The TV writers are sorta mad

Whenever you watch a rerun of the classic Jim and Pam finally kiss “Casino Night” episode of The Office on TV, the episode’s writer, director, and actors all make a little money from residuals. But if you watch that same episode on Peacock, they don’t.

And for the roughly 10,000-member Writers Guild of America (WGA), that's a big problem. Though it’ll soon have a chance to rectify this – the writer’s union announced earlier this week that negotiations will begin with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers, which represents studios such as Disney, Apple, and Netflix, on March 20.

If a deal isn’t struck before the existing contract expires on May 1, the writers may strike. Which could cause the production of most TV series to halt completely.

🤔 What does the WGA want?... To put it bluntly, a bigger piece of the pie. Total earnings for WGA-West writers have dropped by more than 12% from 2019 totals, per the WGA’s 2021 annual report – while, for example, Netflix’s revenue increased by over $9 billion over the same period.

The reason for this, according to the WGA, is outdated agreements that fail to capture a content landscape dominated by streamers like Netflix and Apple. A couple examples:

• Fees for shows on streaming platforms are one-time, not based on how often content is watched (or residuals, aka how it’s traditionally worked for years). This significantly decreases the upside for popular shows.
• Writers get paid per episode, and the number of episodes per show has decreased over recent years.

🚫✍️ Bottom line: The WGA is no stranger to strikes. In 2007, all union writers walked off the job for 100 days – during which production on most TV series had to stop because they had no new scripts to shoot.