How Big Streaming decimated the screenwriting profession

Since May 2, the Writers Guild of America has been on strike, shutting down film sets across the country and demanding a fair shake in the face of a changing Hollywood landscape that, if we’re being honest, looks a lot like the one that we’re dealing with over here in the media industry. Hint: It has a lot to do with the ways that some of the world’s biggest tech companies — including Netflix, Apple TV, and Amazon — have transformed what it looks like to make a living as a film or tv writer. 

With issues like shrinking residuals — or payments writers receive when their work is re-aired  — increased job insecurity, and the looming threat of automation and AI, it’s a story that brings together many of the issues we touch on this show. So we brought on two key players from the front lines to give us a candid peek into what life as a screenwriter in 2023 actually looks like: Mason Flink, a TV writer and WGA Guild Captain based in LA who has worked on shows like Minx, Special, and Love, and Sara David, a former colleague of ours from VICE who has worked at Netflix and Paramount+, and who is now the VP of online Media for the WGA East. 

Mason and Sara tell us about how Hollywood labor conditions directly impact the quality of the film and television we consume (and who gets to produce it), the long history of deregulation and financialization that set the stage for this moment, and why this fight has big consequences for creative workers of all stripes — not just in the writers’ room.

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