The writers' strike in Hollywood opens another crisis in the cinema and series

The largest cultural creation and production machine on the planet suddenly stopped this Tuesday for the first time in 15 years. The around 11,500 scriptwriters and film and television writers in Hollywood went on strike to protest against working and salary conditions that they consider unfair and outdated. The measure puts the entire entertainment sector, yesterday and today, in trouble: from the usual big film companies like Universal or Paramount to the relatively new streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon or Apple, as well as those that combine both formats such as Disney and American talk and humor television programs such as Saturday Night Live or The Late Show. And all this when the industry is still trying to recover from the complex effects of the pandemic.

The strike began at midnight on the West coast of the United States (9:00 a.m. yesterday in Barcelona), when the period of a month and a half that the two parties in conflict, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the the Alliance of Film and Television Producers (Amptp), had been given to negotiate. The strike had a priori the green light of 98% of WGA members with the right to vote.

The demands center on better wages and more employment opportunities. Scriptwriters complain of substantial job and money losses in multiple ways linked to the change in the model in the dissemination and consumption of audiovisual products.

For one thing, while the number of scripted TV shows airing in the US has skyrocketed in the past decade, the salaries of screenwriters have stagnated. On the other hand, if with conventional network television a writer could sell his services in a program with more than 20 episodes per season, when streaming broke out, orders were reduced to 8 or 12 episodes, with the consequent drop in his salary. Also, if in the previous era writers received residual payments every time a new program was licensed, either under the syndication formula or through DVD sales, with global streaming services like Netflix or Amazon those other distribution windows disappeared and the residual payment became unique for each production.

In short, and according to the large convening union, “the working conditions of series writers have worsened at all levels while the streaming service platforms continue to benefit.”

The employer responds that it offered “generous increases in compensation” to the writers, but complains about the union’s claim that companies hire shows with a certain number of writers for a certain period of time, regardless of whether the services of all they are necessary or not.

The impact of the strike will obviously depend on its duration, which looks long at first, and will go by neighborhood. Comedy shows, which rely on writers for everything, come to a screeching halt. Series and movies, on the other hand, will only notice long-term unemployment due to their extensive production processes.

According to companies in the industry, some 20,000 people who work in some 600 productions could end up losing their jobs if the strike lasts for some time. As for the economic damage, it is impossible to calculate. The 2007 strike caused economic damage amounting to 2,100 million euros, basically in southern California. The figure, adjusted to current costs, is equivalent to 3,000 million today. But the sector has changed so much in these more than 15 years that the reference has a very limited validity.

The convening union spoke of “totally insufficient responses from studios” to their demands, given “the existential crisis facing writers.” And he added that they have “pulled the trigger” only after six weeks of intense negotiations with Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Disney, Discovery-Warner, NBC Universal, Paramount and Sony.

The failed talks included as a big novelty the demand by the writers to impose significant barriers to the use of artificial intelligence. In the words of Mike Schur, WGA member and author of The Good Place series, it’s about “drawing a line in the sand” right now and proclaiming: “Writers are human beings.”

Already only the approach scares.