By Mike Reynolds
With the Directors Guild of America (DGA) announcing to its membership that negotiations on a new contract wouldn’t begin until “later this spring,” it appears that the Writers Guild of America (WGA) will be up first on the list of industry entities looking at improved changes for their membership to the existing deal ending May 1 (the DGA deal runs until June 30). While there is often a faction within any guild (some for, some against any strike action) this time around writers appear united — to the extent that some 500 attended a recent meeting to go over the many issues.
The frustrations of writers (along with directors and actors) have been regularly covered by media outlets, and all signs point to a strike, which would shut down production across the board. The situation is so serious that there’s even been a suggestion that the DGA and SAG/AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Film, Television and Radio Actors unions) would unite with the WGA to get a deal.
Whether or not that happens, thoughts immediately go back to the devastating 100-day writers’ strike (that ran from November 5, 2007 to February 12, 2008), which resulted not just in lost TV ad revenue worth tens of millions of dollars, but a cost to the local L.A. business economy of more than $3 billion, and the loss of some local businesses not connected directly with the industry, as well as homes foreclosed on for many industry workers.
This time around issues aren’t about DVD residuals or payments for online reuse (as they were back then) and while the WGA won’t state exactly what will be discussed, members want wage increases, to raise issues including the so-called “mini writers rooms” (explained below), loss of profit and residual payments (not just for those in the mini rooms, but for everyone), and deal with the fact that they believe streamers are generally low-balling writers. This all adds up to negotiations being hard fought.
We do know that in 2020 the WGA sought to put forward TV “script parity” — standardizing teleplay minimums at the network prime time rate and eliminating lower rates that applied to other platforms and dayparts. They also wanted improvements for staff writers who don’t get an episodic fee, even if they wrote a script; for writing teams, who are paid the same as individual writers; and for writers of streaming stand-up and talk shows, who are not protected by minimums. These issues may well reappear in the upcoming negotiations.
“Mini rooms” may not be something everyone is familiar with but they’re definitely known and certainly not beloved by writers. These small writers’ rooms are made up of fewer than the usual number of writers and are not there for the usual length of time a writing team would be together. These mini rooms break short-season stories (i.e., come up with a story and further story ideas) and have become the new normal. But they’ve become a “scourge,” according to WGA negotiating committee member Ashley Gable, and the guild has said that “writers are being asked to break an entire season of story in rooms that meet for brief periods of time and pay them only (weekly) scale (and no) episodic fees.”
Even showrunners “find themselves forced to scale because their wages land outside of span protections,” according to board and negotiating committee member Travis Donnelly.
Fewer writers, compressed time-frames, and lower rates represent significant savings to studios and streamers — and denies writers their due. Another WGA board member, David Schulner, suggested, “Those first weeks in a writers’ room completely shape a series. And that’s worth far more than a weekly minimum.”
The guild could also push to index future increases to inflation. As the studios attempt a trifecta — building a profit model for streaming, managing the decline of linear TV and divining the future of theater-going — substantial wage increases, even if justified by inflation, will be an awfully bitter pill.
Every above-the-line strike has centered on residuals. There are hundreds of different residuals formulas, with the rules determined largely by the medium a production was initially made for (theatrical, broadcast TV, premium cable, basic cable, streaming, etc.) and the medium it is being used or reused in (which can be the same as the initial medium or not).
Today, the most intense focus is on streaming. Residuals for originals on Netflix, Hulu, etc. are an annual sum payable as long as the episode or movie stays on the platform. The amount declines year by year and depends on the guild, the program length and the number of domestic (i.e., U.S.) subscribers a platform boasts. The platform’s global reach, increasingly important as U.S. growth stalls for some streamers, is not part of the metric; nor is the program’s success, unlike many other residual formulas based on license fees or transactional sales. Viewership is not a factor. A smash hit pays the same residuals as one canceled after one fleeting season. Also disregarded are such core metrics as subscriber attraction, retention, or purchasing behavior.
All of that riles the guilds, which see studios and tech billionaires building global empires powered by professional content but not sharing enough wealth with the creatives. Angelina Burnett, a WGA West negotiating committee member, said that residuals checks “are not the reliable life raft they once were.” WGA’s Donnelly asserted that feature writers are “often getting a quarter of what they used to,” and that television writers suffer too. “The companies must be forced to share data with unions and profit participants,” said Burnett. “Will it take a strike? Almost certainly.”
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