How TV Residuals Work, and How Fast They Decay
A residual is a contractual payment for reusing work you already made, calculated from union agreements rather than from a show's profits. On the network prime-time ladder the second run pays 100% of the applicable minimum and the thirteenth pays 10% — a 90% decay across a dozen airings. Streaming reuse pays on an entirely different basis with a viewership bonus attached.
A residual is a payment for reuse. Make a television episode once, and every time it is shown again in a market the union agreement covers, a further payment is owed — regardless of whether the show ever turned a profit.
That last clause is the important one. Residuals are not profit participation and cannot be defined away by studio accounting. They are calculated from the collectively bargained agreements, they are enforceable through the union rather than through a lawsuit, and the union tracks and chases them on the member's behalf.
The decay is steep and it surprises people. On the network prime-time ladder the second run pays 100% of the applicable minimum, the fourth pays 65%, and everything from the thirteenth onward pays 10%. The mailbox money is real; it is just an awful lot smaller by year five than the folklore suggests.
What triggers a payment, and what does not
Reuse in a covered market triggers a residual. The original broadcast does not — that is what the initial compensation paid for.
Covered markets include network reruns, broadcast syndication, basic cable, foreign telecast, home video, and the various streaming categories added and revised across the last two decades of negotiations. Each has its own formula and its own base.
Who receives them is narrower than most people assume. Performers under the relevant SAG-AFTRA agreements, writers under the WGA Minimum Basic Agreement and directors under the DGA agreement all receive residuals on covered work. A performer working under a non-union agreement receives none. Neither do most reality participants, most non-fiction contributors, or performers whose work falls outside the covered categories.
Payments flow from the distributor through the union to the member, which is why residual cheques so often arrive months after the airing that caused them, and why a change of address filed with the union is a genuinely consequential piece of admin.
The network rerun ladder
The percentages below are the network prime-time rerun ladder as published in the SAG-AFTRA television agreements. The dollar columns are modelled on an applicable minimum of $6,000 for illustration — substitute the actual minimum for the performer's category and the ratios hold.
One caution before you cite any of this: these agreements are renegotiated on a roughly three-year cycle, so any copy of a ladder you find online is dated until you have matched it to the signed agreement in force for the period you care about.
Run Percentage of the applicable minimum Payment on a modelled $6,000 minimum Cumulative 2nd run 100% $6,000 $6,000 3rd run 75% $4,500 $10,500 4th run 65% $3,900 $14,400 5th run 65% $3,900 $18,300 6th run 65% $3,900 $22,200 7th run 55% $3,300 $25,500 8th run 55% $3,300 $28,800 9th to 12th run 55% each $3,300 each $42,000 after the 12th 13th run and beyond 10% each $600 each $42,600 after the 13th Read the last two columns together before forecasting anything. Twelve network reruns produce about seven times the original scale payment; every run after that is worth a tenth of what the second run paid. Two things follow from that shape. First, the money is front-loaded — a show that reruns hard in its first two years generates most of its network residual value quickly. Second, the long tail is genuinely thin, which is why the famous decades-long sitcom cheques come overwhelmingly from syndication rather than from network reruns.
Every other reuse market
Only the network rerun uses a run-by-run ladder. Everything else is computed on a different base entirely, which is why 'what is the residual rate' has no single answer.
