Warner Bros. Discovery has been sued by Soiled Jobs host Mike Rowe, who alleges that the community is refusing to pay him sure streaming royalties and is misinterpreting his deal to shortchange him on different funds.
Rowe, in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday in New York federal court docket, claims he hasn’t seen some funds when the present was licensed to multiprogram distributors, like DirectTV and YouTubeTV, in violation of his deal.
Soiled Jobs, which was nominated for 3 Emmys, had an eight season-long run on Discovery, with the community rebooting the sequence in 2022. In offers struck in 2008 and 2011, Lab Rat, Rowe’s manufacturing banner, secured rankings bonuses for linear airings of the present on Discovery-owned networks, a say in sure areas of distribution and the best to share in earnings from varied third occasion offers, in keeping with the criticism.
Tuesday’s lawsuit isn’t the primary time the 2 sides clashed over funds. In 2015, Rowe performed an audit that led to a five-year mediation. The outcome was a settlement and new participation settlement that, amongst different issues, compensated him for airings of the present on streaming platforms on prime of the provisions he secured in prior offers.
This dispute revolves across the licensing of Soiled Jobs as video-on-demand content material to 3rd events that carry Discovery’s linear feed, which embrace Hulu + LiveTV, DirectTv and YouTubeTV. Rowe says that he hasn’t seen funds for such offers, of which he’s entitled to half of adjusted gross revenues.
Opposite to the community’s place that “video-on-demand airings of Soiled Jobs on a multiprogram distributor or digital multiprogram distributor are a part of a [Discovery] linear service, the unambiguous definition” of the phrases “doesn’t embrace on-demand entry,” writes Randall Rasey, a lawyer for Rowe, within the criticism.
The lawsuit additionally takes subject with the community calculating royalties for licensures of the present to Max and Discovery+ based mostly on minutes seen. “Not solely is that this just lately concocted interpretation by Discovery inconsistent with the Settlement, however Discovery has by no means accounted for such video-on-demand viewings,” states the criticism.
In a press release, a Discovery Community spokesperson stated, “We worth our long-standing relationship with Rowe and have fulfilled our contractual obligations for royalty funds. We dispute the allegations and can defend ourselves towards these claims.”