Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Wednesday, September 27th, 2023

Netflix had a pretty good week

Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Tuesday, September 26th, 2023. 

SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT THE TENTATIVE WGA MBA 
As I promised in last night's newsletter, I talked to a number of people today about the new WGA deal with AMPTP and a few things are becoming clear.

The "Now we are going to be able to see how many people watch my show" narrative isn't accurate. But there is a reasonable framework in place to provide performance-based residual payments. There are also a lot of caveats, and I went through them in this piece I posted earlier today on AllYourScreens.com.

The development room/mini-room framework is the one in which I think the WGA probably got less than what they wanted. The positives are they negotiated some pay increases and obtained a floor for the number of writers that had to be in the room. They also obtained a new pre-greenlight room premium (25% overscale), which among other things should result in fewer shows having drawn-out pre-greenlight work being done before the studio decides whether or not to order the show to series.

But there certainly are some things that are concerning for writers, especially if you are a less-experienced staff writer or story editor.

The deal specifies there has to be a minimum of three writers (including the showrunner) in the writers' room on any show that has six episodes or less. But it also mandates that three of those have to be writer-producers, IE mid/upper levels. I suspect the concern was that without that mandate, studios would end up forcing many development rooms to be a showrunner with two cheaper, less-experienced writers. And to a certain extent, the WGA is damned if they do or damned if they don't on this issue. Forcing the three-person rooms to use more experienced writers helps the show and provides more opportunities for the mid/upper levels. But newer and/or less experienced writers are already voicing concerns that it will mean they will be boxed out of a lot of development rooms. An issue that had been a problem before the strike.

The room minimum does increase as the episode order increases. An order of 7-12 episodes mandates a 5-writer minimum, and 13+ episodes mandates a six-writer minimum. In both those cases, the mandated number of writer-producers and IE mid/upper levels remains at three.

So it's going to be interesting to see if this changes the industry norm of 6-8 episode seasons. And I'm curious if studios will try and get around this by taking a page out of their animation playbook. Order twelve episodes of a show, then call it a "two-season order" in order to save money.

As I wrote yesterday, these deals are extremely complicated, and I am sure that a number of other wrinkles in the tentative deal will become apparent as the days pass.

I will mention that as I have read (and re-read) the deal memo, it is becoming clear that of all the studios on the AMPTP side, Netflix probably got the closest to their ideal scenario in these negotiations. The overall framework is close to one I had heard Netflix's Ted Sarandos was pushing back in May and large parts of it conform to an internal Netflix proposal for a WGA deal that I wrote about back in July:

* There wouldn't be much of a change in transparency on viewing numbers and other internal metrics used in determining content value. But there would be a formula that would provide performance-based bonuses for projects that reached certain goalposts, including Netflix Top Ten Lists, Nielsen rankings and some other third-party data. It's not residuals, but it would at least provide some financial incentives for performance that would be a solid interim step. 

* Changes to AVOD payments and residuals that would not only provide a pay increase for union members, but make it less lucrative for streamers to move low-performing projects to AVOD. The proposal notes that while it would be a substantial cost to Netflix, the changes would fall hardest on Prime Video and Warner Bros. Discovery, both of whom have been aggressively moving original productions from SVOD to AVOD. That factor was seen as a net plus.

There has been a lot of reporting in the trade press about Bob Iger's leadership during the final push to close the deal. And based on what I heard from non-Iger sources, he certainly had an impact. But I think it's clear that at the end of the day, Netflix walked away from this deal with the least painful path moving forward.

SOME RATINGS NEWS FROM THE UK
The new season of The Great British Bake-Off premiered last night on Channel 4 and according to the network, it had an impressive debut. It won the timeslot, nabbing 29% of all viewers and an impressive 48.7% of 16-34 year-olds. The new season - renamed The Great British Baking Show in America - premieres this Friday in the U.S. on Netflix.

HOW ABOUT SAG-AFTRA?
So far, there haven't been any negotiations scheduled between AMPTP and SAG-AFTRA, although the conventional wisdom is that it will happen fairly soon.

