No More TV Until Writers Paid Living Wage. PAAAAAY THEMMMMM Oh My God PAAAAAY THEMMMM.
Writers Guild of America is officially on strike!
The Writers Guild of America is on strike for the first time in 15 years, which apparently means 2008 was more than just a few years ago. Negotiations over a new contract collapsed just before 8 p.m. on Monday night, as the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers were nowhere near resolving key points of disagreements.
Writers are facing what the WGA describes as an “existential crisis” due to the shift from traditional broadcast and film to streaming platforms. Fewer TV episodes are produced for fancy pants series whose seasons don’t air as regularly as during the Must See TV peak. Fewer TV episodes combined with lower residuals have proven an economic blow for writers.
Any narrative about "greedy" writers forcing a strike is bullshit. No one wanted a strike, least of all the people who create the stories we enjoy.
“We know this because they currently use those loopholes not to pay us. What is the point of setting a rate for writers rooms, when they’ve invented something called a mini room, and if they call it a mini room, they’ve decided that means they can pay you less?”
— Ashley Nicole Black (@Ashley Nicole Black) 1683043530
"The future of writing as a profession is at stake," said Charese Castro Smith, who wrote the screenplay for Encanto . "My life has been shaped by stories — created by writers. And it's my job, and I love it, and I want this to keep being a viable career for future generations.”
Encanto opened in the US on November 24, 2021, and was in theaters for just 30 days. Although it still grossed more than $256 million worldwide, its major commercial success came after its release a month later on Disney+. The WGA wants a revision of the streaming residual formula that would account for international subscribers and compensate writers more for hit shows. However, the studios are unwilling to provide streaming viewership data, which does not seem entirely on the up and up.
TV and comic book writer Mark Evanier, who's seen his share of strikes, noted on his blog today that the issues surrounding each strike might appear different but deep down, they're all the same:
The old contract was expiring and the alliance of the major producers were using the need to arrive at a new contract as an opportunity to achieve two closely-related goals…
1. To lower what they paid us for our work…or to at least not give us an increase that kept pace with inflation and the rising cost of living and…
2. To establish that we — and the directors, actors and everyone else — would get the smallest possible share of the revenues being generated by new income streams and new forms of technology. At the moment, that's mainly streaming but in past strikes, it was the increase of new cable channels, the sales of programming on videotape and (later) LaserDiscs and DVDs, etc.
The WGA isn’t asking for the moon or any other celestial bodies. The AMPTP won’t even entertain the WGA’s proposed TV staffing minimum and a minimum number of weeks of employment on a TV show. Writers can’t survive on an Uber style gig schedule.
Back when TV shows aired 22 to 26 episodes a year, a staff writer could earn a solid, reliable living, and if their show was cancelled, they had time during the summer break to get staffed on another series. Now, shooting schedules are less in synch. There is no formal “TV season” for most streaming series.
Decades ago, HBO's "The Sopranos" and "Sex and the City" (usually) produced 13 episodes a year and new seasons came out annually. Now, HBO’s "A Black Lady Sketch Show" produces six episodes a season, and "Succession" produced 35 episodes over five years. This isn't greed. It's math.
Variety reports that "the guild is also seeking sizable increases in minimum weekly rates for writer-producers, with a new tier that would be 25 percent higher than the minimums for story editors and executive story editors. Overall the guild estimated the cost of its proposals at $429 million per year. The guild estimated that the studios are willing to give only $86 million per year."
The last writers' strike lasted for 14 weeks and two days (100 days total). According to an NPR report, the strike cost the Los Angeles economy an estimated $1.5 billion. Other studies put the cost at more than $2 billion. Either way, that's real money. The longest WGA strike on record was in 1988 and lasted 21 weeks and six days, which cost the American entertainment industry an estimated $500 million. It really is cheaper to just pay the writers.
I will miss seeing David Letterman discuss the latest writers strike on his talk show.
Late night talk shows will immediately take the hit. "Jimmy Kimmel Live," "The Late Show," "Tonight," and "Late Night" go into reruns starting tonight. This will also cut short my sister Dulcé Sloan’s guest hosting week on "The Daily Show." The writers room at several TV series, including my personal favorite "Abbott Elementary," have shut down, which could potentially impact the number of episodes produced for the upcoming season.
Back in 2008, the talk shows eventually returned during the strike. Letterman was able to make an interim deal through his production company, Worldwide Pants, but Leno's "Tonight Show" had no writers and felt more like an improvised morning show.
Oh, and there was the delightful crossover throw down between writer-less Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, and Conan O'Brien. It was hardly trenchant political satire, but it helped pass the time. Watch below while we wait for the AMPTP to come to its senses.
[ Variety ]
Follow Stephen Robinson on Twitter if it still exists.
Catch SER on his new podcast, The Play Typer Guy.
Did you know SER has his own YouTube Channel? Well, now you do, so go subscribe right now!
Click the widget to keep your Wonkette ad-free and feisty.
As often I am an odd man out as I have never paid for any pay-TV networks or streaming piss services at all. I DO have cable, but then my family always had it since the closest TV station antennae were mostly 50 miles away as we lived in a valley.Imagine the excitement as a young boy when we had THREE channels.
Now I have more channels I do NOT WANT than I do - this by the way is why cable companies should allow channels to be à la carte, but of course the reason they never will is money and the cable companies would find out damn quickly that most people do not want 300 channels, or even 100.Most could easily get by with 25 at the most.But of course the money that the networks pay the cable companies to carry their channels, with the exception of the terrestrial 'local' channels under the ''must-carry'' rules of the FCC is the main reason à la carte will never happen.
I often smile and laugh when I see all these streaming services. It reminds me of the Monty Python sketch where George Bernard Shaw, referring to the Peince of Wales, says ''Your Majesty is like a stream of bat's piss''.I often look at what they are offering and see onlu one of two on each 'service', so why would I spend shitloads of money to get all things. I have resigned myslef to the fact that in the remaining years I have left I will never see all the films or shows that I want to see, although more importantly to me, I will never hear all the music I want to hear, inclduing some of which I have.
What I think about this strike is that it IS absolutely needed by the writers and all the other people that work in these media. But I do NOT Think this wil; ultimately make TV and movies any better.Peopl my forget or not know about United Artists - the original company was created in 1919 by aand for actors by D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks.This group did not want to depend on commercial studios. But eventually, In 1967, United Artists was bought by Transamerica Corporation.
My feeling is that eventually a number of these streams of bat's piss will fold as more and more actors see that they are being cheated, as will the public also.
How many quatloos is that?