https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2023-07-18/sag-aftra-strike-bob-iger-fran-drescher-barry-diller-david-zaslav-revolution
With writers and actors on strike, the studios have a full-blown labor revolt on their hands — and they have no one but themselves to blame.
The folks in charge aren’t healthy enough to fight what’s coming so they’re just gonna trash it all.
The people we are dealing with have always been shitty bitter assholes and FINALLY the masks are off.
Nothings gonna change until the studios get broken up. They own the production, content, distribution, the wire, and the channels. There’s no real competition, too much concentrated power, and no way to shop around your product. When your Netflix-produced show gets canceled, it’s not like they’re gonna let you walk over to Paramount to negotiate a new deal. You can’t go from a streamer to a cable channel or a broadcast channel because all three are owned by the same conglomerate.
The only reason Minx got to move to Starz is because it wasn’t produced by HBO. Same with One Day At A Time.
Both sides have a lot more to lose than they realize here. It's never been easier to produce and distribute content, production companies aren't as necessary to make good entertainment. At the same time, the industry is facing more competition than ever, foreign film quality is rising and easier to see, traditional venues of theaters and cable TV are struggling to stay relevant, streaming opened up back catalogs.
Streaming isn't a magic pile of money that will get all the actors and writers paid. Look at the music industry, Spotify pays pennies to all but the most popular artists, and with film/TV that money gets divided further.
Spotify pays pennies to all but the most popular artists
That's what the strike is about, getting paid a fair wage from streaming. The streamers can afford it, leastways they could when there were essentially two large streamers. The biggest driver behind this whole thing is Disney, which has always been a cuntish entity, and the fact that with their acquisitions from Murdoch, another cuntish entity, have decided they can push everyone around and digitally recreate their voices and likenesses in perpetuity and pay them fuck all for the privilege.
Film production is continuing in the UK as it is cleared through Equity the UK actors union. Could be that the top tier of US actors will still be able to work.
That's the thing though even when it was Netflix and Hulu, there wasn't big money in streaming if you break it down to the actor and writer level. Now that it's fragmented, piracy is picking back up. Broadcast TV vastly overpaid for content compared to streaming.
To quote Livia Soprano, the streaming services are like a man with a Virginia ham under one arm crying the blues 'cause they ain't got no bread.