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Ryan Knutson: Mike says streaming services have completely upended how writers get compensated and made the profession incredibly unstable. Ryan Knutson: The TV industry was good, but a lot was about to change. The first big thing in the mid 2000s was that studios started putting content on the internet and writers thought they're being shortchanged. The dispute led to the union's last strike in 2007. Mike was on the picket line back then too.Ryan Knutson: The strike lasted 100 days. Eventually, studios agreed to give writers a cut of the revenue generated from online videos.
Ryan Knutson: Mike says that streaming made writing for TV much less stable. Instead of working for nearly a year on two dozen episodes for a network show. Ryan Knutson: The other big change brought about by streaming is the way that shows are green lit. In the past, studios made just one pilot episode. And if a network liked it, they'd buy the whole show. But streaming services didn't want to make pilots. They wanted to launch full seasons.
Ryan Knutson: Because after that eight weeks is up, then the studio will take the script that's already finished and say, "Okay, now we'll turn it into a show if we happen to like it." Ryan Knutson: How realistic is that though, for just the way the industry, the pace at which it works and the way it works to say that there needs to be... Won't that slow things down potentially if you're saying we need more time?
Ryan Knutson: It's these guardrails that the studios seem most resistant to. The Alliance of Studios said in a statement that they've already offered "generous increases in compensation." Studios say they're willing to pay writers more for mini room sessions, and they're willing to pay more for streaming residuals too, though not as much as the writers are asking for. But they said they didn't want to budge on things like mandatory staffing.
Ryan Knutson: There's also a concern among writers about the rise of artificial intelligence and new AI services that are able to generate entire scripts based on simple prompts.