2023 Writers Guild of America Strike

[Fluttershutter 2,122]

37 minutes ago, Patriotic Brony 42 said:

Bin effected?

I think every person has at least 2 years worth of shows they are back logged on. Therefore, most people would not be effected. I think the studios can hold out another year. They have reruns and foreign shows.

As far as I'm concerned, I'd like to see the strike continue and let the whole system fall apart. 

The writers union turned down $11,000 a week! I don't have sympathy for either side. Maybe if they made better shows then I would care.

I'd say the system's already falling apart. They just churn out crap so people always have something new to binge then forget about a week later. No quality, no passion, way too much money.

[SharpWit 2,472]

I watched this video put out by Knowledge Husk that says no one wins in this strike for two main reasons.

The first was that if the writers were to be paid from their work on streaming services, that they'd technically owe companies like Disney money, because streaming services aren't profitable.

The other is that streaming services severely over inflate their viewership by assuming multiple people are watching together, and counting any amount of watch time as someone having watched "the series". In order to pay the writers they'd have to reveal accurate viewing numbers, and officially getting caught in the lie and/or the sudden drop in views would see many investors pull out.

I must admit that I don't know much on the situation, and I think the weiters deserve fair treatment, but found the video to be very enlightening.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Patriotic Brony 42 said:

Bin effected?

I think every person has at least 2 years worth of shows they are back logged on. Therefore, most people would not be effected. I think the studios can hold out another year. They have reruns and foreign shows.

As far as I'm concerned, I'd like to see the strike continue and let the whole system fall apart. 

The writers union turned down $11,000 a week! I don't have sympathy for either side. Maybe if they made better shows then I would care.

I agree. They may come to a compromise. Eventually studios will either find new writers and some will use AI, which I'm fine with. The quality of shows won't differ too much as many of the recent ones are just not good. There are many that have multiple seasons that are just terrible, while there are decisions to reboot a ton of old shows based on nostalgia. Just leave those shows alone.

Another topic that should be mentioned is that streaming services have a large overhead and cost a LOT to run. Giving actors more money may result in even fewer shows/movies on each platform.

Here I would have thought that the actors agents would have struck deals similar to syndication rights in regards to streaming. One story that surprised me was hearing that Aaron Paul who played Jesse from Breaking Bad stating that he was NOT receiving any residuals since Breaking Bad has been on Netflix. However, if two sides have a contract, they should honor it and not go back on it because one side is making more money now.

Edited September 12, 2023 by StarlightNyars

[Guest]

On 2023-05-05 at 1:25 AM, Dreambiscuit said:

I say fire ‘em all and replace them with people who honor their contract. When someone signs a contract it’s their duty to honor it, and not quibble over how much money was made a decade ago compared to today, or how some computer writing program can threaten their job. No one can cite technology that didn’t exist when their contracts were signed as a justifiable cause to strike. Nor can they complain about the state of the economy to complain about the wages of the previous generation vs the present one. Members of the Writers Guild make money way out of proportion to their talent or contributions, as all Hollywood creative people do. If they were shown the door they’d soon realize just how well they have it compared to the real world that has to work lousy jobs with lousy hours for lousy pay. If the AMPTP aren’t paying enough, don’t sign their contracts, and if the writers feel they’re too indispensible for the pay the contracted for, they should have thought of that when they signed-on and were happy just to be working in an industry that’s nearly impossible to get into. If the wages are too low (a laughable concept in my opinion) then move on to greener pastures if they exist. Otherwise, render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and be happy with what you signed-on to receive.  

This is what I thought of as well.  Streaming has been around for quite a while now and actors should have been fighting a long time ago for more money from streaming residuals. It's very odd timing and then they tried to throw AI on top of this. I don't think AI will take over the industry as they are claiming, but studios would be right in investing in AI as the quality of shows in the past decade have been bad.  That and we have way too many reboots of old shows that should have stayed finished. If they have felt that they deserved more money, that is why negotiations from agents and unions exist.  A contract is a contract and they signed on the dotted line. I'm interested in what these agents and unions have been doing to safeguard these actors for such situations if they still brought this strike upon the industry.

