Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Sunday, September 15th.

Today on Forbes, the highest paid TV showrunners 2024.

One veteran entertainment manager speaking about the deals top TV producers are offered today says,

quote, the yacht money is gone.

It was a different story five years ago.

That was the peak of the so-called streaming wars,

when studios and technology companies,

bolstered by low interest rates and Wall Street optimism,

were locked in an arms race for subscriber growth, seemingly at any cost.

The number of scripted TV shows on broadcast and streaming in that period surpassed 500 for the first time and for those creators whose content

that broke through to mainstream popularity the dollar amounts had a lot of

zeros. At least a dozen showrunners signed nine figure deals during that window

and another dozen landed more than fifty million dollars across four or five year

contracts.

Now, with the majority of those deals having expired or set to end in the coming months

the same creators are emerging into a very different TV landscape. The effects of

the pandemic, two Hollywood strikes, and widespread corporate cost cutting, not to mention the lack of hits produced on some large showrunner deals, have cratered the market for overall deals, show orders, and licensing deals.

For the winners at Sunday's 2024 Emmy Awards, it will be gold-plated trophies and not outsized

paydays that are the prize at the end of the red carpet. There is still, however, a few showrunners whose earnings defy gravity,

the older generation of creators who own a percentage of the $100 million or more in profits thrown off each year by mega hits,

like The Simpsons or The Big Bang Theory.

Of TV's highest paid showrunners for 2024,

...