Is there an assumption that strikes don't also hurt workers? I'm trying to figure out the angle here.
I think the insistence that AMPTP is totally unified on forcing the writers into homelessness is a bit villainously overblown; sure, streaming-only companies like Netflix can weather this by just picking up more global content and unscripted work, but keeping the strike going through Q4 is going to expose some real strategic fissures between streamers, networks, and studios that cash hoarding alone isn't going to paper over, especially since the studios' bets on blockbusters and in-house streaming aren't paying off. If AMPTP is really serious about this, the studio chiefs could end up taking down their own companies by exposing them to potentially multiple quarters without significant new content availability. With IATSE negotiations coming up in 2024, it seems unlikely to me that the studios are willing to lose the rest of this year and then go right back into a strike situation.
Probably because, like you mentioned, Netflix can more easily lean on foreign content.
I think Netflix is being particularly shitty here because they negotiated unique terms with the unions 10 years ago under the guise of being a new business model. They aren't "new" anymore, they are an established player, they should have to play by the same rules as the big boys.
Well, playing by the same rules as the big boys can also be attained if the big boys join the rules that Netflix negotiated (which are, of course, less favorable for the writers). I do believe that many studio executives will at least attempt to make use of this once-in-a-life opportunity. ;-)
Practically every studio was announcing cuts to programming spend in the months preceding the strike. An industry-wide pause means nobody loses market share while delaying expenses.
There are no LLMs writing scripts for TV productions today, and yet, WGA writers are out of work. Something political - I mean, something that is totally controlled by humans, and can be turned around with a stroke of a pen, if collectively - has the biggest impact on writers' work. Not technology. In case you're confused where my opinions lie, I do support the writers, because this is what they are actually asking for:
> But the fear is that studios will use AI to turn out a crappy first draft, and then turn it over to writers who they hire for a few days or a week to turn it into something good. And they won’t pay them as if it’s an original script. That is the fear.
https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/wga-ai-writers-strike-tech...
The whole article is about how studios have a tool that could seemingly pass legal muster and abrogate a lot of the economic obligations they have when they start an engagement with a writer. Basically via tricks. It's about politics.
Writers want to use AI. They also want to use Google and pirate movies and TV shows and read other people's books and file the serial numbers off of the characters and do all sorts of things that have complex copyright implications. This isn't about luddites or whatever the fuck.
What they don't want is for studios to do tricks. They want "we will not use this to do tricks where we pay you to do something that has for the last 20 years meant X and then when it turns out you make us a ton of money, it will actually mean Y." That sounds like a reasonable contract term for me. If you see a trick coming from a mile away; if your opposing party has a trick-manufacturing machine overseen only by octogenarians, and you have collective bargaining power, what else can you do?
There's a lot of other stuff, like staffing requirements and increased pay, that the studios are frankly not in a position to concede on. This strike should have been staged in 2021, or not at all.
You should look at the Sony hack and see for yourself what a studio does and how it is built. You don't have to rely on any speculation whatsoever.
I know gaming better. Steam gives away for free all the proprietary data movie studios hoard. A few people with Steam data, if they're numerate, can do the work of 1,000 movie studio people.
People are worrying about LLMs and economics and all this bullshit. It's all political, in the strict sense of the outcomes are controlled entirely by people and can change with the stroke of the pen.
The real thing the two sides should be worrying about is not this speculative AI bullshit or copyright law. It's how Hollywood is working more like the games industry does.
I've seen a dozen different posts and articles where people did the math, and showed that what the WGA is asking for, financially speaking (annually), could be paid out of a single studio's profits for a single quarter (at least, I think that was the degree of disparity; in any case, it was painfully obvious that the studios were being obscenely greedy).
The only way one can argue that the studios are "not in a position to concede on" these demands is if they take Wall Street's insistence on ever-increasing growth as mandatory, rather than purely for the benefit of increased bonuses for the already-very-wealthy people at the top.
Sure, this. Management is constrained because, after the last years' spending and leverage binge, they are unusually dependent on investors. Investors who didn't like the past years of spending levels and demanded cuts. Cuts management promised and the WGA delivered.
> on ever-increasing growth
I don't think this is about growth. See this commentary on Discovery's equity [1]. The focus isn't growth, but servicing debt. If they give into the WGA, there are knock-on concessions to other unions, and altogether that could bankrupt them. Certainly quicker than not putting out scripted content.
To be super clear, I think the writers deserve better pay. But the strike doesn't make sense.
[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/video/warner-bros-discovery-merger...
Oh nooooo if they have to give concessions to other unions, too, then more people might be able to live comfortable lives without having to bow and grovel every time an exec looks at them funny!
The strike is absolutely necessary, and it's about more than just pay right now.
First, it's about the near-complete loss of residuals as viewing shifts from TV to streaming (because the old contracts didn't cover it), which would, as I alluded to earlier, mean that writers would basically never have a stable income stream again. The entire visual-medium-writing profession would be consigned to lives of scraping together little jobs here and there to make ends meet.
While the studios raked in the billions in profit (not gross!) off the backs of the scripts those writers created for them.
And second, and possibly more importantly for the long-term viability of the industry as a whole, the studios are destroying writers' rooms. Traditionally, when writing a script, they'd hire a whole bunch of writers—including both senior and junior writers—and have them all work together on it for an extended period—possibly the entire run of a season, or most of the way through the production of a movie. This was a vital way for newer writers to gain experience and practice their craft.
Now, they're instead hiring a bunch of writers for a week or so, getting them to hash out the rough outline of a script, and then having one showrunner take over from there.
And what they're trying to do is get rid of that first step, and have ChatGPT do it, instead.
They're eating their seed corn, all to juice their profits in the short term, and totally ignoring what the long-term effects will be: fewer and fewer writers who have any experience actually writing for television and movies, on top of making sure to starve the ones they do still (occasionally) hire, thus driving even more out of the profession.
In short, if the studios get their way, they'll be guaranteeing a decline in quality of writing across the board for the foreseeable future, until eventually there's nearly no one human left who's both willing and able to do the job and still pay rent.
I have seen at least one movie that grossed a billion dollars that could have very well been written by an LLM. In fact, that was one of my immediate impressions while watching that movie. I don’t think it would be sustainable to do this across the industry but it could easily be done.
There is also a big difference between a factory that can’t be stopped for months and Hollywood that can operate without scripts until the box office will indicate that you actually need writers like last time. The studio plan might be to bust the WGA entirely.