to slow down rollouts of new scripted programming. Depending on how long the strike lasts, we could get down to a trickle of content by the end of the year.
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May 5, 2023 20:21
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I'm interested to see how Apple deals with this since it doesn't licence content. Their proposition is, with the occasional exception, that their service is for their originals only.
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May 5, 2023 21:10
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Maybe that's why they're keeping Masters of the Air in their back pocket.
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May 5, 2023 22:42
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Narcissus1916 posted:Its wild how little residuals and royalties are now. WGA member here. Broadcast and cable residuals are still pretty good, but streaming residuals are absolutely pathetic. They were first negotiated during the 07-08 strike, back when "streaming content" was like, trailers and promo clips on YouTube. Sometimes original short-form content, little mini webisodes. The problem is that paltry residual figure is now being applied to full-fledged, full-length, high-budget movies and TV series. For example, the first TV episode I ever wrote was for a network show back in 2019. My residuals to date (2019-2023) for that particular episode break down as follows: Broadcast/Foreign Broadcast/Cable: $40,607.79 Streaming (Hulu/Netflix): $824.76 And that's before taxes! I think the numbers speak for themselves. If you're on a straight-to-streaming show, you really can't count on residuals to be a meaningful part of your income. So you're only relying on your base weekly pay. And with the streamers having their writers rooms only going for, say, 12-16 weeks or less, you're basically relying on that small window of time to make your whole year's pay. So when you hear people say "But WGA minimums are like $4k a week!", bear in mind that could only add up to $48-$62k over the course of one show. And it's VERY hard to line up two shows in a row due to everyone being on different production schedules. What's more, writers' rooms used to employ 15-20 writers at a time. Now I'm hearing stories about rooms as low as 5 writers. Even 3! That's why we're pushing for minimum room sizes AND minimum weeks of employment, including employing writers through production (another popular move is to fire the entire writing staff as soon as the cameras start rolling, leaving just the showrunner to handle ALL writing duties during production). Anyway, my legs hurt from picketing all week and I could be out of work for months, but this is a fight worth fighting. We're very much fighting for the survival of screenwriting as a viable profession. Edit: Rental Sting posted:I'm super curious what this situation of having no scripts is going to mean for these streamers that have been pumping out a colossal amount of content for years, now. It's going to be a real debacle. Broadcast and cable networks will probably run out of scripted content pretty fast. Streamers will be prepared, they love to stockpile content and just sit on it. Netflix is especially notorious for this -- Netflix shot Love is Blind back in 2018, but didn't release it until 2020. I spoke to a writer last night who just wrapped on a Netflix show that she said wouldn't be released until 2026 
Argyle fucked around with this message at 00:07 on May 6, 2023 |
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May 5, 2023 23:58
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Argyle posted:Anyway, my legs hurt from picketing all week and I could be out of work for months, but this is a fight worth fighting. We're very much fighting for the survival of screenwriting as a viable profession. Be honest, you were just in it for some free Pete Davidson pizza
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May 6, 2023 00:11
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mutantIke posted:Be honest, you were just in it for some free Pete Davidson pizza No but Rob Lowe made eye contact with me in the picket line so that's something
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May 6, 2023 02:29
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Argyle posted:No but Rob Lowe made eye contact with me in the picket line so that's something LITERALLY the coolest thing that could have happened
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May 6, 2023 03:35
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My job is about to shut down and I hope I can get by on unemployment. Good luck to the writers but this sucks. Hopefully they find quick success and my union is inspired enough to go for bigger pay raises so we aren’t falling behind actual cost of living increases every year. Just kidding, that won’t happen.  sorry, just panicking a little here right now
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May 6, 2023 03:53
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we're all very shocked https://twitter.com/THR/status/1654578842944634884 quote:The Disney letter (read it in full, below) features a Q&A informing showrunners that they are “required” to perform duties that are not in line with the guidance provided by the WGA to its around 11,500 striking members.
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May 6, 2023 20:44
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"small changes to dialogue or narration" That's loving WRITING for gently caress's sake!
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May 6, 2023 21:52
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