A commissioning checklist needs four separate documents

What was announced or recorded

As retrieved on 16 September 2026, three documents a commissioner needs sit in three different registers. The Writers Guild's own page on its Minimum Basic Agreement describes it as the agreement that “covers most of the work done by WGA writers,” and directs budget-specific questions — including “High Budget SVOD series that may be grandfathered” — to its Contracts Department rather than publishing every threshold on the page itself. YouTube's help page for Shorts states a fixed delivery ceiling: a “maximum resolution of 1080p” and a duration “up to 3 minutes long.” Wattpad's terms state a writer “own[s] all the rights” to posted work and grants Wattpad only a nonexclusive publishing licence.

What the documents establish

A budget-tier decision under a WGA agreement is not self-service from the public page: the page itself defers specifics, including any per-project threshold for short-form or SVOD work, to direct contact with the Guild, so a commissioner cannot confirm a writer minimum from this page alone. A platform delivery spec, by contrast, is stated in full in public: YouTube's numbers are fixed for that platform, not negotiable per project. A rights position under Wattpad's terms is also stated plainly: the platform's own licence does not extend to adapting a work into another medium, so that permission must come from the author directly, or from an agreement the terms do not describe.

Announced versus delivered

The WGA page governs union coverage in general terms and points elsewhere for numbers specific to a project's budget. The YouTube page governs one platform's technical intake only, not any other platform's delivery requirements. Wattpad's terms govern the platform relationship, not adaptation rights, which sit outside that document entirely. None of the three, alone, clears a commissioning decision, and none states how the other two interact with it.

What to watch

This is an editorial checklist assembled from what these three documents actually state, not a complete production-clearance guide. A commissioning production with a US cast will typically also need a performer union agreement; SAG-AFTRA's own budget-tier agreements were not accessible for this dossier and are deliberately not summarised here, since the brief requires citing only what was opened.

• Has the Guild's Contracts Department confirmed which minimum applies to this specific budget and format?
• Does the intended delivery platform's technical spec match what the production is actually shooting and exporting?
• Has the source author confirmed, separately from the hosting platform's terms, that adaptation rights are available?

A union page, a platform spec and a hosting site's terms each answer one question and stay silent on the other two. Commissioning a vertical drama means holding all three documents at once, not assuming one implies the others.