6 ms·

Is writer pay up or down? Depends how you look at it

28 points by hhs 3y ago

myhrvold 3y ago
Unsurprising to see TV writing overtake film writing in the last decade plus; TV writings lends itself much more to streaming shows (which are considered TV even if they never appear on cable / "normal" television). Interesting that adjusted for inflation however, writing pays roughly what it does in the mid 1990s per the article. That's a little surprising. It's also probably a more competitive industry however, and the median pay (which is what's measured) doesn't account for the best writers probably doing better than ever. And then maybe more part time people trying to break into the field but not getting much. If there's a pretty large middle ground buoyed by union pay scales and contracts, then both ends (high/low) will not really be accounted for in the statistics.
- ghaff 3y ago
  One thing mentioned--but largely passed over--in the article is the following: Average writer earnings in 2021: $260,000. Average earnings do not account for the sizable number of WGA members who, in any given year, earn nothing from writing. The WGA has not released a median annual figure since 2014, when it was $140,000 (in 2021 dollars, for the sake of consistency). I'm not actually surprised. So writing is actually a pretty good gig (even if you're not a showrunner/executive producer) if you have a real gig. But the median WGA member is probably waiting tables or has some other job. And that's WGA members. The typical writer submitting scripts to studios on spec is earning almost nothing. ADDED: And this is in the context of writing, perhaps other than some corporate content job, being an increasingly terrible way to earn a living on average.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    Anytime I read a single statistic without the accompanying distribution in deciles, or at least quintiles, I assume there is an agenda or the publisher is trying to hide something.
    - gruez 3y ago
      Seriously? Isn't that an overly cynical worldview? I agree that having distribution information is strictly better than only the median, but in most cases only the median/mean is mentioned for the sake of brevity. People reading a article about writer pay don't want 10 numbers thrown at them for a single statistic.
      - lotsofpulp 3y ago
        It is just my experience over 20 years of reading. A 2x10 or 2x5 table is not going to make an article too long. But all too often, the word “average” will be used without even clarifying if it is mean or median, and I have seen too many cases where it just so happens to support whatever argument the publisher is making. See even the example ghaff quoted. The union went out of its way to remove information about the earnings distribution because they did not want people to know how the median was moving.
        ghaff 3y ago
        In this case, the distribution (for which it's not clear the numbers are public) is pretty important. A storyline that showrunners of hit shows make bank while the typical scriptwriter sending a spec script in to a studio makes zilch is basically "water is wet." Judging whether writers in film/TV in general have a real gripe with compensation (given that median salaries seem pretty decent) needs some more granularity.
        gruez 3y ago
        > A table with 2x10 table with the data is not going to make an article too long It is if you're going to do it for every statistic. eg. in a story about gen Z skipping college, you could have statistics about tuition rate, student loan amount, time to graduate, graduation rate, earnings after graduation, etc. Add to that, all of the statistics but separated by various demographic factors (eg. geography, age, race), and you can easily have dozens of tables. That's fine if you're writing a 20 page graduate dissertation, but for a daily article on npr.org or whatever that's just overkill. Not to mention, in many cases the reason why it's being omitted from news stories isn't because of some nefarious motives by the author, it's because the source material only mentions medians. eg. most of the BLS news releases only has medians/averages: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.toc.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.toc.htm, so any news stories based off them are inevitably going to not have decile level data like you demand, through no nefarious motivation on the part of the writer.
freitzkriesler2 3y ago
The WGA has terrible timing with their strikes. Last one was in 2008. This one is now on the heels of another banking crisis and chatgpt which has the ability to destroy any writing gigs. I feel for my friends in the industry but AI is going to wreck workers in entertainment.
- dhosek 3y ago
  It’s going to also wreck entertainment.
- _whiteCaps_ 3y ago
  https://www.forbes.com/sites/merrillbarr/2019/04/15/wga-ata-writers-fire-agents-fired-strike-staffing-season/?sh=57a9942e145b https://www.forbes.com/sites/merrillbarr/2019/04/15/wga-ata-... I don't know how to describe it, but the WGA had a form of collective action in 2019 - they fired all of their agents. Not exactly a strike, but maybe more like a boycott?
- cbsmith 3y ago
  > I feel for my friends in the industry but AI is going to wreck workers in entertainment. I seriously doubt that, but I imagine this is exactly the point where one needs to renegotiate to make sure terms are fair. Strikes are common when labour is at a relative disadvantage, because that's when they tend to be exploited the most.
- kcartlidge 3y ago
  > The WGA has terrible timing with their strikes. Last one was in 2008. This one is now on the heels of another banking crisis and chatgpt which has the ability to destroy any writing gigs. I don't think it's terrible timing due to ChatGPT and AI. Rather, it is timing that is specifically because of ChatGPT and AI.
  - jjk166 3y ago
    The writing's been on the wall (no pun intended) for quite some time (GPT-3 was released in 2020), and writers would have been in a much better position to say "you won't be able to replace us with AI anytime soon" even just a few months ago. But they waited until after the technology became so accessible that even non-technical people are regularly using AI to write things.
arghandugh 3y ago
The writers say it’s down in the ways that matter to them. And since they’re the ones who create and drive popular culture this piece is mostly twirling on the head of a pin.
gamblor956 3y ago
