Opinion: WGA Strike

I’m a fan of movies and TV. From the constant supply of superhero movies to the many shows on streaming that I will eagerly binge in their entirety, I consume scripted media on a regular basis. This stream, however, is being impacted right now—for some very good reasons. 

On May 1, 2023, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) called for a strike. In the time since, writers and supporters have halted their work and begun to picket outside major studios. Late night shows have already halted and the productions for shows in the future are in peril. It’s very possible that the end of the strike will persist for the foreseeable future, so it is necessary for us to understand the recent history of WGA strikes, what the demands of the writers are, and how studios and writers can move forward to find a solution. 

The last strike that writers executed was back in 2007. Their main concern was with streaming and how they were going to be paid with streamed media. The residuals that writers get with cable TV and movies are fundamentally different from how they get paid with online media. With the “new media” of 2007, the writers believed that they were being under-compensated for their work and were unsure about the future of their changing field. The result of the 2007 strike was that writers now gained more money for content that was consumed online. Additionally, with this strike of 2007, many movies and TV shows were affected. The ending of season one of Breaking Bad was accelerated, season four of The Office was hampered, and Transformers 2 was made without a finished script. When writers go on strike, the media that we all love changes. 

With an understanding of how a strike has affected us in the past, let us now understand what the current strike is demanding from the major studios. 

  • Increased Pay

Due to high inflation and a faster increase in living expenses near Hollywood, many writers argue that studios are not paying them enough to sustain themselves with a career in screenwriting. In a similar vein, writers are demanding that they receive increased residuals, similar to their demands in 2007. With the omnipresence of streaming, writers want better pay for when their content ends up on a streaming site. 

  • Staffing Requirements 

Very often, the writing rooms of shows have decreased in size in recent years. In order to support the large community of writers and create stability for their jobs, strikers are demanding that studios promise to keep rooms of writers instead of treating them as freelance workers. 

  • AI

With the explosion of ChatGPT into the public conversation, writers are ultra-aware of the dangers that AI is posing to their careers. With the possibility that AI would be able to create a script from scratch or edit a pre-existing script, writers fear that their jobs could be dramatically reduced or eliminated in the near future due to AI. Writers are asking for studios to give them more assurance that they will have job security for the future. 

Now that we have a grasp of what the demands are of the WGA strike, let us look at a possible solution. If studios were to promise increased pay, large writer rooms for shows, and an avoidance of the use of AI for script production, it seems that the writers would then stop the strike. Are all of these concessions by the major studios going to happen? Possibly. As this strike continues, its impact on consumers and the economy will be more strongly felt. The last strike lasted 100 days and cost $2 billion dollars to the US economy. As shows like Stranger Things and movies like Blade face delays due to the strike, the average consumer will place more pressure on the studios and writers to end the strike. So, as the strike drags on to the unknown future, I have optimism that the strike will end with a better working condition for writers and better health for the industry as a whole. 

"Edwards speaks to WGA picketers" by John Edwards 2008 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

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