How the writers’ strike will impact your favourite shows and Canadian jobs

CLIP You are listening to a Frequency Podcast network production.

Jordan Heath Rawlings If you’ve ever stared at the homepage of a streaming app, trying and failing to choose between all those brand new buzzy shows that it seems everyone is talking about. Well, good news, I guess that problem might soon be solved for you, in the worst possible way.

CLIP Overnight, more than 11,000 film and TV writers went on strike. After the Writer’s Guild of America and a group representing TV networks and studios failed to agree on a contract.

Jordan Heath Rawlings The impact of this writer’s strike won’t be felt immediately. Your Netflix homepage didn’t change overnight, but if it drags on, as it is expected to. You will definitely see it. We only have to look back at some shows that tried to make a go of it without writers the last time this happened. And of course, the real impact will be felt by the people who work in film or television production. And if you haven’t been paying attention in recent years, in Canada, that is a lot of people and a lot of money. So, the writers are on strike. There’s no easy settlement looming, what happens now both to the shows and the films? But also to the people who rely on their production to make a living. And is there more at stake in this strike than it might appear? Could this battle be over more than wages? Is it perhaps…a fight for the future of the streaming era? Duh Duh Duh You see, this is what happens when you try to get dramatic without professional writers.

Jordan Heath Rawlings I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. This is the big story. Barry Hertz is the film editor for The Globe and Mail. And I guess this is your job for the foreseeable future, Barry?

Barry Hertz Hopefully not too long, but yes.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Can you explain the actual strike as in, you know, who is striking and why? What are the issues here?

Barry Hertz So, the people that are on strike right now are the almost 12,000 members of the Writer’s Guild of America, which is a guild representing screenwriters for film and television. So, the issues are complicated and not so complicated. It all kind of boils down to, as you might expect, money. Basically since the advent of the streaming wars, the whole business of writing for entertainment, specifically writing for television has been upended. Whereas writers used to make a very comfortable living, you know, writing for a show for 22, 24 episode seasons that they would then get residuals, as those shows would go into syndication in, other broadcasters and other territories. Now, because most of television comes through us through streaming services. And most of those shows last eight to ten episodes a season, often canceled rather arbitrarily, and most importantly, remain within the walls of those streaming services. That means there’s no syndication, money, there’s no residuals. You’re paid kind of upfront. And the business is just very different. The writer’s rooms are smaller, there are day rates, there are fewer show runners, and you also just don’t have any leverage in terms of contract negotiations because the data about how successful a show is, AKA ratings, are not as forthcoming from the streamers. So what it comes down to is lack of job security, lack of money. And then overall, the specter of AI and different technology threatening to even further disrupt what has been disrupted.

Jordan Heath Rawlings So while all these issues are at play, and as writing has become, I guess less and less lucrative, what do we know about how much money the streaming services are making? Is this a case of the bosses getting richer and the workers getting poorer? Or is everybody sort of fighting for the pie?

Barry Hertz No, that’s pretty much it. I mean, if you look at some of the interesting, picket signs, you’ll see that people are basically pointing out the humongous salaries of the heads of those streaming and media services. You know, the heads of Netflix getting something like 50 something million a year. The CEO of Warner Brothers Discovery, getting even more, you know, this is all driven by profit and growth, and it all, you know, starts at the top and very slowly, very stingily trickles down to the actual creatives. So, while streamers are certainly not in the home clear in terms of revenue and profit. It is a very difficult market out there. There are more streaming services than ever before, there will be a contraction in that industry. And the advertising market for traditional broadcasters is also down because of the, you know, quote unquote recession. Nobody’s quite making out as they hope to. But yeah, the people at the top, they’re fine. They’re more than fine. This is exactly a case of writers wanting their fair share of the pie because as we know, content starts with the writers.

Jordan Heath Rawlings So you mentioned off the top that you hope it’s not long. How forlorn is that hope you know? How far apart do we know these sides are and will this be a prolonged action?

Barry Hertz From all reports, it seems that the sides are quite far apart going into the strike for the past several weeks of negotiations. A lot of the, punditry class was very skeptical that a deal could be reached. It almost seemed like a strike was an inevitability, and that actually might be a good thing because the system needs to break a little. Perhaps before people can build it back up to what it needs to be. The system wasn’t working, for the past several years, you know, at the heights of the streaming war. So maybe, you know, throwing a wrench into the machine can actually make sure that we go into it and, and come out with something a little better. That certainly works for the creative class. In terms of how long it will last, I don’t, you know, anybody could make a guess. But I don’t think that we’re looking at something that is going to be a short one or two week thing. The last writer’s strike was in 2007, 2008, and that lasted a hundred days. I think we’re in for something similar.

Jordan Heath Rawlings So as we begin this action, how will what I watch on TV or the movies I watch be impacted?

