A per-minute budget line decides if vertical writers get residuals

The figure or the record

The Writers Guild of America publishes a standing page titled 'Verticals, Microdramas, and Low-Budget Streaming Projects,' which states that this writing work is 'generally covered by the MBA under the classification of original new media.' The classification traces to the Guild's New Media Sideletter, last revised as of 25 September 2023, which sets the actual numbers. Under Paragraph 3 of the sideletter, initial compensation for an 'original new media production' buys 26 consecutive weeks of use on a consumer-pay platform and unlimited use on a free, advertiser-supported one. The sideletter draws its line at $25,000 per minute of exhibited program material: below that figure, no further payment is owed once the 26 weeks end.

What the documents establish

Above the $25,000-per-minute line, the sideletter requires a residual of 1.2 percent of accountable receipts for continued use on a pay platform. The Guild's public summary page adds the figures a writer collects regardless of budget: pension at 11.25 percent, health at 16.25 percent and paid parental leave at 0.25 percent of negotiated pay, plus a requirement that producers file a Notice of Tentative Writing Credits after principal photography. A separate compliance page confirms the mechanics: signatory status must be checked, contracts filed with the Guild's Contracts Department, and plan contributions made through wgaplans.org.

Scope and caveats

Initial writer compensation itself is 'fully negotiable' — the sideletter sets residual triggers, not a minimum fee. The $25,000-per-minute test is stated as covering 'actual program material as exhibited,' a per-minute production-cost measure, not a total series budget or a revenue figure. Reuse in traditional media such as broadcast, cable or pay television triggers its own, separately defined residual outside this test. Most vertical drama, produced quickly and cheaply for mobile apps, is likely to sit below the threshold, meaning the residual question rarely arises in practice even though coverage does.

What to watch

Editorially, the figure to track is whether a vertical producer's declared per-minute cost approaches $25,000, since that is the only number in this framework that changes what a writer is owed after the free window closes.

• What per-minute production cost does a given vertical series actually declare, and does it clear the $25,000 line?
• Has the writer's initial fee been negotiated to include anything beyond the 26-week window, given that the sideletter does not require it?
• Is the distributing platform a 'consumer pay' service, a free advertiser-supported one, or a hybrid that could complicate which use period applies?

The sideletter's age — a framework revised in 2023 for a category first written in 2007 through 2008 negotiations — is itself a scope marker: it was not drafted with vertical drama's coin-and-episode economics in mind, and its dollar line is the only place that economics enters the text at all.