Hollywood’s 15-year industrial peace was rocked Monday night as film and television writers said they would go on strike, bringing many productions to a standstill and dealing a blow to an industry rocked by the pandemic and sweeping technological changes in recent years .
The unions representing the writers said in a statement that they “voted unanimously to go on strike.” Writers will begin picketing Tuesday afternoon. Her three-year contract was due to expire at midnight Pacific time on Monday.
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which is negotiating on behalf of Hollywood corporations, said in a statement that its offer included “generous increases in compensation for writers.” The organization added that it is ready to continue negotiations.
The main sticking points, according to the studios, are union proposals that would require companies to staff TV shows with a certain number of writers for a certain period of time, “whether necessary or not.”
The unions representing writers, the Eastern and Western branches of the Writers Guild of America, said: “The behavior of the companies has created a gig economy within a unionized workforce, and their steadfast stance in these negotiations has underscored their commitment to further devaluing the profession of writing”.
Chris Keyser, a co-chair of the WGA negotiating committee, said in an interview that “philosophically and practically we are very far apart”.
The dispute has pitted 11,500 screenwriters against the big studios, including old-guard entertainment companies like Universal and Paramount, and newcomers to the tech industry like Netflix, Amazon and Apple.
The WGA painted the dispute harshly, saying the rise of streaming services and the explosion of television production had eroded their working conditions. It has described this as an “existential” moment and that “the survival of writing as a profession is at stake in this negotiation”.
Entertainment companies, which previously said they would approach the talks with “the long-term health and stability of the industry as our priority,” are facing a rapidly changing business as network and cable TV viewership plummets.
For viewers, the most immediate impact will be felt on talk and sketch shows. Late-night shows like Saturday Night Live, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, and The Late Show With Stephen Colbert are likely to go dark immediately. Reality series and some international shows not covered by the guild are aired in heavy rotation.
It would take a long strike for arrivals of new TV shows and films to slow down, as the production process for these can take months or more than a year.
A prolonged shutdown of production could also prove detrimental to the local economy, particularly for workers who help support production, such as drivers, costume cleaners, caterers, set designers and woodworkers. When writers last went on 100-day strikes in 2007, the Los Angeles economy lost an estimated $2.1 billion.
Seth Meyers, the host of NBC’s late-night 12:30 p.m. show, alluded to the devastation of the recent strike in a segment late last week.
“It’s not just affecting the writers,” Mr Meyers said in the web-only video. “It’s affecting all of the incredible non-writing staff on these shows. And it would be truly miserable for people to have to go through that, especially considering we are on the heels of this horrible pandemic.”
Mr Meyers said he was a proud member of the WGA and he had a strong feeling that what the authors were asking for was “not unreasonable”.
“If you don’t see me here next week, know that it’s something not to be taken lightly and I will miss you heartbrokenly too,” he said.
The authors have raised numerous complaints. In a very topical twist, the authors try to set significant guidelines for the use of artificial intelligence. But the most pressing issue for them is compensation.
Over the past decade, a period often referred to as peak TV, the number of scripted television programs aired in the United States has increased dramatically. However, writers said their pay is stagnant.
In the network television era, a writer could get work on a show with 20+ episodes per season that would provide a steady living for a whole year. However, in the streaming era, episode orders have dropped to 8 or 12, and the average weekly salary for a writer-producer has fallen slightly, the WGA said.
The authors also want to fix the formula for final payments, which streaming has turned upside down. Years ago, writers could receive residual payments when a show was licensed – through syndication or through DVD sales. But global streaming services like Netflix and Amazon have cut off those distribution channels and instead pay a fixed balance.
The unions are particularly interested in so-called mini-rooms, which have become widespread in the last decade. There is no uniform definition of a mini room. But in one example, before a show is officially greenlit, studios convene a small group of writers to write a script. But writers are often paid less to work in minirooms, WGA officials said.
Authors have also said that the sudden growth of minirooms has also disrupted the decades-old art of learning how to make a TV show. Mike Schur, creator of “The Good Place” and co-creator of “Parks and Recreation,” said in an interview that as a young writer at “The Office,” he learned how to write, rewrite, and edit a screenplay, and worked with Acting and got to know specialized crafts like stage design and sound mixing.
“It’s not stuff you can read in a book,” he said. “You have to have experienced something like that.”
But because of mini-rooms, writers are sent home after 10 weeks and are often not there for the production process, he said.
“These companies don’t understand what’s coming,” he said. “And what’s coming our way is a whole generation of show makers who might be super talented, who might have a lot to say about the world, but practically don’t know how to do the job that they’re being told to do.” “
However, studio execs have privately said they have their own issues and this is not the best time to give significant raises.
For several years, Wall Street rewarded media companies for investing in their streaming services at any cost to grow their subscriber pool. But investors angered that philosophy last year, prompting studio executives to find a way to turn their loss-making streaming services into profit engines.
The consequences were brutal. Disney is laying off 7,000 employees. Warner Bros. Discovery ditched thousands and shelved titles over the past year as it tries to pay off about $50 billion in debt. Other media companies have taken similar austerity measures.
Apart from that, executives have also claimed that they can survive a strike. Last month, Warner Bros. Discovery chief executive David Zaslav said, “We’ve prepared, we’ve produced a lot of content.” Two weeks ago, Netflix co-head Ted Sarandos suggested the streaming service could do better would be protected than its competitors because it produces so many unscripted and foreign series. “We could probably serve our members better than most,” he said.
Still, he acknowledged that the consequences of a strike would be significant.
“The last strike was devastating for the creators,” Mr Sarandos said. “It was really tough in the industry. It was painful for the local economy that supports the production and it was very, very, very bad for the fans.”
Screenwriters have quit six times over the decades. In the past they had the stomach for a prolonged strike. In addition to the 100-day strike in 2007, writers also went on picket lines for 153 days in 1988. Writers have also shown signs of remarkable unity. In mid-April, 98 percent of more than 9,000 union writers authorized a strike.
The writers will hold demonstrations in New York and Los Angeles, where most entertainment companies are based.
Images of pickets have already surfaced on social media, with slogans such as “Fonts don’t grow on trees!”. and “The future of writing is at stake!”