Considering the sheer size of “golden age” television’s critically acclaimed programs, it comes with irony that Hollywood barely avoided breaking out in strikes last April. The Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, concerned with the repercussions of a full-scale strike, successfully negotiated terms that aimed to reverse the recent trend of declining writer salaries. After a WGA report last spring reported median earnings have dropped between 8 and 26 percent on average (from 2013-14 to 2015-16), guild members will now receive a $15 million increase in residuals, earned from streaming or reruns, and greater pay for episodes taking longer than two and a half weeks of work. These terms arrive at a moment when Netflix has surpassed cable TV subscription in America, when writers who are paid per episode must work on 10-episode seasons instead of the traditional 22, and when streaming has replaced reruns as the primary source of royalties. The industry has changed, and compensation is finally beginning to follow.
Representing nearly every writer on cable TV, the WGA plays a pivotal role at a time when national union membership is at a historic low, and its power at any key moment for the television industry cannot be understated. Between strikes in the 50s after the introduction of cable, in the 80s following VHS, and in the 2000s over DVD and on-demand streaming, organized resistance from the WGA almost always arrived in response to a new model that threatened the sustainability of screenwriting. While strikes come out of necessity for writers, they have disastrous implications for a business that adheres to such a strict schedule. Without writers ensuring a new episode arrives every week, the entire schedule of many networks needs to be restructured. The 2007-2008 strike, which lasted over three months, reportedly dealt the Los Angeles economy over $3 billion in damage and cut many seasons short. Among those hurt by the strike were set designers and camera operators, who lost work for an extended period of time. The implications of a large-scale strike give the WGA both a deadly bargaining piece but also a reason to opt for negotiation. Not every guild member wants to see their work crash and burn.
Cognizant of the WGA’s influence, studios have found subtle ways to safeguard from blows dealt by strikes. Reality TV, for example, evades the problem entirely by providing a model that removes unionized writers from the picture, as an “unscripted” program does not need writers. Titans like American Idol continued production during the previous strike, and shows such as The Biggest Loser even recorded longer episodes to fill in the space once occupied by WGA-unionized shows. While “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” might not be part of a conspiracy to undermine labor rights, the ubiquity of reality TV certainly provides a safety net if negotiations go south. Though a scripted program would stop production in the advent of a strike, reality TV can resume unaffected. The safeguard has only become bolstered in recent years, with audiences tuning in less to catch a new episode every week and choosing instead to rewatch old favorites on streaming platforms. Although these platforms do create original series, the nature of the all-at-once release of new seasons means that a strike delaying production will no longer result in an empty slot that needs to be filled every Friday night—potential viewers can just stream “The Office” instead.
In addition to being a near direct improvement over cable on the consumer end, streaming does grant certain benefits to writers as well, allowing for more creative labor at the expense of a less equitable business model. With the advent of programs sold directly to a digital platform, streaming has become a place for risk-taking and forward thinking. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a show like the Netflix Original “Dear White People,” which addresses questions of police brutality and systemic racism in an unapologetic and controversial manner, on cable TV. The medium has certainly shaped the message, and viewers couldn’t be more pleased. If HBO beckoned television’s golden age with its risky decision to program “The Sopranos,” a show that FOX, CBS, and ABC all rejected, then Netflix might be its logical extension, having taken up “Stranger Things” after it faced rejection from 15 networks. There may be a direct correlation between the creative liberty provided to the screenwriter—a liberty that did not necessarily exist on cable—and the quality of the program.
The ability to eschew advertising slots further supports the notion that the platform of streaming may actually be changing the content of programs. While a 30-minute time slot would traditionally require 22 minutes of television, with the remaining eight used for advertisements, and an hour-long program would take 45, shows made for Netflix tend to be a bit longer and vary more in length. This ultimately means more flexibility for a studio; before it would have been impossible to have one episode go five minutes over in length, but since streaming does not use a schedule, it can easily be accommodated. Additionally, most seasons are released all at once online rather than over the course of several months. This means that narrative can be emphasized in a way that previously would have been difficult. Traditional television uses episodic, self-contained stories that sometimes fit into a larger arc. Such a format certainly fosters a familiarity of characters to the audience by merit of their recurring presence in each story, but also by necessity of not confusing viewers who might be tuning in for the first time halfway through the season. By releasing an entire season at once, a culture of “binge-watching” every episode in one sitting has arisen. Stories can become more cinematic in a way that simply was impossible on cable, explaining why the “golden age” might indeed be today. However, success for the industry doesn’t necessarily translate to financial success for the individual, and even if a screenwriter’s options surpass those of 20 years ago, they still do not guarantee a steady income.
Almost a year after the WGA’s threat of another strike loomed over Los Angeles, streaming has fallen out of the conversation as the accusations made in the #MeToo movement took the media by storm. The WGA continued to play a role, recently sending a survey out to its members asking the extent of sexual harassment they have witnessed or experienced. With the increase in residuals given to guild members, it appears that creative labor can indeed be compensated fairly in the digital frontier. However, the industry’s concessions to writers would certainly have never happened without such a heavily unionized workforce. The music industry, for example, has no analog of the WGA, explaining why Jay Z’s attempt to pressure tech giant Spotify into implementing a service that more fairly compensated musicians fell flat on its face. Changes in labor rights require a support structure—while Jay Z may be able to afford to keep his newest album off streaming platforms, artists with smaller audiences need a union to advance their cause.
Behind the conflict of the shifting television industry lies the biggest question labor has to answer in the 21st century: How can workers respond to technology that renders their labor not obsolete, but invisible? With the sleek interfaces of Silicon Valley comes an erasure of labor, which has been digitized—a labor that indeed still exists whether seen or unseen. Perhaps television has always been guilty of this, explaining why the previous writer’s strike was such a breach of daily life. In terms of inconceivability, major studios deferring production for a couple months rivals only the daily mail failing to arrive, and even that analogy might no longer hold true in a couple years. However, the Netflix generation has only exacerbated the abstraction of a television episode as an actual product of labor. Instead of expecting our regularly scheduled programming at 6 p.m. every weeknight, we expect it always. Every time is prime time. The negotiations achieved through the Writer’s Guild stand as a testament to the importance of maintaining unions as cable continues to decline.