'Suits' Was Streamed For 3 Billion Minutes on Netflix and the Writers Were Collectively Paid $3,000

Damn. That payout is a disgrace.

To clarify, this is how much "residual" the writers got out of the show being streamed after production. Imagine being a writer on one the biggest shows on a platform, and all you get for it being successful is like a tenth of a months rent.

The truth is these companies won't give in unless the strike starts hitting their revenue.. there needs to be a lot of shows on hold and garbage movies produced over time due to lack of good writers, only then something will happen.. which i think is going to be a long fight. I'm hopeful that some good comes out of this strike for the labour.

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The old days of "one syndicated sitcom" setting people up for life have been gone for a while. But this is just particularly egregious and is a big part of why (last I checked) the studios were willing to concede on AI (revisit that in a few years) but not streaming residuals.

And I do understand there is at least some concern over people being able to game the system. The cast of Friends are loaded because TBS will never stop showing reruns of that show. Same with the cast of Cheers and so forth. And a lot of that is because "hollywood" likes the crew and writers of those shows and are basically doing kickbacks. Seriously, look up the production crew for Friends. Hell, look at Fran Drescher. She is an anti-vax nutjob but is also a straight up G in terms of negotiating power for SAG. And The Nanny (or whatever god awful show she was on) was never good but she had enough friends and connections that it gets the rerun treatment.

So under the tv model? The "right people" are getting paid.

Under streaming? People might suddenly realize how incredibly good season 1 of Human Target was (let's not talk about Season 2... aside from the rather problematic but still appreciated Janet Montgomery eye candy. And the final sequence where Chance rushes to rescue Indira Varma was good) and suddenly Mark, Chi, and Jackie are wondering if someone is scamming them because of the residuals checks that showed up in their mailboxes. Or a social media aware actor or writer runs a campaign to encourage people to "just leave whatever shitty USA spy show Sarah Shahi was on before POI on in the background".

And now the "wrong people" might actually get paid.

This is also a big part of why it is being normalized for shows to be taken off of streaming services. Because this is a losing battle for the studios. But they will be "fine" with paying residuals... if it goes to the people they want it to. So rather than run the risk of the wrong shows or movies being watched too often? Just get rid of them after their "run".

All that being said: Really, Suits? For fuck's sake there are so many better shows out there.

Now that is a stat that puts into perspective why the actors and writers are striking.