Was the Strike Worth It? What Writers Say Out Loud vs. in Whispers
As the labor action hits a one-year anniversary, a dozen writers, showrunners and agents tell me how they really feel
Elaine Low covers the TV market from L.A. She recently wrote about the two words TV are allergic to, the worries of Hollywood’s top earners, and where the TV jobs are (and not).
Deep into a Sunday night in the last week of Sept. 2023, a throng of TV and film writers had overtaken Idle Hour, the barrel-shaped bar in North Hollywood that had become one of several impromptu celebratory spots after the Writers Guild of America and Hollywood’s studios announced a tentative agreement, ending the writers strike.
“It feels like a war ended,” one scribe there told me that night, exuding palpable relief and joy. After 146 days, the sacrifices were many: Careers were put on hold, productions shut down, savings accounts decimated. All for the cause of making the profession more sustainable for the next generation.
A year later, what fruit did that war bear? The town, already in the throes of a painful contraction well before the WGA — and then the SAG-AFTRA — strike, has yet to recover fully.
“There have been a few things that I’ve been asking for post-strike,” says Arrowverse showrunner Marc Guggenheim. “My reps have said that some of the things I’ve been asking for might annoy the studios and my response has been, ‘Don’t blame me. If I’m gonna walk in circles holding a sign for eight months, I’m gonna spend that time thinking of things I want in my next deal.’”
Yet in conversations with more than a dozen writers, showrunners, studio execs and TV agents to get a sense of what has transpired over the past year — and what contract gains they’ve seen in action — the reaction is mixed about whether it was all worth it.
Ask any writer on the record and they’ll tell you: Yes, absolutely worth it. Without question. They saw the future of an industry whose legacy business model had been irreparably rattled by streaming technology. An entire generation of young (and not so young) writers were struggling in an already unstable profession that had only become more volatile over the past decade. Their fight was necessary.
But in whispered conversations, the responses can sometimes be a little less enthused, a little more hedged. The gains from the new three-year contract are real, but so, too, is the financial pain of the last 12 months. Here’s what people have told me.
In this issue, you’ll learn:
The wage gains writers have seen in the immediate wake of going back to work
The negotiated benefit that WGA president Meredith Stiehm believes is “huge”
The first recipients of the viewership-based streaming bonus
Why there’s grumbling from writers who haven’t been able to see the remunerative benefits from the strike yet
How mini-rooms remain a controversial deal point a year after the strike
Where writers are seeing a return to normal
The career-building right that writers are most looking forward to taking advantage of
How writer solidarity shapes up strong a year later
How the strike further emboldened writers to fight for what they believe they’re entitled to