One of the major driving forces behind the strikes is the lack of fair compensation creatives receive for their works being played on streaming, with massive viewing figures translating to what’s sometimes proven to be literally pennies, with a former writer on resurgent smash hit Suits painting a galling picture.
The USA Network original is airing eight of its nine seasons on Netflix – with Peacock thrilled to point out that it holds the rights to the entire run – and as a result the legal drama has become one of the biggest titles on the planet, one that smashed records twice over on its way to racking up almost seven billion hours watched across the space of two weeks.
And yet, Ethan Drogin’s op-ed in The LA Times is a massively discouraging look at just how little of that success trickles back down to the people who helped create the series in the first place.
“Here, when you write for a show that becomes an unprecedented success, there is no such windfall. There is only a check for $259.71. It doesn’t matter whether the show you helped build generates 3.1 billion viewing minutes in one week across Netflix and NBCUniversal’s Peacock, setting a Nielsen record. It doesn’t matter whether said show constitutes 40% of Netflix’s Top 10. $259.71: That’s how much the Suits episode I wrote, “Identity Crisis,” earned last quarter in streaming residuals.
All together, NBCUniversal paid the six original Suits writers less than $3,000 last quarter to stream our 11 Season 1 episodes on two platforms. Yes, it’s gratifying that the show has found a new and bigger audience this summer on Netflix. Every writer and actor hopes their work will endure. And yes, I’m grateful to have been in the engine room of Suits for eight of its nine seasons. But $259.71 for writing a show with an audience so massive? This is why writers and actors are on strike. This is why SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher has used terms such as “un-American” to describe this system.”
The strikes aren’t going to end unless companies like Netflix alter their stance, because such a paltry amount for an episode of TV that millions of people have watched in the very recent future isn’t just unfair, it’s outright shocking.
