What's to stop the actors or writers from simply making their own content?
It made sense to me when you had terrestrial television stations with actual monopolies over broadcast rights.
But now with the internet they have many vectors to share and market their content.
So you won't be on NBC or Netflix or whatever, so what, post it on Twitter and YouTube. If they move to alternative distribution platforms and the studios don't do anything then the studios will lose their audience and thus their revenues.
Some of the best content I've encountered is exactly this. A good example is "High Maintenance", which started as a Vimeo web series and cost $1000 / episode to produce. [1] Another example is Christopher Nolan's first film, "Following", which cost $6,000 to produce. "El Mariachi" by Robert Rodriguez famously had a $7,000 budget.
They could also pool their money, crowdfund, or otherwise shoot for a bigger budget, in which case they could mimic the first Coen Brothers movie, "Blood Simple", which had a $1.5 million budget. There's also "The Blair Witch Project" ($200k), "Clerks" ($230k), "Paranormal Activity" ($15k), etc. [3]
I truly hope this latest labor dispute causes an industry shift in the direction of creatives taking more control over production and distribution of their content. Musician Anton Newcombe said this about the recording industry, and I think it applies equally well to film studios:
"...it’s a mafia. And until they can write the letter that I’m writing, they are the postman, and I am the letter writer. Period. End of discussion."
Distribution, access to capital, a reliable track record, contracts or relationships with channels, etc. All the unglamorous parts of media.
There were some very cool things that came out of the last strike (like Dr Horrible's Sing Along Blog) but I would guess that at least 75% of you have never heard of it.
IMO, it's because writers and actors form a seriously minor part of the labor needed to make a film or TV episode.
From VFX to catering, there's a lot of labor needed - much of which is highly specialized - that would cost too much to contract or develop independently.
> What's to stop the actors or writers from simply making their own content?
1) access to capital to cover the cost of production. $/min of a Mandalorian episode or even a late night comedy show is way above self funding capacity of most of the people employed as writers or actors.
2) critical mass providing leverage in distribution. It is very very cheap for Netflix to market just one more show, as compared with the costs of a new subscription service to try to acquire new customers. On the feature side, studios pay a lot less to be in theaters (as percentage of box office revenue) than indie films.
> So you won't be on NBC or Netflix or whatever, so what, post it on Twitter and YouTube.
It's not like people haven't been trying. But take any successful show in the last few years, it simply could not have made nearly the same audience or revenue on these platforms. The stuff you see there is already hyper optimized for these platforms - it'd be a very poor business decision to take a show with the production cost of TV or subscription services, and monetize it purely on these platforms.
> But take any successful show in the last few years, it simply could not have made nearly the same audience or revenue on these platforms. The stuff you see there is already hyper optimized for these platforms - it'd be a very poor business decision to take a show with the production cost of TV or subscription services, and monetize it purely on these platforms.
This is exactly it. There are tons of incredible series with high production values on YouTube created on shoestring budgets, but they mostly cater to very specific niches. They can succeed on YouTube because they aren't going for the broad appeal and hyper-consistent development cycle required for TV channels to pick them up. If such an ecosystem existed in the early 00s, some of these series probably would have been picked up and made incredibly successful to a much broader audience by channels like Discovery, History, or TLC, but falling cable subscriptions has resulted in massive consolidation diluting the original premises of these networks, thus forcing them to focus on more generalized content. (The 2007-2008 WGA strike certainly didn't help, but I think this was inevitable with the subsequent rise of streaming services - the strike just kickstarted the realityfication/enshittification of cable TV a couple years early.)
That's not to say that no YouTube series or YouTubers can make it on TV, but they have to fall into the niche of having broad appeal on YouTube without being limited to YouTube, and I think Drew Gooden made this point really well in his video covering Lilly Singh's late night show [0], which got off to a horrendous start because studio execs, blinded by the prospect of getting a popular YouTuber to make a show for them and (hopefully) get that YouTuber's audience to throw their eyeballs at it, did not attempt to create a show that worked for Lilly, but instead shoved Lilly into a tired formula which she floundered in. (Keep in mind that Lilly's core YouTube demographic would be sound asleep by the time each episode aired at 1:30 AM, and one wonders the kind of discussions that led to this show getting greenlit in the first place.)
