Veteran Hollywood writer William Lucas Walker breaks down the differences between the 2007 WGA writers’ strike and the ongoing war writers are now facing with a coalition of motion picture and television producers, streaming services and their reluctance to offer a fair deal. Pointing to bring a deal.
Walker, a writer best known for his work on “Frasier,” Roseanne” and “Will & Grace,” said the lie is on Netflix and others.
,[Networks and streamers] probably not happy with each other because the networks want to get back to work, but they can’t until the streamers do their job,” Walker said. “Streamers are the ones who have the most important issues to address. There are things and they don’t want to.”
It has been nearly three weeks since the 2023 WGA writers’ strike began on May 2, which came about as a result of the WGA and AMPTP’s failure to agree on a new basic contract during their negotiations – an event that occurs every three years. The strike is now the biggest interruption to US television and film production since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and the biggest since the 2007-08 strike, which lasted 100 days. Walker believes it could be longer.
“I think it’s going to be three or four months, I really do,” Walker told TheWrap while joining his fellow writers who were striking in front of Paramount. “I think the issues are much more complicated this time. The networks are already giving us a lot of what we want, the streamers aren’t. With the networks we get good residuals, so you get a lot of episodes per season.” Those are a lot of things that I think people who are writers in streaming want.
The biggest issue is residuals and how much less the royalty check amounts to writers who work on streamed shows compared to broadcast series, which are re-aired via cable television or syndication, which pay writers Have to go through working condition.
In a memo sent to members in April, the WGA said, “Over the past decade, while our employers have increased their profits by $10 billion, they have adopted business practices that have reduced our compensation and residuals.” and has degraded our working conditions.” this year. “The very existence of writing as a profession is at stake in this conversation.”
most recent update was 46% bump in residuals It became effective in 2020. However, some writers have yet to see the compensation increase in their checks. An hour-long episode of an Amazon or Netflix series will earn a writer $72,000 in residuals over a three-year period, and eventually grow to $114,000 over a seven-year time frame.
“WGA’s proposal on foreign streaming residuals represents an increase of over 200%
current rates and treat foreign customers the same as domestic customers,” AMPTP wrote in a May 4 statement to the media. “However, the subscription fee varies from country to country, and in many countries, the subscription fee is higher than in the US. Quite rarely, however, companies have recognized the importance of overseas streaming and offered to increase residuals. These improvements apply to all types of streaming programs, including feature-length streaming programs.
According to the latest annual report of WGA, which was released in June for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2022, saw the residuals collected by the WGA rise 5.4% from the previous year to an “all-time high” of $493.6 million. Total television residuals increased by 4.7% with screens increasing by 6.9%. Overall the largest residual category, New Media, accounts for nearly half of the total residuals collected at 45.2%.
And that streamed shows typically deliver fewer episodes, with the average series making eight to 13 episodes compared to the traditionally between 16 and 22 episodes for broadcast TV, doesn’t help the matter either.
“The industry has changed a lot since then [2007]and streaming has changed, it’s really turning into a gig,” Walker said. “I wrote for a bunch of sitcoms in the ’90s like ‘Roseanne’, ‘Frasier’ and ‘Will & Grace’ , And I was able to buy a house three years after I joined. [Writers Guild], I still live there. Today’s writers can’t even begin to think about it.”
How streaming has turned writers’ careers into gig-like workshops, and the emergence of so-called “mini rooms” is another pressing issue for writers. Mini-writers rooms typically consist of two to three writers, and in them the group writes and develops an entire season of a show or series pilot, with no certainty that they will be brought on to the production process or There will be a show. Even the greenery.
Walker said she has talked to writers who fear the mini-room model is stifling career growth and a living wage for writers.
,[A writer] “Yeah, I started out on Nickelodeon Multicam, doing 22 episodes,” Walker explained. “He thought it was going to be like that and said that since then all he has been able to get are mini rooms that last six to eight weeks. He said that just two weeks before the strike he got a mini -room and told him that he would give him a script and offered him $2,000 for it.
Walker continued: “[Writers] They are constantly in tension about where their next job is coming from. When you’re on a standard network show, like I was, you were employed for a year, and they may or may not pick up your ops at the end of the year, but you definitely had enough money, and residual Who were coming up with…I mean, I still get residual checks from episodes I wrote 25 years ago. [Writers today] He is not. It’s a completely different ballgame.
In a statement distributed to the media on 4 May, AMPTP said that the WGA’s claim that writers’ jobs have turned into a “gig economy” is not correct.
AMPTP wrote, “Employment as a writer has almost nothing in common with standard ‘gigs’ jobs.” “For one thing, most television writers are hired on a weekly or episodic basis, with a specified number of weeks or episodes guaranteed. It is not uncommon for writers to be guaranteed ‘all episodes produced.’ Writing jobs come with substantial fringe benefits that are far better than what many full-time employees would receive for working an entire year, including employer-provided health care, employer-provided contributions to a pension plan, and paid parental leave programs. Eligibility included.
The 2007 WGA writers’ strike was due to the Guild and AMPTP reaching an impasse during negotiations for a minimum basic agreement. Major issues in the strike were related to disagreements over DVD residuals, union control over animation and reality programs, and compensation for “new media”, which was content written or distributed via digital technology such as the Internet.
“In 2007, we were striving for the future of the Internet,” Walker said. “No one knew what that was but we assumed it was getting low enough that we should get protection – and we did. Now the internet has become streaming, and it’s a giant. That’s all it is right now. It has changed everything for everyone.
And that “everyone” includes actors, producers, directors, who get a financial share of the streaming pie. Members of SAG-AFTRA, the DGA and the PGA have joined the WGA on the picket line, signaling what could be the culmination of an all-out strike by the unions.
“If the DGA, or the actors, strike, the whole industry will shut down like overnight, and I think that would be a quick solution because they can’t film without them,” Walker said. “This time there are many more artistes who are joining us. Drew Barrymore said the other day she’s not going to host [MTV & TV Awards] Show because he is in solidarity. Not as much in the previous phase, and I think because this is an existential problem for all of us, for every union, and for different reasons, we all have different concerns.
Click here for all of TheWrap’s WGA strike coverage.