Top writers make significantly more (see, for example, the large paydays for Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Quinta Brunson). But everyone else makes significantly less. While pay scales have increased on a per-episode basis, TV show seasons are less than half as long as they were before, and streamers don't pay royalties, so absolute pay decreased substantially. For point of comparison: a friend who worked in the writer's room on a FOX broadcast TV show several years ago (5+ years ago) was able to buy a house with the salary from one season and the royalties for writing a single episode broadcast that season (out of approximately 20ish). She currently works on a streaming show for one of the major streaming services and her salary this year as the head writer for that 10-episode show is less than the royalties for that single broadcast episode, despite millions more viewers watching the streaming show.
- gruez 3y ago
  >But everyone else makes significantly less. While pay scales have increased on a per-episode basis, TV show seasons are less than half as long as they were before, and streamers don't pay royalties, so absolute pay decreased substantially. But if seasons are half as long, can't writers write twice as many seasons, canceling that effect out?
  - ketzo 3y ago
    Only if you actually get a gig on another season in that same time. Writing is a very inconsistent job, and stability is really valuable. A contract that guarantees you for half the time, at the same rate, is a lot more uncertainty.
  - gamblor956 3y ago
    No, shows actually require more work today. For example, Wednesday, is only 8 episodes but required 8 months of actual production. In comparison, Grey's Anatomy averages over 20 episodes a season (in its heyday, 27 episodes/season) but only required 6 months of production each season. (Writers who are part of the "writing room" are contracted to the show until production ends. They can write film scripts in their free time but can't work in another show's writer's room.) The problem is that everything these days is heavily serialized, and directors and studios are far more willing to demand last-minute script changes. Because of the nature and extent of serialization, this requires significant amounts of work--often more work than the original writing, because changes have to be propagated throughout the season.
ketzo 3y ago
The lack of streaming residuals seems to be a big, big part of the strike, and man, that's a tricky issue. On one hand, writer compensation has always been structured around residuals -- and it seems like pay for writers on streaming shows has stayed the same, even though residuals haven't. That seems unfair. On the other hand, "residuals" as a concept make less sense for shows that live on subscription streaming platforms. Each view of a Stranger Things episode generates exactly zero dollars. Obviously there is a lot of value in Netflix having good, popular shows -- but the marginal cost/revenue structure is very different from cable TV, where you can actually map viewers to income whenever you air an episode. Clearly the writers want to capture some of the possible upside of a super-popular show, much like residuals did in the past (and like startup equity does in SV). I just wonder if the industry is ready for a new structure to try and express that upside-value.
- bryanrasmussen 3y ago
  I suppose it will end up like the Spotify model of paying musicians.
  - dhosek 3y ago
    Viz, the artists get bupkis.
    - bryanrasmussen 3y ago
      exactly!
  - jsmith45 3y ago
    Yeah. Take the subscription revenue, divide it up by program based on watch count (or number of minutes viewed, or whatever). This gives you a rough approximation of revenue that can be attributed to each program. From this some proportion could sensible be allowed to the writers of the programming. This might be a percentage of the revenue after certain overheads have been first subtracted, or whatever. There are plenty of possible details to work out, but the basic concept seems sound. Obviously this applies to subscription streaming without ads. Non-subscription streaming with ads seems perfectly amenable to traditional residuals, although if such ads pay less than TV ones (which i suspect is true), a smaller residual may make sense. Subscription streaming with ads could sensibly be be either pure residual, of a hybrid of both approaches. The hybrid makes more sense for services that offer no ads if consumers pay more.
JustSomeNobody 3y ago
So, an actor on a popular show can get, say 500k per episode. And, sure, they have to be good at acting for the show to be good. However, without good writing, they wouldn't have a good show either. The writers don't get that much per episode. They might get that per SEASON. Seems largely unfair.
- devindotcom 3y ago
  Big productions might pay household-name writers at that level plus points, but most writers are nowhere near that level and are grinding away at various smaller jobs while pitching shows and treatments where pay is delayed, divided, and contingent. I thought this was an enlightening little thread: https://twitter.com/coreydeshon/status/1655319912104218624 https://twitter.com/coreydeshon/status/1655319912104218624
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  There is no point in trying to figure out fair and unfair, as there is no clear metric with which you can measure things. For example: -An actor has to maintain a physical appearance -at higher risk of losing income due to an accident since it could change their appearance -has to travel and generally do more physically strenuous tasks I am not saying actors should be getting paid more either. But prices are best determined by supply and demand curves, not by people’s “feelings” on fair and unfair.
- sparky_z 3y ago
  Not really equivalent in terms of leverage. Generally speaking, no matter how good a writer is, they can be replaced by another writer with the same level of talent if necessary. The vast majority of the audience won't even notice. (Exceptions for some showrunners, but by definition a staff writer needs to fit seamlessly onto the writing team, without much room for a unique creative voice.) By comparison, replacing an actor is much more of a headache, and requires writing out or recasting a character. In some circumstances this could potentially ruin the show. That gives actors much better leverage for salary negotiation, particularly once the show has become established.
Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y ago
It's not down enough IMO. I've seen what writers are producing these days and I say sack 'em all and let the AI take over.