In a way, though, we're already seeing lots of content which is hyper-optimized for streaming services that is paid for by the big studios - I remember seeing an interview with some writers for a show only available on Netflix (I think, and I wish I could remember anything more specific) who remarked that with broadcast shows, you had to fit everything neatly into very specific timeslots, and that each timeslot had to have a hook to keep you sticking around after the commercial break, but when you're writing for a streaming platform, all those considerations just go out the window, allowing for much easier and more natural storytelling, like a movie.
Of course, you could still air these shows on TV, but they wouldn't work as well on TV as, much like movies that get chopped up for broadcast, very rarely do you have good hooks before commercial breaks. In addition, many shows made for streaming services do not follow the standard 18-22/37-42 minute show length, which means you have to either insert a ton of ads to pad the runtime into a 30/60/90 minute timeslot or have an odd lineup until you can get to some other oddball-length show (or until the infomercials begin).
>What's to stop the actors or writers from simply making their own content?
At this point, I would think the union. I have a family member in Equity that couldn't play in his own productions because he couldn't afford to pay himself. Sounds like a joke, but it's true.
Refusing to accept a deal is akin to acts of violence? I feel like the pro-union rhetoric is getting hyperbolic, and is detrimental to the quality of the discussion. If simply refusing to accept a deal is "tar and feather territory", then what do you call it when studios are literally covering union members in tar and feather? "tar feather (fr!) territory"? Rather than discussing actually relevant topics like which side's offer is objectively more fair, half the comments here are about trying to describe the studio's actions in increasingly hyperbolic terms.
> Refusing to accept a deal is akin to acts of violence?
Its not 'refusing to accept a deal', its this:
"“The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses,” a studio executive told Deadline." [0]
I don't think I can get more hyperbolic than "our stance is we won't talk to them until they're freezing in the streets".
The part that you're not mentioning is that the union members are choosing not to sign the deal, and therefore are freezing in the streets. This sucks for union members, but I don't see how else such negotiations are supposed to work. If there's no threat of either side not accepting a deal, then what leverage does either side have? And if the union doesn't want to accept a deal from the studios, and consequently doesn't want to work, why should the studios continue paying them?
I think you're vastly oversimplifying their stance as merely "refusing to accept a deal". If studios are waiting for writers to "start losing their apartments and losing their houses,"[1] that is a major negative impact to people's lives.
>that is a major negative impact to people's lives.
I fully acknowledge the hardship that the union members are going through, and that the impact is likely disproportionate. However, that's a negative impact brought on by themselves by choosing to engage in said strikes. The union might still be in the "right" in terms of what they're demanding, but they're still the proximate cause of their own hardship.
This is a very cruel take, lacking such empathy that you blame the least powerful people in an industry for demanding a living allocation of the vast wealth the industry creates from those in power that decide the allocations? Walk away from your career and surrender if your partners decide to take all the income from you? What an odd way to live your life. What an impossible way to live a life.
>This is a very cruel take, lacking such empathy that you blame the least powerful people in an industry ...
See my previous comment: "The union might still be in the "right" in terms of what they're demanding, "
My only point was that the union and its members was presented with two choices: accepting a "bad" offer, or striking in hopes of getting a better offer. If they chose the latter and lost out, it was entirely their decision that led to their predicament.
Not being the worst tactic used by companies to break strikes doesn't make it good or even OK.
Nor should it lessen the condemnation faced by these companies.
EDIT: To be clear, I expect a company's executive team in the 21st century to act ethically and with even the smallest bit of compassion for their coworkers. I do not expect them to act like some entitled plantation owner in the late 19th century.
And if that's me being naive, it's a naivety I'll gladly take to the grave.
This not some dirty tactic, it is specifically how all breakdowns in employer/union negotiations go. Union withdraws their labour until their demands are met, employer doesn't agree until their demands are met. As time goes on, both lose money, both parties are betting the other party will compromise in a beneficial way before their side does.
If you don't approve of this, you don't approve of unionization. Because this is how it works.