But unless I am completely misreading the situation, I don't think it's going to be an easy process. In theory, WGA accomplishments should mean that SAG-AFTRA has something to negotiate towards and some guidelines to work with. In practice, the big SAG-AFTRA issues don't track that closely with what the WGA was able to win from the studios.

SAG-AFTRA has very different concerns when it comes to AI. And their approach to performance-based residuals also varies radically from the approach taken by the WGA.

Here is a link to the interim agreement some smaller non-AMPTP producers have agreed to during the SAG-AFTRA strike and there are a lot of differences from the WGA. Some of them are due to the differences in the types of work between the two groups. But one big one is that while the WGA is basing its performance-based residual on viewing numbers, SAG-AFTRA has been pushing for a two percent cut on top of any existing residuals. From my perspective, there are a couple of problems with this approach. The biggest one is simply determining an accurate number. 

SAG-AFTRA wants to base the payments on the revenue directly attributable to an individual title. Which, as you can imagine, can be a challenge. SAG-AFTRA's solution was to suggest using valuation numbers from Parrot Analytics, which uses a number of data points including public viewing numbers, social media interest and even the number of people pirating a title to establish a "value" for a specific program.

Studios have pushed back so far, arguing that they are hesitant to use a third-party analytics firm to establish the value of their content. And they have also suggested that Parrot's numbers are less than comprehensive or accurate.

This seems like a pretty big hurdle to overcome, but as the WGA has shown, it can be done. The big question is how long will those negotiations take?

ODDS AND SODS
* The six-episode HBO drama True Detective: Night Country premieres Sunday, January 14th.

* Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix premieres Thursday, October 19th on Netflix. It's "an animated series mixing alternative Ubisoft characters from beloved franchises such as Assassin's Creed, Rayman, and Far Cry in a highly referenced homage to the early 90s."

* The coming-of-age series My Life With The Walter Boys premieres Thursday, December 7th on Netflix.

* Here are the today's ten global TV stories you should know.

TWEET OF THE DAY

WHAT'S NEW TODAY AND TOMORROW:

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27TH, 2023:
* America's Got Talent Season Finale (NBC)
* Celebrity Jeopardy! Season Premiere (ABC)
* Celebrity Wheel Of Fortune Season Premiere (ABC)
* Encounters Series Premiere (Netflix) 
* L-Pop Series Premiere (Disney+)
* Love In Fairhope Series Premiere (Hulu)
* Overhaul (Netflix)
* Physical Season Three Finale (Apple TV+)
* Snake Oil Series Premiere (Fox)
* Strange Planet Season One Finale (Apple TV+)
* Street Flow 2 (Netflix)
* Survivor Season Forty-Five Premiere (CBS)
* The Amazing Race Season Thirty-Five Premiere (CBS)
* The $100,000 Pyramid Season Premiere (ABC)
* The Masked Singer Season Premiere (Fox)
* The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (Netflix)

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 28TH, 2023:
* A Guard And Her Dog (Crunchyroll)
* A Really Haunted Loud House (Nickelodeon)
* A Time To Kill Season Premiere (Investigation Discovery)
* Bachelor In Paradise Season Premiere (ABC)
* Castlevania: Nocturne (Netflix)
* Dino Pops (Peacock)
* Hell's Kitchen Season Premiere (Fox)
* Ice Cold: Murder, Coffee And Jessica Wongso (Netflix)
* Lego Masters Season Premiere (Fox)
* Love & Murder: Atlanta Playboy (Part Two) (BET+)
* Love Is In The Air (Netflix)
* People's Choice Country Awards (NBC)
* Sasaki And Miyano: Graduation [subtitled] (Crunchyroll)
* Starstruck (Max)
* The Darkness Within La Luz del Mundo (Netflix)
* The Golden Bachelor Series Premiere (ABC)
* The Hunt For Raoul Moat (Britbox)
* The Kardashians Season Premiere (Hulu)
* The Swan (Netflix)
* The Vanishing Triangle (Sundance Now)
* Toya & Reginae Season One Finale (WEtv)

Click Here to see the list of all of the upcoming premiere dates for the next few months.

SEE YOU THURSDAY!

If you have any feedback, send it along to Rick@AllYourScreens.com and follow me on Twitter @aysrick.