Actor Diana-Maria Riva is all too familiar with a show being canceled. For a performer, it’s a painful part of show business. But this was different.
In December, Riva was floored when she found out that “Gordita Chronicles” would be removed entirely from HBO Max’s vast streaming library — one of dozens of shows that HBO effectively wiped from existence for U.S. viewers.
“It was as if somebody had broken up with you and then came back to remind you a couple of weeks later that we’ve broken up,” says Riva, who played the mother of a plus-sized 12-year-old named Cucu in the critically lauded comedy about a Dominican family adapting to life in 1980s Miami.
As streamers face mounting pressure to save money, several have followed HBO’s lead. Erasing original shows can help streamers get tax write-downs and, to a smaller extent, save on residual payments. But it brings criticism that they are sidelining already marginalized voices and shortchanging creatives. These issues have increased tension between executives and writers amid union contract negotiations that started in March and could lead to a significant work stoppage.
Streaming companies offer this defense: They never promised shows would live forever. In a hyper-competitive market, they say, each streamer is trying to balance ample offerings with sheer survival.
Amid the downturn in tech and media, streamers are being pushed to cut spending and turn a profit rather than “chasing growth at all costs,” media analyst Dan Rayburn says.
HBO’s 2022 purges occurred as its parent company, Warner Bros., merged with Discovery, enabling a slew of tax write-off possibilities. In January, Starz erased a handful of shows including “Dangerous Liaisons,” which disappeared just days after the finale aired. A few weeks later, Showtime underwent its own culling. It eliminated the Jeff Daniels-led drama “American Rust,” among others. Cuts at Paramount+, merging with Showtime, included Jordan Peele’s revival of “The Twilight Zone.”
How much money streamers save through these erasures is unclear. But Rayburn says the companies clearly concluded that the excised shows weren’t bringing in enough new customers or significantly aiding retention. Streamers, Rayburn says, are under no obligation to host shows for years. What’s more, customers are used to hopping among apps to hunt down titles.
Casey Bloys, chair and CEO of HBO and HBO Max, said on a recent episode of “The Watch” podcast that streamers are taking a closer look at their libraries and seeing how best to profit.
“The idea that everything a company produces will be in one spot forever and ever, for $15 a month, for eternity, is a relatively new concept,” Bloys said. “$15 a month is going to cover everything for the rest of time? It’s a nice idea, but it’s not viable.”
The shifting landscape has alarmed creatives who have already seen residuals dwindle over the years.
Residuals were once a cornerstone of an actor’s or writer’s livelihood, with large checks consistently rolling in with reruns. Now, that income has plummeted as streamers have grown. As part of union-negotiated contracts, streamers still pay residuals, but those back-end payments are a fraction of the checks from TV channels.
Per the Writers Guild of America West’s contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, a single rerun of an hourlong prime-time broadcast show on ABC would currently net its writer $24,558. But if that show were on Netflix, the writer would earn — at most — $20,018 in domestic residuals for the episode. At a smaller streamer, that annual payment would max out at $13,346. Each additional year a show is on a streamer, residuals decrease.
