How Composers Find Unpaid TV Royalties
The short answer
Your PRO statement lists what your society paid. It does not list what aired. If a TV airing was never reported, was matched to the wrong work, or has not been distributed yet, it has no line on the statement, and nothing on the page looks wrong.
To find unpaid TV royalties you need a second list: the airings. Then you compare that list, cue by cue, against the statement that covers the same period. Whatever aired and did not pay is a question for your society.
One composer who checked his detected TV placements against his BMI statements going back to 2021 found about 15% of them unpaid. Here is how to check your own, and what usually turns out to be the cause.
A statement is a record of payments, not airings
Every line on an ASCAP or BMI statement is money that moved. A performance nobody paid for has no row. There is no line that says "aired 14 times, paid nothing."
You can read every statement carefully and never see the gap, because the gap is a row that is not there. You have to know what aired first.
Why a TV airing goes unpaid
In the order I rule them out:
It has not been paid yet. This is the most common one. BMI pays in February, May, August and November, for airings about two quarters earlier. ASCAP pays writers in January, April, July and October for airings about three quarters earlier, and publishers about two quarters earlier. Foreign income is slower, because the foreign society pays your society first. BMI says most foreign payments reach its writers one to two years after the performance. An airing is only missing once the statement covering its date has arrived without it. ONTRK's guide to when each PRO pays puts the ASCAP, BMI, PRS, SOCAN and GEMA calendars side by side.
There is no cue sheet, or the wrong one. Your society learns your music was in an episode from the cue sheet the production files. If nobody filed it, or it names the wrong cue, the airing cannot be paid to you however many times it runs. The composer's cue sheet guide covers what should be on it.
The work is not registered correctly. A work your society shows as accepted can still be holding money: a writer or publisher it cannot identify, a publisher never named, or shares that do not add up to 100%. Library cues add another wrinkle, because the same cue can carry alternate titles. Nothing downstream can pay a work the society cannot match.
The society did not count it. ASCAP pays TV from its own surveys. On a census it counts every performance. On a sample it records some days and times and scales them up to stand for the rest. An airing on a sampled channel is paid only if it falls inside the sample, so a cue that really aired, with a correct cue sheet on file, can pay $0. ASCAP's survey page puts all performances on ABC, NBC and CBS on the census. On cable, only certain networks and program types are counted in full, and the rest is sampled. How ASCAP census and sample surveys work has the full breakdown. BMI works differently: it matches performance data from licensees and data providers against cue sheets.
It aired abroad. Foreign income arrives as a lump, without the performances behind it, so it can only be checked in total.
How to check a missing TV payment
1. Find the right statement. Work out which distribution covers the air date. Matching against the wrong quarter "finds" gaps that are really money still on its way. 2. Search by work ID, not title. Societies cut long titles short, and library cues often carry more than one title. Your society's work number is the reliable key. Compare performance counts, not rows, because one statement line can stand for dozens of airings. 3. Check the registration. Open the work in your society's portal. Every writer and publisher should be listed, with the right IPI numbers, and the shares should total 100%. 4. Check the cue sheet. Confirm your cue is on the cue sheet for that episode, under a title your society can match, with the right writers, publisher, duration and use. 5. Compare against airing data. You need a record of what aired, from a monitoring service, a library placement report, or your own notes. Line each airing up against the statement that settles its period. What is left over is your list of questions.
ONTRK also has a longer walkthrough of why a TV placement goes unpaid and how to find which airings were never paid.
Ask your society, not the library
Once you have an airing that should have paid and did not, the inquiry goes to your PRO. Your society pays performance royalties, so it is the one that can tell you what it has on file.
Send the work number, the title, the show, the channel and the air dates, and ask what they hold for that performance. Frame it as a question, not a claim. If you are with ASCAP, ask first whether the channel and period were surveyed.
Do not take it to the library. The library did not run the survey and does not distribute your performance royalties, and libraries are the people who give you work. Keep that relationship clean.
The cheapest fix happens before any of this. When you deliver music to a library or supervisor, send the writers, publishers, splits and IPI numbers with it, so whoever files the cue sheet has them. DropCue keeps that metadata stored with each track you share, so it is there when someone asks.
The tool I built for this
Doing this comparison by hand, one quarter at a time in a spreadsheet, is slow enough that most composers never do it. So I built ONTRK, royalty tracking software for composers.
It reads statements from ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, PRS, SOCAN, GEMA, the MLC and more, free in your browser. The free reader needs no account, and the file never leaves your computer. It shows what each cue earned and where it aired. If you already have airing data, it checks it against your statements and holds each airing until the statement for its quarter should have arrived, so a payment that is only late is not flagged as missing.
ONTRK's own TV detection, monitored by BMAT on 50 channels in the US, UK, Europe and Australia, opens in November.
Related: How PROs Actually Pay Composers | The Composer's Cue Sheet Guide | ASCAP vs BMI vs SESAC
Frequently Asked Questions
Can my PRO statement show me which TV airings were never paid?
No. A statement only lists what your society paid. Finding what it missed takes a record of what aired to compare against.
How long after a TV airing should I be paid?
BMI pays for airings about two quarters later. ASCAP pays writers about three quarters later and publishers about two. Foreign income usually takes one to two years.
Why did my ASCAP airing pay nothing when the cue sheet was correct?
ASCAP pays TV from surveys. If the channel was on a sample survey and the airing fell outside the sampled days and times, it earns nothing on its own, even with a correct cue sheet. Ask ASCAP whether the channel and period were surveyed.
Should I contact the music library about a missing TV royalty?
No. Your society pays performance royalties, so the inquiry goes there. Check your registration and the cue sheet first.
