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You may have to wait longer before getting new episodes of your favorite shows, and that’s because writers are on strike. Here’s why …

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Transcript
00:00Whose story? Our story!
00:02Whose story? Our story!
00:04You guys make millions and millions of dollars, for God's sake, without the writers worth nothing!
00:11I sincerely hope the writer's strike in Hollywood gets resolved,
00:14and the writers are given a fair deal they deserve as soon as possible.
00:18By now, you might have heard of the writer's strike.
00:21The writers are in full force.
00:26Here's why writers across the country have gone on strike,
00:29how the studios are responding, and what this could mean for your favorite movies and TV shows.
00:39The Writers Guild of America is a union that represents over 11,000 writers across various scripted mediums.
00:46Every three years, the union negotiates agreements with studios under the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
00:52Think companies like Disney, Paramount, Netflix, Hulu, and Apple.
00:56These agreements are intended to protect writers' wages, benefits, and working conditions.
01:01In 2023, after failing to agree on a new contract by May 2nd, WGA members voted to go on strike.
01:08So I just got an email from the Writers Guild of America saying that the negotiations have broken down,
01:13and as of midnight tonight, the Writers Guild of America will be on strike, which means no writing at this point.
01:20With the rise of streaming, writers say, studios have forced them into a, quote, gig economy.
01:29With this strike, writers are fighting for, among other things, increased compensation and residuals,
01:35minimum staffing, better pension and health funds, and more regulation when it comes to AI.
01:40According to the WGA, median writer pay has declined by 23% over the last 10 years when adjusted for inflation.
01:48The union also estimates that over half of writers are working at the minimum salary allowed by the current contract.
01:54Writers are working on shorter contracts for less money, and they're not getting paid when that content is being replayed.
01:59The people literally creating the content that is making you richer than you've ever fucking been before can't pay their rent.
02:07Bitch better have their money.
02:09Meanwhile, the WGA estimates that in 2021, eight Hollywood CEOs together pocketed nearly $780 million.
02:18Don't be stupid! Make sure you take care of people!
02:22You guys make millions and millions of dollars, for God's sake!
02:27Without the writers, we're nothing!
02:29They create the stories that make our hearts beat! Help out now!
02:34These are the people who make up all of your favorite things on TV and television, and they are not paid accordingly.
02:39While guys up in the suits who don't really make up anything get paid a lot more.
02:43Residual payments, which writers receive for reruns of their work, have significantly decreased with the introduction of streaming.
02:50Because more broadcast TV shows are readily available to stream, networks have less of an incentive to re-air episodes.
02:58And in the case of shows developed for streaming platforms, writers say they aren't being compensated fairly in accordance with their viewership numbers, which streaming platforms often keep private.
03:08It used to be that on TV, you would get a job, you could work on that for the entire year, and you would make money once those episodes that you wrote aired on TV.
03:16And if they kept playing them over and over again, you would get paid for that.
03:19Over the years, that structure has gone away, especially the advent of streaming.
03:22In negotiations, the WGA asked for viewership-based streaming residuals.
03:26But the studios rejected the proposal and refused to counter.
03:29Whereas the writers used to get 4, 5, 6 figures on their residual checks from a TV show or a film, now those same checks are coming in at $20 because of streaming.
03:38The people that are writing your favorite TV shows can't even afford to pay their rent, can't even afford to feed their families.
03:44Please let that sink in.
03:45Writers are also calling for an end to what industry people call mini-rooms.
03:50Mini-rooms allow studios to hire a small team of TV writers to write a few episodes before a show gets picked up.
03:56Under this arrangement, writers are paid the union minimum rather than their normal fees, and they lose out on the stability of a traditional writers' room.
04:03And then, if the show is picked up, they will most definitely go with a smaller group.
04:10If you get cut, then you're out on the street looking for another job.
04:15We're talking about 6, 7 weeks of employment here and there.
04:19To address the issue of mini-rooms, the WGA demanded that writers' rooms have a minimum of 6 to 12 writers, depending on series length, and that these writers be hired for at least 10 consecutive weeks.
04:30The studios rejected this proposal.
04:33There's also the question of artificial intelligence.
04:35The WGA asked for AI not to be used as source material or to adapt literary works.
04:41The Studio Alliance rejected these proposals, instead offering to hold annual, quote, meetings to discuss advancements in technology.
04:49I think we don't really believe that a robot can write something that will be as compelling as what a human being could write.
04:59It takes years to learn how to do that shit. Do you think a computer can do it? I don't think so.
05:02While most of the conversation surrounding the strike has revolved around TV, feature films will also be affected, though it'll take longer to see the impact.
05:10So far, the only film confirmed to have stopped production due to the strike is Marvel Studios' long-awaited Blade, which doesn't have a finalized script.
05:19Meanwhile, for projects with completed screenplays, the strike means writers won't be able to be on set for rewrites.
05:25Of course the writers should be getting paid. I mean, they create the content.
05:29I mean, for them not to be able to walk freely on sets and see what they created and help create it.
05:36I mean, how do you expect anything to happen without the writers?
05:39So far, the Studio Alliance has rejected or ignored many of the WGA's demands.
05:44And there's no telling how long this strike could last, affecting not just writers, but workers across the industry.
05:50So what happens now? Well, late-night shows were the first to halt production.
05:55They're entitled to make a living. I think it's a very reasonable demand that is being set out by the Guild, and I support those demands.
06:02Among a growing list of scripted shows, Netflix's Stranger Things, Showtime's Yellow Jackets, and ABC's Abbott Elementary have paused writing and production.
06:11We are a show that writes while we air. And so if this strike goes on for a significant period of time, our show will not come out on time.
06:21The last time the WGA went on strike was in 2008. It lasted 14 weeks, cost the city of Los Angeles over $2 billion, and hit shows like Lost and 24 had to cut their seasons short.
06:33I think I realized I never processed the trauma from the last writers' strike.
06:37Like, do the kids today know? Do they understand? Do they get what happened?

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