Also the overhead to run a streaming service is quite expensive and giving more money to actors can possibly change streaming services in general for the worse with less content and less money to produce new content. Now that more studios are in the streaming game, people's options are about to get even worse to watch their favorite shows.

Edit 1: Now that I think about it, I don't think the timing is odd as there are more platforms to watch shows, so they probably think that they can get some more money even though there are deals set in place.

Edited September 12, 2023 by StarlightNyars
editing?

[Denim&Venöm 16,534]

This won't end well for the writers. They are losing sympathy by the day. I forgot which studio made the offer, but to oversimplify, it was for like a guaranteed 11K per week, AI restrictions, royalties from streaming and guaranteed work year round.  

They turned it all down due to the demand of a mandatory minimum of writers per project being rejected, that minimum being rather high. The union won't budge on having a double digit writers room on every project, even though that's what's sinking most of these projects. Too many cooks in the kitchen. Fewer writers or having just one show runner and a few assistants has led to more consistent results. There's quite a few people who would kill to make that kind of money, especially when it comes to gig work. 

We're probably gonna see studios go non-union or folks leave the union and make their own negotiations. Deals are probably being made with actors and writers out of Canada and the U.K. Foreign made shows will be imported to fill the gap. Classics will be brought back out. More of the movie making process will leave the Hollywood sphere of influence. Many actors are getting less and less tolerant of Sag-Aftra's shenanigans and may not stand beside them in the future. Not to mention all the non-writer/ actor jobs that have now been lost because of shut down productions. You think catering companies, editors, engineers, sound and camera crews, stunt doubles, make up artists, Foley artists, animators and security are gonna see the writers union in a positive light after they were cost their jobs, especially when this could've been settled weeks ago? 

The media industry stops for nothing. If there's a work around, they will find it. And if these writers are as good as they think they are, then why are they so worried a basic computer program can make formulaic content better than they can? 

[Samurai Equine 45,978]

18 hours ago, Misty Shadow said:

We already have a topic for this. 

https://mlpforums.com/topic/199890-2023-writers-guild-of-america-strike/#comment-6119073

Since I made the posts I did, I can honestly say that the impact on TV from the writer's strike has not affected me since I've honestly not been interested in any new TV shows with very few exceptions. Still not hot on AI-written stuff though.  

Huh. So we do. Guess we need to fix that.  Merged.

[Denim&Venöm 16,534]

Yeah, the studios are winning out in the end. They were on board with the strike. Cause if they extended it long enough, they got to cancel a lot of projects that were bad in retrospective. Now that they've agreed to a deal after a bunch of projects got axed, they can now give out these new and improved terms to the writers... that are still on board or will get hired. And sadly, that won't be everyone int he WGA. It probably won't even be most. 

We're in a recession. Everything is a lot more expensive. Costs are getting cut. And one of the things that tends to go are streaming services and cable packages. Less money for shows. Less projects getting green lit. Less writers needed. Not only that, we've about hit the streaming bubble. The market is too saturated. Just about everyone who can subscribe already has and that number is gonna go down. Even fewer shows will be green lit. And with writers now being more expensive to take on, the process of hiring will be far more discerning. The few WGA members that do get hired will be living the good life. But the rest? Well, hopefully they didn't quit their day jobs.

TL:DR - The WGA got played. 

[Steve Piranha 28,783]

I’ve heard part of the deal is paying more to writers who already have successful works in their resume. I hope this means we get back to quality shows instead of Apache helicopter cows or High Guardian Spice bullshit 

[Samurai Equine 45,978]

So it seems the strike is mostly over.

From what I understand, until more details are posted, the writers got the majority of what they wanted. Better pay, better benefits, and the studios can't rely exclusively on AI as a means of replacing writing staff.  However, the strike is not completely over. Actors are wanting better conditions too and no agreements have been reached on their behalf yet.