Warner Bros. Discovery has been sued by Dirty Jobs host Mike Rowe, who alleges that the network is refusing to pay him certain streaming royalties and is misinterpreting his deal to shortchange him on other payments.
Rowe, in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday in New York federal court, claims he hasn’t seen some payments when the show was licensed to multiprogram distributors, like DirectTV and YouTubeTV, in violation of his deal.
Dirty Jobs, which was nominated for three Emmys, had an eight season-long run on Discovery, with the network rebooting the series in 2022. In deals struck in 2008 and 2011, Lab Rat, Rowe’s production banner, secured ratings bonuses for linear airings of the show on Discovery-owned networks, a say in certain areas of distribution and the right to share in profits from various third party deals, according to the complaint.
Tuesday’s lawsuit isn’t the first time the two sides clashed over payments. In 2015, Rowe conducted an audit that led to a five-year mediation. The result was a settlement and new participation agreement that, among other things, compensated him for airings of the show on streaming platforms on top of the provisions he secured in prior deals.
This dispute revolves around the licensing of Dirty Jobs as video-on-demand content to third parties that carry Discovery’s linear feed, which include Hulu + LiveTV, DirectTv and YouTubeTV. Rowe says that he hasn’t seen payments for such deals, of which he’s entitled to half of adjusted gross revenues.
Contrary to the network’s position that “video-on-demand airings of Dirty Jobs on a multiprogram distributor or virtual multiprogram distributor are part of a [Discovery] linear service, the unambiguous definition” of the terms “does not include on-demand access,” writes Randall Rasey, a lawyer for Rowe, in the complaint.
The lawsuit also takes issue with the network calculating royalties for licensures of the show to Max and Discovery+ based on minutes viewed. “Not only is this recently concocted interpretation by Discovery inconsistent with the Agreement, but Discovery has never accounted for such video-on-demand viewings,” states the complaint.
In a statement, a Discovery Network spokesperson said, “We value our long-standing relationship with Rowe and have fulfilled our contractual obligations for royalty payments. We dispute the allegations and will defend ourselves against these claims.”
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