Creators Move to Unionize. Hollywood Wants to Help. Solidarity Not Guaranteed
I break down the tension between independence and worker protection as an ‘industrial age’ movement scrambles to catch up to digital creators’ growing power
This is a preview of Like & Subscribe, my standalone Ankler Media newsletter on the creator economy. I talked to Mark Fischbach (aka Markiplier) about his film, Iron Lung; scooped Substack’s new TV app; spoke to Wheelhouse CEO Brent Montgomery about microdramas; and wrote about TikTok’s and BuzzFeed’s moves in vertical video. I’m natalie@theankler.com
Hello! I’m writing this column from somewhere on the 5 Freeway (don’t worry, I’m not driving) as I head home from an exhilarating weekend watching my hometown Seattle Seahawks win the Super Bowl. There were a lot of creators on the ground in San Francisco — Logan Paul’s suite overlooked my seat, MrBeast was captured on the stadium cameras and Alix Earle was spotted dancing on the field during Bad Bunny’s halftime show.
At this point, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that creators were all over your television sets during the game. After all, Super Bowl Sunday is a lot about the football, but it’s even more about the brands.
I’ll still be celebrating my fellow USC Trojan Sam Darnold and the rest of the Seahawks this week, but a good portion of the entertainment community has moved on to another important chapter: contract negotiations between actors union SAG-AFTRA and the Hollywood studios. As my Ankler colleague Ashley Cullins previewed last week, these talks — the writers and directors will soon begin their negotiations, too — have the potential to reshape the entertainment labor landscape, setting wage standards and influencing production trends for years to come.
But the Hollywood guilds don’t have direct influence over the vast majority of short-form video distributed on the major social media platforms.
Should they? It’s a question more people have been asking lately, particularly as entertainment unions look to expand their membership ranks (and, let’s be honest, increase contributions to pension and healthcare funds) amid the industrywide decline in production. Two of Hollywood’s most powerful guilds, SAG-AFTRA and WGA West, have made moves to organize creators and workers on microdrama productions.
When I started calling up sources, everyone I spoke with agreed that creators would benefit from access to more affordable healthcare, industry standards around audience measurement and rates, and better terms with the social media platforms. But they all had different ideas about the best approach.
“There need to be a lot of options,” says Shira Lazar, the founder and CEO of digital media brand What’s Trending who recently teamed with U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna to establish a Creator Bill of Rights that would provide safeguards for online entertainers.
Today I dig into the complex topic of unionizing creators, exploring what’s been tried, what hasn’t worked and what industry experts believe is the best path to making the job of “creator” into a sustainable career.
Over at Like & Subscribe I break down:
OG YouTuber Hank Green’s Internet Creators Guild and why it shuttered after just three years
Why the creator economy is a complicated industry to unionize
The “shrinking iceberg” in Hollywood that has led WGA West and SAG-AFTRA to start organizing creators
The engine behind SAG-AFTRA’s “influencer agreement” and the response from its members
The microdrama company using SAG-AFTRA’s “verticals agreement,” and what the new rules really mean for production costs
What drives creator resistance to unions in general — and Hollywood guilds in particular
Creators’ power and demands as their work increasingly drives global commerce: “I don’t think we can say this is a Wild West anymore”
The rest of this column is for paid subscribers to Like & Subscribe, a standalone newsletter dedicated to the creator economy from Ankler Media.
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