The fact that this article has zero reference to the WGA action against the agencies is bizarre. All the issues TV writers are facing in the article are connected to the guild action.
I see in these comments a lot of different hot takes either pro or against writers or Hollywood. But what seems to have eluded everyone is very, very simple. Worker solidarity.
Much like professional baseball players, an outside observer can bemoan the salaries protected by union contracts. But the fact remains the adversary behind all of these issues is not OTHER workers, other writers, etc. It is the companies making RECORD PROFITS in the billions while continuing to squeeze workers of every kind.
An article like this that fails to place the issues into the proper context serves as an insidious weapon of the powerful against the weak, who turn on each other and fail to see the root of our common problems.
6
I'm just a viewer of programs on broadcast and cable, not a professional in the entertainment industry like the writers profiled here, but I've long wondered what sense it was supposed to make to have a "series" last even ten (10) episodes as many, yes, network shows, though not all, do (as opposed to what this article claims), not to mention those on cable.
Any show, I figured, would have a set amount of development that it'd need and all of that was now being, effectively, "pro-rated" among a smaller number of episodes. This also forces networks to book more of these "series" during the course of a year because they'd still need to program the same number of hours overall during a year regardless of how many episodes a "series" would have.
This smaller season size also hamstrings producers who'd need more "seasons" in order to have enough episodes for syndication should they wish to go that route.
So, who truly wins from this? Why not keep series at their larger commitments like they had in the past? Show staffs would get more work as would the actors and other support personnel on those series, producers would reach a syndicate-able number of episodes sooner, and network programmers wouldn't need to search for more "series" to fill their programming needs once they have some they already like for their schedules.
Who loses from such a move? I don't know, so why not bring those season-lengths back? I've yet to have someone answer this question intelligently.
1
@Bram Weiser With streaming the singular goal of 100-episode syndication has gone. And the cost of "pro-rating" the development of a new series pales in comparison to actual production. The scale has now tipped in favor of committing to as few episodes as possible to mitigate risk. Now with short seasons, studios gain leverage over producers and creators in negotiation. It took the erosion of the protection of agencies pushing back for their clients.
1
@Chris Thanks for responding.
OK, so maybe not 100...how about 65 (13 weeks of 5-day-a-week programming) or 52 (1 per week)? Limiting production to 10(!) or so per "season" significantly impacts station managers who'd want to program more than just another talk show or court program.
Also, when I said, "pro-rated", yes I was referring to financial cost, but also to the time, effort, and "people-power" needed to bring a series to life regardless of how many episodes are actually being ordered by a network. Produce a 10-episode series instead of, say, one that has 22 and all of the people involved will need to seek additional work sooner while nonetheless doing a similar amount of work (in the development and pilot stages) as any 22-episode series season would likely require as well.
I can perhaps see an idea of doing a shorter 1st season (in case the series doesn't become a hit), but, once it proves to be successful, why in the world wouldn't those involved want to have later seasons more like the 22-episode ones we saw in recent years? Sorry but I just don't get it.
Shows with traditional broadcast season lengths are mostly not very good, as evidenced by the examples cited in this article.
1
New York Times:
Black Mirror isn't a great example. Charlie Brooker wrote every one of those "just three episodes". Further, that was after (again single-handedly) writing 'Bandersnatch', which folded hours of scripted content into a single 'episode'.
Brooker didn't exactly have a "slow" season!
BM is an outlier, with the creator writing a majority of the episodes (true of all its seasons). So... find better examples.
What needs to happen to balance all this out is for writers to get a carry in the actual IP of the script and the subsequent production. My guess is that all the subscription plays for streaming cannot work. Households simply can't afford multiple subscriptions. And the streamers - Netflix, Hulu etc - will not be able to write blank cheques to buy market share as Netflix did in the early days. There will be a pivot and private equity will fund productions directly, removing the financial burden from the streamers. For successful writers this will lead to an elevation on their actual value to the model and equity or IP carry will be seen as of vital interest to the backers. The production will leased to the streamer, which will be no more than a platform business, and revenues shared. Once this shift occurs it will make sense for all the subscription model streamers to move onto the same platform. Thus one 'subscription' will be all consumers need to have, with revenue streams apportioned based on consumption to the 'owners' shared with the streamers and the platform. This is a far more equitable system. One in which the writer will be correctly positioned as a value creator. Writers for movies and TV product which is streamed will become akin to writers who earn royalties, own copyright and create valued literary estates. How long will this take? 5 yrs is my guess before you see green shoots. Hang on in, the wheel will turn.
