Hulu paying almost $400 million for This is Us seems flat-out insane.

Was it really that popular? I remember seeing commercials for it on NBC, but know next to nothing about it.

I remember when A&E paid out $2.5M an episode for The Sopranos, and thought that was nuts, too. It was a cable net that hardly anyone watched, they paid out the ass to show highly censored and watered down versions of the episodes. And even then, it seemed like they didn't even show it that much and for very long.

So much of this just seems like a bunch of rich guys throwing money at each other to keep it out of the hands of the little people.

Yes it was one of the highest rated 1 hour dramas during it's run. Disney/20th Century produced it.

Obviously it wasn't your cup of tea as it was a relationship/family drama and this was the 1st successful one on TV in many years.

It is insane, but likely the last “big” broadcast show were ever going to see. I can’t imagine it will ever be as rewatchable as The Office, Modern Family, TBBT etc but there is no denying it was a broadcast hit for most of its run. Hulu (Disney) now owns Fox (This is Us studio) so this is kind of funny seeing how much they paid for it. It’s a really bad unique example of streamers over spending in the early days to get content. They have got to have had a major loss on that one because it’s just not a show people flock to once it’s over to rewatch.

next year Disney has to buy out Comcast’s share of Hulu for something like 8-9 BILLION, so that’s something to look forward to.

They have to pay fair market value or risk getting sued by other stakeholders for self-dealing.

They didn’t own “Fox” in 2017 when the deal was made. This is still pretty funny to see how much they over paid for a show that in 2023 is probably viewed by hundreds each month.

Back in 2017, it would have only been Netflix and maybe Amazon Prime who would have any interest in it. They really over paid for it and I wonder how long they deal was for.

[QUOTE=DJariya;14303060
Obviously it wasn't your cup of tea as it was a relationship/family drama and this was the 1st successful one on TV in many years.[/QUOTE]

Parenthood wasn’t a massive hit but went on for 6 seasons. Brothers and Sisters also had 5. TIU had a hook that kept it going, but I’d rather rewatch Parenthood over TIU any day of the week and I really liked Galavant and The Neighbors.

No, obviously. Not only did I not watch it, but I don't know anyone who did. Kind of like CSI or NCIS, but I at least knew people who watched them.

These days, it seems like anything that doesn't die a quick death is a hit show. Going back thirty years, I could at least get a sense that something was massively popular even if I didn't watch it. Now it seems like there's a lot of stuff out there... some it's watched by lots of people who never discuss it, other things are sort of cult hits that get tons of discussion and seep into the pop culture whether or not they draw hit numbers or struggle to expand their audience. Other times, you have a series that has small but extremely vocal following (like Firefly).

And I don't think I've seen a top ten tv shows of the week list in ages, though that could be because everything is balkanized between broadcast, cable, premium cable, and streaming, making them sort of useless.

All my of my wife's friends watched This Is Us and so we had to start watching it too. It wasn't that bad, but it was way too emotional manipulative, so we stopped watching after season 1.

21st Century Fox owned 30% of Hulu before Disney bought them. They were actually one of the founders of Hulu, along with NBC Universal, Disney didn't buy into Hulu until later.

https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/3/2...s-marvel-x-men
So the This is Us deal could've been considered self-dealing back in 2017, since Fox owned 30% of Hulu, and thus would benefit from that service getting that show.

The show got good viewing numbers on Hulu:
https://www.thewrap.com/this-is-us-r...c-app-viewers/
So Hulu paid a lot of money for it, Hulu got a lot of viewers for it, but the studio only pays out pennies to the actors that starred in it for the Hulu streaming. That's why they're picketing, because obviously popular shows that are obviously making a lot of money still screw over their writers and actors when it comes to streaming.

Surely everyone remembers music clubs like BMG. They were notorious for paying artists a fraction of their normal royalty rate, and in some cases nothing at all, depending on how bad the artist's contract was, because major-label contracts had royalty exclusions for music club editions.

I never knew that.

It's why artists like the Beatles were never available through record clubs. Most acts got nothing when you "bought" an album from BMG or whatever. Lots of little anecdotes of musicians refusing to sign record club copies over the years for their fans.

Beatles albums were available through the Capitol record club.

Yeah, I remember reading that the record companies considered Columbia House and BMG Club albums (or at the least the ones you received for free when you joined) as promotional and didn't give the artists any royalties on them. They might have paid some royalties on the albums that were bought at full price through the clubs, but I'm not sure.


Back when I started joining record clubs in junior high, there were a few artists who weren't available through them like the Beatles. I think that the Stones' "Steel Wheels" was a selection of the month at Columbia, so they at least had that. Don't remember if they had their back catalog or not. And Metallica was available initially, but disappeared from them in the late 1980s. (That's where I got my copies of "Kill'em All" and "Master of Puppets.")

Maybe this applies to This is Us, maybe it doesn't, but it does feel to me like companies can pretty easily manipulate the numbers internally to make streaming take a gigantic loss and shift the profit over to other divisions via these kinds of licensing deals.

There have been many lawsuits about creative accounting by studios.

"This is Us" is a great example - they pay over 3 million an episode for the show because it was popular...was it popular because of the studio executives or the stars and writers? Once you answer that, it should be easy to figure out who deserves to be compensated the most.

I like Coca Cola. The people in the factory make it for me and I guess you can say I'm a fan of their work, right? Should the factory workers be paid more than the CEO of a global organization because they put the ingredients in the can for me?

You got us, this is exactly what we're advocating for. Might as well bring fast food workers into it as well...

C'mon now.

Well, I don't think the Coca-Cola CEO should be making $22,822,519 while the median employee wage is $12,122, a 1883:1 pay disparity:
https://www1.salary.com/COCA-COLA-CO...-Salaries.html

Maybe there should be a 10:1 pay ratio cap between the highest paid and lowest paid. If they top wants to be paid more, they can raise the wages of everyone else first.

But keep in mind the actors and writers aren't asking to be paid more than the CEO, they're asking for a living wage, akin to what they get for network TV projects, or at least cable TV.

This is why "profit sharing" is a scam. You ask for revenue sharing, i.e. gross points, not net. Then it doesn't matter how much "profit" they claim to have "netted" or not, you get a share of the "gross" income that came in, not what's left over after "costs."

Of course, even this can have pit-falls, like the self-dealing referenced earlier, like the studio selling a license to a network/streamer it owns for less than it'd get from a competitor. The studio makes the money on the network/streamer side, while paying out less on the studio side. So this is why like having multiple bidders for a show/film from streaming services is important.

However, actors and writers aren't asking for either of that. They're asking for fixed wages upfront based on amount/length of work, and more-or-less "fixed" residuals.

Right, I'm more talking about the argument that the streaming services are crying poverty due to released revenue calculations and saying they can't pay more in streaming residuals.

While I don't think the comparison is exactly the same, if you're trying to make an argument that the people who work the hardest to make a product shouldn't be compensated well...that's an interesting take.

SAG is now forcing all the “rewatch” podcasts to stop They really want to make all these small time actors who can barely book gigs as it stands broke as fuck. Good luck getting back that audience after they’ve been gone for months.

It’s all cool though, ya know.

OK, I've discovered that while the WGA isn't asking for straight revenue sharing for shows, SAG-AFTRA did include such a demand in their negotiations.

https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/sa...ts-1235670826/
It sounds like the 2% would be split among all actors in some way. I also assume any actors that negotiate their own revenue sharing would be exempt from this share.