Writers and actors striking for better contracts dealing with new world of streaming and digital media

For the first time since 1960 both the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the Writers Guild of America (WGA) are on strike at the same time against Hollywood shutting down virtually all production and promotion of scripted movies and TV shows.

In the 1960 strike the Screen Actors Guild was led by Ronald Reagan, who would go on to become the only union president to become president of the United States. According to Variety: 

In that strike, both the writers and actors were wrestling with compensation issues arising from the dawn of television. Together, they won residuals for TV reruns and for broadcast of films on TV, and established the first pension and welfare plan.

This time the unions are dealing with the decline of legacy linear television and the move to streaming and digital video — a transition at least as transformational as the rise of broadcast television in the 1950s and 60s.

Until recently, actors and writers could count on getting paid when a show or movie was initially created and screened or broadcast. They would then receive residual payments each time a show was aired on broadcast/cable TV as a syndicated rerun. (Think about how you might have watched old episodes of Friends or Sienfeld in the afternoon on your local television station or on a cable channel such as TNT or TBS.)

For many writers and actors, there can be long gaps between big, successful projects, and the residuals are what help them pay the bills during those lean times. (Remember, for every high-paid star in Hollywood there are literally dozens of journeyman workers who are just hoping to make ends meet.)

For the 2023 strike, writers and actors have a number of new concerns:

• They want a bigger, better defined share of the income from streaming services such as Netflix, Disney+, Paramount Plus and Hulu. Given that’s are where most viewing is moving, that’s where the people who work in the industry feel they need to be getting more of their income.
• Both writers and actors worry about how studios might use artificial intelligence computer programs to write scripts or create photorealistic recreations of actors for movies or shows.
• According to film and TV professor Andrew Susskind, TV shows traditionally have lasted 20-24 episodes a season, giving staff writers eight to 10 months of work per season. “And being around for all the episodes, it offers writers the opportunity to grow, because they’re there for script writing, they get to see preproduction, maybe get to see postproduction; so they get to learn production and maybe one day get to be producers or showrunners,” Susskind said. Now shows are more likely to have 10 or fewer episodes, and the writing staff will be smaller with more freelancers being brought in to work on just a single episode.  This gives the writers employment of weeks rather than months.

These strikes will, of course, delay or cancel the production of a wide range of projects. The actors’ strike will also mean that the stars will not be turning out for promotion of new movies. The first of these to be hit was the Christopher Nolan summer blockbuster Oppenheimer, where stars Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Cillian Murphy and Florence Pugh were only available for a single red carpet appearance before the strike sent them to the picket lines.

The studios see things a bit differently than the unions, stating that the strikes are coming at “the worst time in the world,” according to Disney head Bob Iger. Speaking to CNBC, Iger said:

“There’s a level of expectation that [the unions] have that is just not realistic. And they are adding to the set of the challenges that this business is already facing that is, quite frankly, very disruptive.”