Barry Hertz Little to none. Right now this shows that are currently airing, you know, the latest season of Succession, the latest season of Barry, you know, whatever you kind of are binging right now, The Ambassador on Netflix. Those shows have been done in the can for months now. And there are plenty of shows, so many shows that are just waiting down the pipeline for the spring and the summer. I mean, you look at something like a streamer like Apple TV plus there’s like half a dozen, extremely high profile, extremely expensive, extremely interesting shows that are gonna be coming out in the next two weeks. So there’s tons of stuff in the pipeline and this is kind of, you know, part and parcel of why there’s a problem right now. Like the streamers just commissioned so much stuff, jam it through, and then it’s almost forgotten about. Anyways, so we’ll be fine. The average consumer will be fine for the spring and the summer. What you kind of are going to be noticing immediately is if you are a fan of late night talk shows. Those have gone dark immediately. Soap operas, stuff like that. Anything that has a writer staff that is churning out things daily. Saturday Night Live, for instance, they announced they’re canceling their show this weekend. Who knows when they’ll be back.

Jordan Heath Rawlings What about shows that aren’t in the can already and coming out in the next little while? Maybe the scripts have been written, but the production is still sort of underway. I read that HBO’s House of the Dragon will continue because, it’s quote already written. What does that actually mean in practice and what should we expect from shows like that?

Barry Hertz Expect to be very nervous about the second season of House of the Dragon. This has happened, you know, again, in the previous writer’s strike, technically, yeah, if a script is written and a production is shooting underway, it can continue, so long as you don’t need to bring anybody in to rewrite. And I’m talking about the smallest of changes, any kind of change to a script, that’s on a WGA production would require a WGA member to come in and fix it up, even tweak it up, just, you know, a little bit of a touch up. So that means that House of the Dragon. Unless they’re going to skirt rules or do some scabbing is going to be, you know, really bound by what’s on the page. As of May 1st midnight, any deviation from such is going to be a problem. So often scripts do need that kind of tweak. They sometimes need writers on the set. They sometimes need to be sent back, so, we’ll see just how that actually comes to fruition. I mean, we can look at something like, uh, a good example would be Friday Night Lights, which had that horrible, I don’t know if you remember, second season plot line in which Landry killed a guy. That was necessitated because there wasn’t time to kind of rewrite it before the strike happened.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Oh, I didn’t know that.

Barry Hertz Yeah, same thing. A similar situation happened with NBC’s, superhero series Heroes. They had scripts written in the can. And the strike happened and they went with those and we saw what a mess that kind of been. So yeah, technically something can go forward, but if you want it to be, I don’t know, good, then you’re in a little bit of a pickle.

Jordan Heath Rawlings If this turns into a prolonged action, one of the reasons we wanted to talk to you, somebody from Canada specifically, is because I know that the film and TV production business in this country is huge and has gotten bigger in recent years. We’ll talk a little bit about how that’s impacted, but first, just how big is the industry here? How much business are we talking about?

Barry Hertz We’re talking about a lot, and, we kind of have to first talk about it by splitting the industry here into two, if you will. There is the Canadian homegrown production sector in which we write and shoot our own television shows and films that air on Canadian networks or you know, are released in Canadian theatres. And there’s also something called foreign service production where, projects that originate, say, out of Hollywood or another territory. They come in here, they take advantage of our tax credits and our great crews and our great locations, and yada, yada, yada. And we staff those up. So we have Canadian crews, we have Canadian tradespeople, Canadian craftspeople, maybe a few Canadian performers, assistant directors, the like. But most of those are, you know, written by Americans starring Americans directed by Americans. So if it’s one of those productions, a service production that’s here and it’s shooting right now, you know something like Umbrella Academy out of Netflix or the Good Doctor over in Vancouver that airs on one of the big US television networks. If those scripts are, you know, in the can, they can proceed as planned and according to the stage hand Union IATSE Canada. As of yesterday, there have been no shutdowns of productions that are already shooting here. But that’s going to eventually change once you run out of those in the canned scripts. And that’s going to be a problem and that’s gonna put a lot of Canadians out of work, potentially. Now on a Canadian show, you know, something like a CBC series, like Run the Burbs or City TV series like Hudson and Rex or anything that is made by Canadians airing in Canada. That’s fine because those operate under the Writer’s Guild of Canada rules and there is a collective agreement. In there, that is in place and is fine. However, if you are a dual member of the Writer’s Guild of Canada and the Writer’s Guild of America, which a fair number of people are, you are definitely not allowed to work on an American show that would normally be reserved. You know, that Writer’s Guild of America people are on, that’s considered a struck production, so you can’t jump over the fence, even though you are a dual member.

Jordan Heath Rawlings What if you’re not a member and you’re only a Canadian member? Would any of those people take work on those shows to keep them going, or that’s just considered scabbing and totally unlikely?

Barry Hertz That would be considered scabbing. Yeah. The Writer’s Guild of Canada has issued, a directive saying, we expect you not to work on any struck productions that would normally be staffed by WGA members. So it would be very much frowned upon.

Jordan Heath Rawlings How worried are people in this sector about the pipeline running dry before this gets resolved?

