Jeff Sagansky Slams Streaming-Driven TV Business Model: “We Are In A Golden Age Of Content Production And The Dark Age Of Creative Profit Sharing”

deadline.com:

Jeff Sagansky, a media investor and producer and former top entertainment executive, is sounding the alarm on the adverse impact the now prevalent “cost plus” business model has had on profit participation.

The setup, originally introduced by Netflix and subsequently adopted by most major streamers and TV studios, reverses a decades-long practice of above-the-line talent on hit series being handsomely rewarded with a cut of the profits that continues to generate income for decades after the show’s creation.In a blistering speech as part of a NATPE event Wednesday, Sagansky paints a bleak picture of what is to come if noone stands up to the new paradigm, including cratering buyout premiums and disappearing big overall deals, and issues a rallying cry for producers, writers actors and agents to go to the Justice Department and Congress “to argue against this anti-competitive behavior” in an effort to “level the playing field” in a way the government did in 1970 with the passing with the fin-syn rules.

They will have to do that without their main ally as “the producer-studio bond…has been irrevocably broken.”While there has been growing frustration in the creative community who have been privately bemoaning the demise of traditional backend deals, this is the first time I have seen a prominent industry figure  publicly — and very bluntly — speak up against the new talent compensation scheme, calling this a “rotten time to be a producer in terms of being paid fairly for the work you are doing” and hinting at a possible collusion among the studios and streamers in imposing the model.In the address, Sagansky, former President of CBS Entertainment and Sony Pictures Entertainment and former CEO of TriStar Pictures and Paxson