28 points by hhs 3y ago

Unsurprising to see TV writing overtake film writing in the last decade plus; TV writings lends itself much more to streaming shows (which are considered TV even if they never appear on cable / "normal" television). Interesting that adjusted for inflation however, writing pays roughly what it does in the mid 1990s per the article. That's a little surprising. It's also probably a more competitive industry however, and the median pay (which is what's measured) doesn't account for the best writers probably doing better than ever. And then maybe more part time people trying to break into the field but not getting much. If there's a pretty large middle ground buoyed by union pay scales and contracts, then both ends (high/low) will not really be accounted for in the statistics.

ghaff 3y ago
One thing mentioned--but largely passed over--in the article is the following: Average writer earnings in 2021: $260,000. Average earnings do not account for the sizable number of WGA members who, in any given year, earn nothing from writing. The WGA has not released a median annual figure since 2014, when it was $140,000 (in 2021 dollars, for the sake of consistency). I'm not actually surprised. So writing is actually a pretty good gig (even if you're not a showrunner/executive producer) if you have a real gig. But the median WGA member is probably waiting tables or has some other job. And that's WGA members. The typical writer submitting scripts to studios on spec is earning almost nothing. ADDED: And this is in the context of writing, perhaps other than some corporate content job, being an increasingly terrible way to earn a living on average.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  Anytime I read a single statistic without the accompanying distribution in deciles, or at least quintiles, I assume there is an agenda or the publisher is trying to hide something.
  - gruez 3y ago
    Seriously? Isn't that an overly cynical worldview? I agree that having distribution information is strictly better than only the median, but in most cases only the median/mean is mentioned for the sake of brevity. People reading a article about writer pay don't want 10 numbers thrown at them for a single statistic.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      It is just my experience over 20 years of reading. A 2x10 or 2x5 table is not going to make an article too long. But all too often, the word “average” will be used without even clarifying if it is mean or median, and I have seen too many cases where it just so happens to support whatever argument the publisher is making. See even the example ghaff quoted. The union went out of its way to remove information about the earnings distribution because they did not want people to know how the median was moving.
      - ghaff 3y ago
        In this case, the distribution (for which it's not clear the numbers are public) is pretty important. A storyline that showrunners of hit shows make bank while the typical scriptwriter sending a spec script in to a studio makes zilch is basically "water is wet." Judging whether writers in film/TV in general have a real gripe with compensation (given that median salaries seem pretty decent) needs some more granularity.
      - gruez 3y ago
        > A table with 2x10 table with the data is not going to make an article too long It is if you're going to do it for every statistic. eg. in a story about gen Z skipping college, you could have statistics about tuition rate, student loan amount, time to graduate, graduation rate, earnings after graduation, etc. Add to that, all of the statistics but separated by various demographic factors (eg. geography, age, race), and you can easily have dozens of tables. That's fine if you're writing a 20 page graduate dissertation, but for a daily article on npr.org or whatever that's just overkill. Not to mention, in many cases the reason why it's being omitted from news stories isn't because of some nefarious motives by the author, it's because the source material only mentions medians. eg. most of the BLS news releases only has medians/averages: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.toc.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.toc.htm, so any news stories based off them are inevitably going to not have decile level data like you demand, through no nefarious motivation on the part of the writer.

