by themerone 12 hours ago
HBO owns Westworld and stopped streaming it to avoid paying residuals.
If they don't make their content available legally, then it should go into the public domain.
Don't want this to happen to your content? Then don't release it to the public.
We need to bring back explicit copyright registration and renewals.
Hoarding is never good for society. It is wild that we've adopted laws to reward it.
Wow. That is dysfunctional.
I would be curious how the financial wires got crossed.
I would have assumed residuals were proportional to views, and views valued proportionally as contributing to subscription demand. And it would be a rare viewer to watch one show like that, over & over. I.e. only upside. Something went sideways.
Thats how it used to work in the movie theater/cable days. Then Netflix said "I will pay you a ton of money up front to own everything" Creatives said amazing! Then the "war" for creative talent started because of the fragmentation of services, so you got people saying I will pay you X + a royalty regardless because you are so sought after, which eventually, as you see here, priced them out of their own content.
I think that a show like Westworld is a great example of the realities of the streaming era. If HBO kept streaming it on HBO Max it probably costs them $2-4 million in residual liabilities. HBO removed dozens of scripted shows during that phase, and had a mandate to cut around $3B in post merger costs.
After Year 1, WGA/SAG residual formulas decrease: Year 2: ~80% of Year 1 Year 3: ~55% Year 4+: sometimes stabilize at a “floor” rate
So what did they do? They ran it for a few years, ran the numbers, realized that Westworld was no longer profitable on the platform. (Profitable would have to mean draws enough new subscribers to the platform). AND THEN - Warner Bros. Discovery made new deals with other platforms with ads. I think you can still find Westworld on Tubi and other ad-supported platforms that actually pay Warner licensing fees.