Opinion: Streaming is TV’s future. Can the writers’ strike make it sustainable?
The 2 central disputes of the present Writers Guild of America strike towards the Alliance of Movement Image and Tv Producers are technology-driven: the rise of streaming, and the looming unknown function synthetic intelligence will play within the artistic course of. SAG-AFTRA could strike over comparable considerations.
Technological improvements have been on the core of a number of strikes in Hollywood historical past and have led to a few of the longest weeks on the picket line. The query now could be whether or not the present strike, happening two months, might be harder to resolve than previous labor actions.
In 1946, when coaxial cable first linked New York and Washington, D.C., and gave delivery to community tv within the postwar period, few apart from Lew Wasserman at MCA had been savvy sufficient to know the worth of reusable content material resembling outdated motion pictures. By 1960, everybody else acquired hip. That 12 months noticed two strikes, one by SAG (43 days) and the opposite by WGA (153 days), over the brand new financial realities of tv: residuals and funds for present reruns and exhibitions of flicks initially produced for theatrical launch. Guilds sought a cost construction for productions going ahead and indemnification for members who labored on motion pictures previous to the emergence of tv.
Twenty years later got here two extra lengthy strikes: SAG/AFTRA shouldered indicators for 3 months starting in the summertime of 1980; the WGA stomped sidewalks for 3 extra months the next spring. The problems at hand had been funds and residuals within the burgeoning house video and pay TV markets. Each had been nascent applied sciences rising quick sufficient to require compensation pointers. Within the early Eighties studios fought onerous towards the sale of house video tools in litigation that went all the way in which to the Supreme Courtroom. They did not cease the gross sales of VCRs and the house video rental market boomed, launching battles over residuals that continued for many years.
Pay TV, together with cable and satellite tv for pc, was a rising enterprise. Cable’s viewers and corresponding income didn’t match that of its older sibling, broadcast tv. However its decrease manufacturing prices, and mathematical magic permitting cable channels to spice up scores by counting a couple of displaying of an episode versus a broadcast community’s single displaying, helped degree the taking part in area. By the flip of the century, cable scores surpassed these of the standard networks. Regardless of enterprise causes for Hollywood and Wall Avenue to distinguish platforms, to the viewers there was no significant distinction. HBO’s tagline however, to most viewers it was all simply TV.
Then Netflix famously used the brand new know-how of the web to upend the content material and distribution system. Their subscription-based mannequin for on-demand motion pictures and exhibits mixed each the house video rental market and pay TV. Netflix was a David that slayed two Goliaths: First it got here for Blockbuster, then it got here for premium cable. Netflix didn’t even outline itself as a part of the Hollywood institution; it was a Silicon Valley disruptor. It wasn’t present enterprise, it was “digital.” Like every large centralized system, Hollywood studios had been gradual to answer the revolution at hand.
Streaming was not but dominant when the WGA went on strike for 14 weeks from 2007 to 2008. The large names on the AMPTP aspect had been now-bygone moguls resembling Les Moonves and Harvey Weinstein, not Netflix’s Reed Hastings or Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. Among the many contentions was the continued concern of house video residuals within the DVD market. The time period “new media” was nonetheless used to explain content material starting from webisodes to YouTube movies and streaming. New media was in 2007 what AI is right this moment: a shark’s fin circling within the water.
When streaming-exclusive unique exhibits arrived in 2013, they had been produced in accordance with guild agreements from 2008. As a subscription-based digital providing, Netflix (joined shortly by Amazon and Apple+) was paying writers much less attributable to decrease residuals than broadcast and cable. With that period’s low rates of interest, cash got here low cost, and extra content material might be made to feed hungry viewers. With no adverts to promote there was no must report scores that might be held to public scrutiny. The exterior metrics for fulfillment had been critics’ critiques and subscriber numbers that had been going up, making Wall Avenue traders joyful. Everybody was getting richer … apart from the writers and different much less high-profile expertise.
Three Hollywood truisms: First, present enterprise shouldn’t be an altruistic endeavor; it’s a money-making enterprise for everybody concerned. Second, new know-how will usher in new content material manufacturing and distribution alternatives. And third, producing content material depends on expertise.
We see this with the streaming revolution: It prompted a seismic shift of media consolidations that generated a slew of aggressive choices from acquainted faces: Disney+ and Hulu, Peacock, MAX, Paramount+. Now, together with what we will paradoxically think about the “conventional” streamers, viewers have many decisions and platforms from which to decide on. Meaning extra competitors for eyeballs and earnings; adverts, promos and scores, that means… don’t contact that dial people! Plucky little digital streaming has turn into one thing nobody thought it will: tv.
Hollywood has proved to be an adaptable place. All through labor disputes, its major goal has stayed the identical: produce and distribute leisure content material. Streaming and AI know-how have spawned one other unsure transition, and a secure and worthwhile new regular has but to disclose itself. However to provide content material, you’ll all the time want creators.
Like a starlet in a Nineteen Thirties musical or a hero in a Fifties western, after Hollywood will get knocked round it all the time manages to get again up and again to enterprise. And one of the best ways to get everybody again to enterprise? Pay content material creators accordingly.
Jordan Beck is a tv govt, model advertising strategist and author with over 20 years’ expertise within the business.