freitzkriesler2 3y ago

The WGA has terrible timing with their strikes. Last one was in 2008. This one is now on the heels of another banking crisis and chatgpt which has the ability to destroy any writing gigs. I feel for my friends in the industry but AI is going to wreck workers in entertainment.

dhosek 3y ago
It’s going to also wreck entertainment.
_whiteCaps_ 3y ago
https://www.forbes.com/sites/merrillbarr/2019/04/15/wga-ata-writers-fire-agents-fired-strike-staffing-season/?sh=57a9942e145b https://www.forbes.com/sites/merrillbarr/2019/04/15/wga-ata-... I don't know how to describe it, but the WGA had a form of collective action in 2019 - they fired all of their agents. Not exactly a strike, but maybe more like a boycott?
cbsmith 3y ago
> I feel for my friends in the industry but AI is going to wreck workers in entertainment. I seriously doubt that, but I imagine this is exactly the point where one needs to renegotiate to make sure terms are fair. Strikes are common when labour is at a relative disadvantage, because that's when they tend to be exploited the most.
kcartlidge 3y ago
> The WGA has terrible timing with their strikes. Last one was in 2008. This one is now on the heels of another banking crisis and chatgpt which has the ability to destroy any writing gigs. I don't think it's terrible timing due to ChatGPT and AI. Rather, it is timing that is specifically because of ChatGPT and AI.
- jjk166 3y ago
  The writing's been on the wall (no pun intended) for quite some time (GPT-3 was released in 2020), and writers would have been in a much better position to say "you won't be able to replace us with AI anytime soon" even just a few months ago. But they waited until after the technology became so accessible that even non-technical people are regularly using AI to write things.

arghandugh 3y ago

The writers say it’s down in the ways that matter to them. And since they’re the ones who create and drive popular culture this piece is mostly twirling on the head of a pin.

gamblor956 3y ago

Top writers make significantly more (see, for example, the large paydays for Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Quinta Brunson). But everyone else makes significantly less. While pay scales have increased on a per-episode basis, TV show seasons are less than half as long as they were before, and streamers don't pay royalties, so absolute pay decreased substantially. For point of comparison: a friend who worked in the writer's room on a FOX broadcast TV show several years ago (5+ years ago) was able to buy a house with the salary from one season and the royalties for writing a single episode broadcast that season (out of approximately 20ish). She currently works on a streaming show for one of the major streaming services and her salary this year as the head writer for that 10-episode show is less than the royalties for that single broadcast episode, despite millions more viewers watching the streaming show.