You seem to misunderstand what unionisation is. The current state of things has been reached as kind of a gentleman's agreement. If employers want to revert to life threatening solutions, unions will revert to life threatening solutions too. Sequestration, destruction, tarring, and other fun things.
But then again, defenestration of a bunch of execs might just be the exact thing the world needs to put some fear back into these ghouls again.
> You seem to misunderstand what unionisation is. The current state of things has been reached as kind of a gentleman's agreement. If employers want to revert to life threatening solutions, unions will revert to life threatening solutions too. Sequestration, destruction, tarring, and other fun things.
Weird, my definition of "unionization" is "workers bargaining collectively". It doesn't involve any veiled threats of violence.
That is what it means, but it's an arrangement that replaces the previously "we'll resolve this with violence" situation. If one party wants to dump the "new" way of doing things, mostly likely it just goes back to the "old" way.
Life threatening solutions? Let’s cut the hyperbole please. You are the one making threats here, no one else is.
They have made an offer of employment to the union, following the legal framework in the country.
It’s the same predicament any striking worker has. Each party is applying significant financial pressure on each other to get what they hope will be a better deal than the current offer.
How… how do you think this works in other strikes?
"It's legal" is about the most basic, dogshit argument you can ever use. When there are livelihoods at stake, when we have emails of execs explicitly wanting to wait it out so their writers get evicted, when Bob Iger makes the GDP of a small African country and refuses to give anything even close to acceptable, it's not a threat of violence. It is actual violence, but you've been conditioned to only see violence as the physical act.
Abusing the massive wealth imbalance to force people back to work under your own terms is violence. They should be happy people haven't actually resorted to violence in return.
How it works in other strikes? It'll depend on the context. Your small company that can't afford everyone striking for a month will go to the negotiation table and reach a deal. Other companies? In my lifetime, I have seen offices destroyed, CEOs sequestrated. And you know what? It worked.
> Not being the worst tactic used by companies to break strikes doesn't make it good or even OK.
I mean, I'm very pro-union rights, but I think in this case, it's pretty simple. If you don't work, you don't get paid. Both the studios and the unions are playing by the rules, here.
It may not produce a fair outcome (because the distribution of power in society isn't fair), but it is at least a fair process.
And the union should really have put aside more money to fund a longer strike.
"absolutely gentille" and "strike-breaking" seems like weird ways to describe studios refusing to accept the union's offer, as if they're expected to accept whatever that the union offers.
The studios haven't even come to the negotiation table in the 70 days of the WGA's strike. Their entire plan is waiting them out so they'll accept a worse offer.
>The studios haven't even come to the negotiation table in the 70 days of the WGA's strike.
What's the point of coming to the negotiation table when the other side's demands is so far from what you're willing to offer?
>Their entire plan is waiting them out so they'll accept a worse offer.
It takes two to make a deal. By refusing to accept a deal, both sides' are hoping to inflict damage to the other side so they can get what they want. You might have your own opinions about which side has the more reasonable offer and is therefore in the "right", but both sides are essentially trying to do the same thing.
> What's the point of coming to the negotiation table when the other side's demands is so far from what you're willing to offer?
Uh, does this situation not fit the dictionary definition of negotiation? Such a gulf in demands/desires/position between the sides necessitates negotiation and compromise. The institution saying "lol fuck them, we'll starve 'em out" is monstrous in that context, imo.
>> What's the point of coming to the negotiation table when the other side's demands is so far from what you're willing to offer?
>Uh, does such a situation not fit the dictionary definition of negotiation?
There's nothing in the definition of "negotiation" that necessitates compromise. Moreover, negotiation isn't an end goal in and of itself. The point is to reach an agreement (ie. contract), and the very definition of a contract is that it's voluntary. That means walking away is an entirely valid response.
Same argument could be made in the vein of why should one side be forced to accept the other's demands unilaterally? Thus the deadlock and the strike. After all, each side making concessions is how this usually works.
Has anyone run the numbers on how long this might take? I know there's a lot of people in both striking unions who aren't super wealthy, but don't know what the spread is.
I'm fully expecting more dogmatic/richer members to bankroll the strike to prevent it breaking. I'm guessing through loans or something.
Good on SAG-AFTRA. This can only increase the bargaining power of both groups.