The 2023 writers' strike, explained — and how it will affect your favorite TV shows

Описание: It’s been a dramatic week in Hollywood, to say the least.

On May 2, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) — an alliance of two labor unions representing over 11,000 film, television, news, radio and online writers — went on strike, demanding higher pay and a stable pay structure, as well as fairer deals and contracts and provisions about artificial intelligence, per a list of WGA proposals.

The guild, when announcing the strike, called this moment an "existential crisis" for writers.

“We have reached this moment today not of our own choosing but because the companies’ assault on writer income and working conditions have pushed us to an existential brink,” WGA negotiating committee co-chair Chris Keyser said on the organization’s website.

For the past week, writers have been picketing the headquarters of major studios including Netflix, Amazon, Warner Bros., Universal Studios, and others.

Protestors have been brandishing signs demanding higher wages and targeting studio executives with tongue-in-cheek messages like, “Give up just ONE yacht” and “Pay your writers or we’ll spoil ‘Succession.’”

With the strike entering its second week, production has halted on several major TV shows.

“Saturday Night Live” went dark on May 6, and late night shows including “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” also stopped taping live episodes, airing reruns instead.

Why are writers walking off the job? Here’s what to know about why writers are striking, and what the strike means for upcoming TV show and movie releases.

Why are Hollywood writers striking?
Writers went on strike after six weeks of negotiations failed with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, a body that represents major Hollywood studios and production companies like Discovery-Warner, NBC Universal, Paramount, Sony, Netflix, Amazon, Apple and Disney.

One of the strike’s key demands is higher compensation.

Median weekly writer-producer pay has declined 23 percent over the last decade when adjusting for inflation, according to a recent WGA report.

“Our wages have been falling in the last few years as the streamers’ profits have been skyrocketing,” writer Amanda Mercedes tells TODAY.com.

Mercedes, 36, who lives in Burbank, California, is a staff writer for the ABC crime procedural “The Rookie: Feds.” She says the rise of streaming services like Netflix have “changed the business model completely,” making it harder for writers to find consistent, well-paying work.

Whereas a successful show could have run for seasons during the cable era, giving writers steady job and learning for years, the binge-able, big-budget shows made for streamers are typically shorter and renewed with less consistency. Writers have to scramble from jobt to job.

“With traditional TV models, jobs were lasting six months, nine months, a year. I saw a writer the other day that said that her last job was four weeks, and that’s just not sustainable to be able to string together gigs in that way to make a living," Mercedes says.

Streaming also lead to different format of writers' rooms. Mercedes pointed to the rising use of “mini rooms” — scaled-down writers’ rooms that hire fewer writers for shorter periods of time, and often pay less, according to the WGA. In a mini room, a small group of writers typically work with the showrunner to break down the season's plot points and work on scripts, which are finished without them.

“Mini rooms are crushing the ability for writers to string together jobs the way that we used to,” Mercedes says.

There’s a lot at stake for Mercedes, who spoke with TODAY.com just before heading out to join the picket line at the headquarters of Paramount.

Mercedes started her staff writing job last May and joined the WGA in September, just in time to be eligible for health insurance before welcoming a baby this February.

“It’s objectively a terrible time to have just broken in and started a family,” she wrote in a recent Instagram post. “But I will be wearing that baby on the picket line so that I have a shred of hope to stay in this business while raising him.”

Writers are also fighting for higher residual payments, or the payments writers receive when shows they have worked on are re-released, whether as reruns or in syndication.

According to the WGA, half of all writers now work in streaming, which pays fewer residuals for new and pre-existing shows.

Valentina Garza, a producer and writer who has worked on shows including “Wednesday,” “Only Murders in the Building” and “Jane the Virgin,” shared one stark example on Twitter of how low residual payments can be on streaming services.

“In case anyone’s wondering why the WGA is on strike, this is my streaming residual check for two episodes of 'Jane the Virgin,'” she tweeted, sharing a photo of a check made out for three cents. “One for .01 another for .02. I think the streamers can do better.”

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