gruez 3y ago
>But everyone else makes significantly less. While pay scales have increased on a per-episode basis, TV show seasons are less than half as long as they were before, and streamers don't pay royalties, so absolute pay decreased substantially. But if seasons are half as long, can't writers write twice as many seasons, canceling that effect out?
- ketzo 3y ago
  Only if you actually get a gig on another season in that same time. Writing is a very inconsistent job, and stability is really valuable. A contract that guarantees you for half the time, at the same rate, is a lot more uncertainty.
- gamblor956 3y ago
  No, shows actually require more work today. For example, Wednesday, is only 8 episodes but required 8 months of actual production. In comparison, Grey's Anatomy averages over 20 episodes a season (in its heyday, 27 episodes/season) but only required 6 months of production each season. (Writers who are part of the "writing room" are contracted to the show until production ends. They can write film scripts in their free time but can't work in another show's writer's room.) The problem is that everything these days is heavily serialized, and directors and studios are far more willing to demand last-minute script changes. Because of the nature and extent of serialization, this requires significant amounts of work--often more work than the original writing, because changes have to be propagated throughout the season.

ketzo 3y ago

The lack of streaming residuals seems to be a big, big part of the strike, and man, that's a tricky issue. On one hand, writer compensation has always been structured around residuals -- and it seems like pay for writers on streaming shows has stayed the same, even though residuals haven't. That seems unfair. On the other hand, "residuals" as a concept make less sense for shows that live on subscription streaming platforms. Each view of a Stranger Things episode generates exactly zero dollars. Obviously there is a lot of value in Netflix having good, popular shows -- but the marginal cost/revenue structure is very different from cable TV, where you can actually map viewers to income whenever you air an episode. Clearly the writers want to capture some of the possible upside of a super-popular show, much like residuals did in the past (and like startup equity does in SV). I just wonder if the industry is ready for a new structure to try and express that upside-value.

bryanrasmussen 3y ago
I suppose it will end up like the Spotify model of paying musicians.
- dhosek 3y ago
  Viz, the artists get bupkis.
  - bryanrasmussen 3y ago
    exactly!
- jsmith45 3y ago
  Yeah. Take the subscription revenue, divide it up by program based on watch count (or number of minutes viewed, or whatever). This gives you a rough approximation of revenue that can be attributed to each program. From this some proportion could sensible be allowed to the writers of the programming. This might be a percentage of the revenue after certain overheads have been first subtracted, or whatever. There are plenty of possible details to work out, but the basic concept seems sound. Obviously this applies to subscription streaming without ads. Non-subscription streaming with ads seems perfectly amenable to traditional residuals, although if such ads pay less than TV ones (which i suspect is true), a smaller residual may make sense. Subscription streaming with ads could sensibly be be either pure residual, of a hybrid of both approaches. The hybrid makes more sense for services that offer no ads if consumers pay more.

JustSomeNobody 3y ago

So, an actor on a popular show can get, say 500k per episode. And, sure, they have to be good at acting for the show to be good. However, without good writing, they wouldn't have a good show either. The writers don't get that much per episode. They might get that per SEASON. Seems largely unfair.

devindotcom 3y ago
Big productions might pay household-name writers at that level plus points, but most writers are nowhere near that level and are grinding away at various smaller jobs while pitching shows and treatments where pay is delayed, divided, and contingent. I thought this was an enlightening little thread: https://twitter.com/coreydeshon/status/1655319912104218624 https://twitter.com/coreydeshon/status/1655319912104218624
lotsofpulp 3y ago
There is no point in trying to figure out fair and unfair, as there is no clear metric with which you can measure things. For example: -An actor has to maintain a physical appearance -at higher risk of losing income due to an accident since it could change their appearance -has to travel and generally do more physically strenuous tasks I am not saying actors should be getting paid more either. But prices are best determined by supply and demand curves, not by people’s “feelings” on fair and unfair.
sparky_z 3y ago
Not really equivalent in terms of leverage. Generally speaking, no matter how good a writer is, they can be replaced by another writer with the same level of talent if necessary. The vast majority of the audience won't even notice. (Exceptions for some showrunners, but by definition a staff writer needs to fit seamlessly onto the writing team, without much room for a unique creative voice.) By comparison, replacing an actor is much more of a headache, and requires writing out or recasting a character. In some circumstances this could potentially ruin the show. That gives actors much better leverage for salary negotiation, particularly once the show has become established.

Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y ago

It's not down enough IMO. I've seen what writers are producing these days and I say sack 'em all and let the AI take over.