A discount schedule shows the real gap below a TV day rate

The figure or the record

SAG-AFTRA's own June 2026 bulletin on its new vertical-programs agreement could not be opened for this ledger, so the clearest published illustration of a low-budget-versus-standard gap comes from a different market: Canada's ACTRA. The union's 2025-2027 Independent Production Agreement rate chart sets the minimum daily fee for an on-camera principal performer at $935.25 in 2025, rising to $1,006.75 by 2027. That is the standard television and digital-media floor under the IPA, before any low-budget adjustment applies.

What the documents establish

The IPA's own low-budget mechanism, CIPIP Appendix 18, discounts that same minimum on a sliding scale. For a 'TV Series on Tape,' priced per half-hour of finished material, a production certifying a budget of $40,700 or less per half-hour — the smallest published band, and one most vertical-scale drama would fit inside — qualifies for a 40 percent discount with an all-Canadian cast, or 30 percent otherwise. Applying that discount to the 2025 minimum, arithmetically rather than as a figure either document states outright, puts the floor near $561 a day for an all-Canadian cast, against the $935.25 standard minimum: a gap of roughly $374, or about 40 percent of the standard rate.

Scope and caveats

This is a Canadian illustration, not a SAG-AFTRA one, and the gap it shows is a discount off one union's own published scale, not a market rate independently observed on a real production. Neither document names 'vertical' drama; the comparison assumes a vertical series' per-half-hour cost genuinely falls in the lowest CIPIP band, which will not hold for every production. The computed $561 figure is this ledger's arithmetic, clearly separated here from anything either document states as a number in itself.

What to watch

Editorially, the number to replace this illustration with, once accessible, is SAG-AFTRA's own published day rate for its vertical-programs agreement measured against its existing television minimums — the comparison this record originally set out to make.

• Once accessible, does SAG-AFTRA's verticals agreement publish an actual day rate, or does it also leave pay to negotiation as Canada's low-budget instrument effectively does at its lowest tier?
• Does a real vertical production's certified per-half-hour cost fall inside ACTRA's lowest CIPIP band, or above it?
• How does either figure compare with what non-union vertical productions actually pay performers, absent any published floor at all?

The gap between a standard union television minimum and its own lowest-tier low-budget discount is real and documented; whether that gap matches what a vertical performer specifically earns remains, on the sources open to this ledger, unconfirmed.