Barry Hertz I think right now, the worry is low. From an advertiser perspective, I’ve certainly seen it’s low. From a content perspective, it’s low. You know, if this goes on for a hundred days, let’s say like the last time, the pipeline will be dented, but easily repaired. And you know, streamers like Netflix, they have so much in their catalog. Reality stuff that doesn’t require writers, foreign language series from places like France and South Korea that can find new life in the catalog and just tons of stuff that’s already in the can, that they can survive a, a good deal while longer. Some of the streamers and studios, I hate to say it, but they’re probably, they’re not all that upset about a strike because this allows them to save some money by not paying a bunch of writers. And also cancel some production deals. Maybe they felt a little, uneasy about with, kind of force majeure liabilities. You know, this is an act of God. They couldn’t predict it. Let’s strike it from the record. Save a couple hundred million dollars. So I feel like they are totally fine letting this kind of cool for a few months so they can kind of shore up their books and then get back to the table, before the real panic hits. The real panic I think would hit around this late summer fall. That’s when you’re getting into threatening the Emmy awards. That’s when the, you know, fall Oscar season, the award season kind of happens, and if a lot of productions, a lot of films, for instance, aren’t able to get in front of the camera because the scripts haven’t been ready, then you’re seeing studios probably moving some big tent pole projects to kicking them down the can to next year or so to fill those gaps that they see coming. Then we’re starting to have a problem.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Is there any upside here for those all Canadian productions that you mentioned, the the CBC dramas, the Hudson and Rexes of the world, if that pipeline starts to get short, like will that be something that the US streamers turn to and say, Hey, this is made and we can keep making it.

Barry Hertz Yeah, I mean the Hudson and Rexes of the world. I think you and I just invented the Hudson and Rex cinematic universe.

Jordan Heath Rawlings I would, I would like to make that universe happen.

Barry Hertz The spinoff potentials are endless. But yeah, and this is something that, again, was kind of echoed in the previous writer’s strike, is that eventually the US broadcasters got a little desperate for fresh content and started licensing US rights for Canadian series. Uh, you know, the CTV Police Show Flashpoint ended up I believe on ABC, The Listener, another CTV production ended up on CBS, was it? And so, yeah, that could happen again. Where US broadcasters and streamers kind of say, hey, you know, the cupboard’s looking a little bare for English language content that seems kind of American, but maybe features the CN tower and some funny colored money. Let’s pay you a little bit and, and license that over here. So, I mean, that is good for those involved in those shows. It gets a bigger spotlight on their work. It opens some doors maybe, but any gains are a little short-lived. It doesn’t really lead to long-term boom times for the Canadian sector.

Jordan Heath Rawlings The last thing I wanna ask you about is, I guess the legacy of this action, which may be the wrong term, but you know, you touched on a couple of times during this conversation stuff that we remember from the 2007, 2008 strike, like Heroes and, and Friday Night Lights. But just in general, when you think back to that time in TV and film, was there this dip in quality that came after it? Like, was it noticeable on the whole, I guess, or just like in a couple of individual series that you pointed out?

Barry Hertz You know, I, I think it was just a little bit of a dip in those kind of exceptions. I think it came back pretty quickly, you know, I don’t think there was a long-term knock around effect. I think the real, you know, Inflection point post that strike was the streaming wars where it was decided that the business of making television was going to be completely reinvented. And, you know, we’ve seen that happen, you know, so much of what is broadcast today. There are, you know, still prestige products out there. There are still series that get people talking. But for every one phenomenon that arrives, there are 10, 20 more series that are instantly forgettable designed with only quick keyword kind of searches in mind. And it shows, I mean, the, you know, it’s hard to become invested in creating a great series when you know that it could be arbitrarily canceled. It’s episode order could be cut and you’re just not sure of how many people are watching it, how much of a success it is because the viewership data is kept under lock and key by these, you know, gigantic technology companies. So the incentive to create something special to kind of work for your success has been dented and I feel that is a a little bit why the television landscape right now can feel both overwhelming and underwhelming at the same time.

Jordan Heath Rawlings That sounds like a huge existential problem for the medium in general?

Barry Hertz It does. And I mean, you know, we’re seeing it, you know, it’s the Wall Street kind of growth or die mentality that has really infected storytelling in our modern consumer culture and it’s sad. And it’s kind of led to this breaking point moment, which again, you know, things sometimes have to break in order for them to be built up to better standards. So maybe this is a good thing ultimately.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Barry, thank you for this, and I guess we’ll see what happens in the next month or two.

Barry Hertz Thank you.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Barry Hertz, film editor at The Globe and Mail. That was the big story. For more, you can head to thebigstorypodcast.ca. You can of course, email us at hello@thebigstorypodcast.ca You can also follow this show on Twitter @thebigstoryfpn, and you can call us and leave a voicemail by calling 416-935-5935. The Big Story is available in every podcast player and on your smart speaker if you ask it to play The Big Story podcast. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow.