How a writers' strike might affect your favorite TV shows JENNIFER HUDSON, JIMMY KIMMEL Randy Holmes/ABC/Getty Images The guests for Monday, March 20 included Jennifer Hudson (The Jennifer Hudson Show), Donnie Yen (John Wick Chapter Four), and musical guest Larkin Poe. ET and features a diverse lineup of guests that include celebrities, athletes, musical acts, comedians and human interest subjects, along with comedy bits and a house band. JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE! Jimmy Kimmel Live! airs every weeknight at 11:35 p.m. Talks are due to start later this month for SAG-AFTRA, which represents actors, and the Director’s Guild. This isn’t the only labor battle coming up. But long-term salaried employment isn’t assured unless they hold out now.” “The Writers Guild is acutely aware that their leverage isn’t as strong as it was in previous strikes because the dynamics have changed. I know talented people struggling to make ends meet,” he said. And he said that math is falling squarely on some very successful writers who are making $2,000 a month, when they can find work. It’s very challenging,” said David Mumpower, a media expert, chief content officer of Mickeyblog and co-host of the “Streaming into the Void” podcast. “They have a long way to go to figure out how to make these profitable ventures. Streaming is clearly the future, but an economically difficult one. But with a steady annual drop of more than 5% to 6% of cable subscribers expected to continue, those revenue streams are expected to get smaller and smaller. The media companies with broadcast or cable channels are still making money on those. “Now that most media companies have moved away from driving streaming subscriber growth at all cost, we expect to see a rationalization of content spending in the years ahead and a shift towards …achieving streaming profitability.” “Wars are brutal, painful and sometimes utterly pointless and the streaming wars may be no exception,” wrote analyst Michael Nathanson of MoffettNathanson in a note six weeks ago. So the streaming wars that had been all about subscriber growth are now all about cost cuts and future profitability. Those are losses that Wall Street is unwilling to support.įor media companies and some content providers, there are also contractual advantages to not having a quick settlement. Those services are seen as the future for media companies due to a steady and severe rise in cord cutting by many households cutting off the cable subscriber revenue stream that the media companies depended on for years.īut the media companies’ streaming services are faced with competition from tech companies such as Amazon and Apple and that’s resulted in continued losses – outside of Netflix. Two years ago, the war between competing streaming services was all about subscriber growth, no matter the cost. So why was management willing to pay whatever it took to avoid a strike then, but is poised for a long strike now? The sea change in the so-called “streaming wars.” That deal, which covered technicians, artisans and craftspeople who perform a wide variety of jobs other than writing, acting or directing, included large wage increases for some of the jobs, with immediate raises of as much as 30% to 50% for some of the lower-paid classifications. The union says management’s offer would transform the industry from one that uses primarily staff for its writing needs to one that offers primarily freelance writing positions.īut less than two years ago the studios agreed to a lucrative deal with a different union, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), representing 63,000 production workers. Studio management says they’re trying to offer a deal that is beneficial to both sides, but that they can’t afford to meet the demands of the Writers Guild for requirements to have minimum staffing levels and duration of employment when writers are hired. There are many successful, even award-winning, writers who are finding themselves unable to make a living at the profession anymore. The writers say they can’t afford to live under the current economics and pay structure of the industry, with fewer job opportunities on many shows and lower pay for many writers who do find work. Nowhere is that more evident than on the picket lines of writers for television shows and movies that began Tuesday. The structure and economics of the entertainment industry are changing ferociously fast.
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