Reuse market How the residual is computed What the base is What it produces in practice Governing text Network prime-time rerun Declining percentage-of-minimum ladder The applicable minimum for the performer's category Front-loaded; see the ladder above SAG-AFTRA Television Agreement; WGA MBA Art. 15.B Broadcast syndication Percentage of distributor's gross receipts after a recoupment allowance Domestic syndication licence fees The market that built the sitcom-annuity reputation SAG-AFTRA Television Agreement; WGA MBA Art. 15.B Basic cable Percentage of distributor's gross receipts, allocated across the cast Licence fees received by the distributor A low single-digit percentage of a pool, divided many ways SAG-AFTRA Television Agreement; WGA MBA Art. 15.B Home video and disc A percentage applied to a 20% royalty base rather than to full receipts 20% of wholesale receipts A fraction of one percent of wholesale — cents per unit The 1985 home video formula, never fully renegotiated SVOD, licensed library title Fixed residual per cycle, stepping down across the first three years then plateauing Licence fee or a fixed schedule by budget tier Steady, small, predictable 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA agreements SVOD, platform original Fixed residual by budget and subscriber tier, plus a viewership bonus Platform subscriber count and domestic views in the first 90 days Bonus triggers where a title is viewed by 20% of domestic subscribers inside 90 days 2023 WGA MBA and SAG-AFTRA TV/Theatrical agreements Foreign telecast Percentage of distributor's foreign gross, subject to a ceiling Foreign licence receipts Front-loaded, then it stops SAG-AFTRA Television Agreement Free ad-supported streaming channels Treated by analogy to the nearest existing market; frequently disputed Licence fee or an advertising revenue share The most contested category on the schedule Claims routinely go through the union's residuals department Identify the market before you value a claim. A title moving into syndication and the same title moving onto an ad-supported channel produce payments that differ by an order of magnitude. Why the decay is that steep
The ladder is a bargained compromise rather than a valuation, and it reflects a fact about audiences: the commercial value of a rerun falls faster than almost anything else in media.
First rerun, a large share of the audience has not seen it. Fifth rerun, the audience is mostly people who have. By the thirteenth the airing exists to fill a schedule slot cheaply, and the licence fee behind it reflects that. The union agreement tracks the economics; it did not invent them.
Home video is the one market where the compromise looks less like economics and more like history. Residuals there are calculated on a 20% royalty base rather than on actual receipts, a formula agreed in 1985 when the format was new and the argument was that manufacturing and distribution costs justified the discount. Physical media came and largely went; the 20% base survived both. It remains the clearest example in the whole schedule of a term that outlived its rationale because nobody had the leverage to reopen it at the right moment.
Streaming, and the bonus that changed the shape
For most of the streaming era, reuse on a platform paid a fixed residual based on budget and subscriber tier, with no relationship whatsoever to how many people watched. A show nobody found and a show that ran the platform for a quarter paid identically.
The 2023 negotiations produced the first mechanism to change that. Both agreements introduced a viewership-based bonus for platform originals, triggered where a title is viewed by 20% of the platform's domestic subscribers within the first 90 days of release. On the performers' side, the money is split between a union-administered fund and direct payments to the cast; on the writers' side it operates as an uplift on the applicable residual.
The more consequential change may be the reporting obligation that came with it. Platforms that had disclosed nothing now provide viewership data to the unions, which means future negotiations start from evidence rather than from assertion.
Also worth flagging for anyone modelling this: streaming residuals do not have a run ladder, so they do not decay in the same way. They step down over the first three years and then hold. Flatter, smaller, and considerably more predictable than the network model they replaced.
Who is left out
- Anyone working under a non-union agreement on non-covered production — no reuse payment of any kind, regardless of how successful the show becomes.
- Most reality and unscripted participants, whose agreements typically sit outside the covered categories entirely.
- Background performers, who receive residuals in far narrower circumstances than principal performers.
- Work made before the relevant market existed. A programme made before an agreement covered a given reuse market may generate nothing in that market, which is the single most common reason a veteran performer receives nothing for a show still airing constantly.
- Anyone whose contact details with the union are out of date. Unclaimed residuals are a large and persistent problem, and the funds sit waiting rather than being redistributed.
Dating a residual claim before you repeat it
Union agreements carry explicit terms, and that makes them one of the easiest document classes to date accurately — which in turn makes it inexcusable to cite one without checking.
The 2023 WGA Minimum Basic Agreement ran to 1 May 2026. The 2023 SAG-AFTRA TV/Theatrical agreement ran to 30 June 2026. Both of those terms have now closed. Any rate, ladder or bonus threshold sourced to those agreements describes a schedule that has since been renegotiated, and should be treated as superseded until matched against the successor memorandum of agreement.
That is the whole discipline in one paragraph. A residual figure is only as good as the agreement it came from, an agreement is only current for its stated term, and a page that reprints a ladder without naming the agreement or the term is not giving you a fact. It is giving you a rumour with decimal places.