The Bear, the Bear and the Streamers: When writers get richer, harder, faster, cheaper… And what do they get for their work?
The move to streaming has made it hard for writers to make a living, and the Writers Guild of America is trying to negotiate a new three-year contract. The main causes of this are TV shows on streaming services having shorter seasons, lower residual payments and small group production which make writers less disposable.
Since negotiations began in March, the WGA had been asking for higher wages, healthcare benefits and pensions, and in particular, better compensation when their work shows up on streaming platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime.
Back then, writers were asking for better compensation when their work went on DVD’s and internet downloads, like iTunes. This time, most of it has to do with streamers.
Alex O’Keefe is a writer for the series The Bear, and he says that the writers aren’t getting a fair amount of money for their work. “I’m really grateful to work on a show about the everyday struggle that so many Americans are living through,” he told NPR. “But at the same time, I’ve seen that there’s complete lack of care towards our working conditions. It makes it so difficult to produce the content that then makes them millions and millions of dollars.”
When Abbott Elementary was renewed, Britanni Nichols used to be able to live off residuals from the show she wrote. She got half her original writing fee each time. Now, when her episodes are sold to the streamers, she gets just 5.5 percent of her writing fee. You are receiving checks for $3, $7, and $10. She told NPR it’s not enough to put together a consistent lifestyle. “It can really be a real shock. … Sometimes you can get a stack of checks for $0.07.
They’re creating shows for a fraction of the price. She said that streaming companies are asking writers to do a lot more heavy lifting in a shorter amount of time instead of paying them more.
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He says that he’s proud of his working class existence. “But yeah, I’ve reached a point that I don’t know how I can continue to survive in this business as it is.”
“It could be right back to a really sort of bad situation where I’m again, struggling to pay rent. Someone who is going to be a decade into their career should be able to work for an award-winning television show. “I don’t think anyone would look at my career and say, ‘oh, that person still has to worry at this point,’ but that’s just where things are right now.”
The only guarantee that other writers can have is if the show gets greenlit, but they don’t know if they’ll ever get to work in the official writer’s room.
We have many upcoming shows and films from around the world. We could probably serve our members better than most,” Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix, told investors during a recent earnings call. “We do have a pretty robust slate of releases to take us into a long time.”
The last WGA strike in 2007 and 2008 lasted 100 days and was credited with tipping California into a recession, causing a loss of around $2.1 billion to the state’s economy.
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The AMPTP provided a statement claiming it had offered “generous increases in compensation” that included an improvement in streaming residuals and had been willing to “improve that offer.” It was unwilling to compromise on the union’s demands for “mandatory staffing” and “duration of employment” however, saying these “primary sticking points” would require companies to staff shows with writers even if they’re not needed.
The conflict over contracts has been going on for a long time. The last contract negotiation happened in the summer of 2017, just minutes after the previous contract expired. The covid outbreak made it difficult for both sides to negotiate terms for the following three-year contract in 2020.
If you went on strike in the spring of 2020, nobody cared. It just didn’t matter, because nobody was working anyway,” Kate Fortmueller, an assistant professor of entertainment and media studies at the University of Georgia, told NPR.
She said they hadn’t seen them as part of the negotiations in the past. “So I think that’s not necessarily a wild card, but it does change some of the stakes.”
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There are fewer writers employed in “mini rooms” compared to a traditional room and that is linked to the growth of streaming shows. Miniature rooms get by with a few writers when there are fewer than seven of them, on a short-term basis.
That means breaking a season down and structuring it as well as paying the union minimum wage, and not being kept on payroll for long periods of time.
“I’m doing absolutely all of the work that I would do in a full writers room, and I’m paid a fraction of my normal quote,” one writer recently told Indie Wire.
ethical questions forFortmueller as a viewer from the strike and its disputes. She says there are so many shows that it’s difficult to keep up with them. She wants to support the writers behind the shows.
She said that she believes it is better for her to invest her time in shows with better working conditions that help keep people employed. But when people reach decision fatigue, she added, “the lure of the minimal commitment is pretty strong.”
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/05/03/1173439467/writers-guild-strike-2023-comparison-2007
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The longest strike lasting more than three months was in 2007. People were very upset by the fate of popular shows like Grey’s Anatomy. They got their DVD players to play shows like Friday Night Lights and My So-Called Life while they waited.
Those who kept tuning into TV found expanded reality TV offerings, such as Project Runway and The Biggest Loser, that are defined as unscripted shows. When Tiger King was shown in 2020, the people became more interested in reality.
“As far as the audience perspective, I’m not sure that the impact is going to be quite as strong in terms of what we’re experiencing,” Fortmueller said. She pointed out that spring and summer are not the best seasons for TV, but there are some streaming platforms that have material from international markets.
“Long term, they can’t necessarily rely on that, because so much of their business model is about attracting new subscribers with new shows. So ultimately, it can only last so long before it starts to hurt them.”