3
@EB From your lips to God's (Disney's) ears.
1
Something not mentioned in this piece is a WGA rule preventing someone from being a staff writer on more than one show per year -- clearly a policy from earlier times, when series had more episodes per season, and seasons were defined by the calendar.
So even if someone who landed a gig in the writers' room of a show with a limited run COULD manage to find regular work on another series, that's not allowed... which clearly curtails one's ability to earn a full-time living.
6
I am in my mid-60s, so I remember when a season was 39 episodes running from early September to late May or early June. The ensuing weeks on the calendars were mostly reruns of those shows. I watch a few shows on the cable. Twelve episodes hardly seems like a season to me. (Survivor wants us to believe it has been on the air for 40 seasons, which to me is 40 calendar years, not 12-15 episodes per season.) Me thinx it all comes down to money. I kn ow their is a standard 7 year contract imposed on actors, if their show lasts that long, but I am not sure about writers and exec producers.
3
To be clear, there has been an explosion in the number of script (and other) writing opportunities in Hollywood and its satellites. Most of the people complaining about the contours of this plenitude would not be working at all if not for the very boom they’re pointing fingers at.
4
@Mia I worked in Hollywood when, due to long seasons, writers were able to earn a living. There's never been more opportunities to make less money.
The "explosion" of tv script opportunities that you speak of translates into a writer, if he or she is lucky, getting to write for a show with a tiny number of script
assignments.
Which means most writers are in deep financial trouble. The "boon" that you speak of is as real as Santa Claus.
10
It's the gig economy for the middle class. Pretty soon, no one will be anything more than a contractor.
That said, British television has always had substantially shorter seasons than US tv. Some of my favorite shows may only ever had 6 or 8 episodes per year. How do writers make a living over there? The cat's out of the bag so this trend seems unlikely to change. Maybe we have something to learn from our neighbors across the pond.
2
In most other countries, TV shows have much smaller budgets, and writers & actors make substantially less. But they work on many more series. The current "short" season model is actually designed to make US TV more able to fit into the faster rotation of other markets. That's why HBO et al started doing 12-13 episode seasons.
@Girl on the IRT
Oh, well, there you go. So, we are following the foreign model now.
Funny how when people suggest following the foreign model on things like providing health care and education, it's communist. But when we do it to pay people *less* and make them less secure, it's all good. Ahhhh, we're so great. (smh)
3
Issues in TV have also had a devastating effect on the livelihoods of writers in film who are a smaller and less powerful minority in the guild.
In April, the WGA forced all writers in TV and Film to fire their agents over a disagreement over TV packaging that had nothing whatsoever to do with feature writers. The vast majority of writers still don't have their agents back nearly a year later. And film writers are much more dependent on their agents than TV writers to work because we can't network with other writers to staff on a show.
If the Guild goes on a prolonged strike in May (a definite possibility) over TV issues like the ones described here, many feature writers may well take a fatal career blow to support our richer and better connected brethren.
5
When you choose to work in an industry full of "clamoring masses" hoping to get their foot in... you're considered on some level semi-disposable. And you're ripe for being used and tossed.
The industry seems to think that writers are literally a dime a dozen, and that scripts just magically generate themselves.
As long as that belief is allowed to remain intact, there will be a constant change-of-shifts to the Next Incoming Writer/s.
7
@Kevinizon I'm a software engineer in NYC. Ever since the goto job for every dropout who couldn't be a anything else, Software Engineers are increasingly in this position as well. First, we get eaten by younger software engineers and then compete with the entire world for wages. And we are unhireable after 45, unless you are Kerinighan or Ritchie. There's always someone who will do it cheaper.
12
The streaming boom has created a huge need for content, which is great for writers, but it's still a nightmare lifestyle. A few make it big with thousands(of very talented people) struggling
on the sidelines.
4
@Paul Shindler. Like so much of American life, Hollywood has become a 1% business. If you are Ryan Murphy or Shonda Rhymes or a handful of others, you are getting 9 figure deals, and honestly, the studios (including the streamers) see the rest of us as basically expendable.
4
This has happened in show biz before. It used to be called the 'Studio System'. Instead of the new technology of streaming it was the new technology of network television that caused a disruption. This is when independents (Coppola, Scorsese, Lucas, etc.) found a niche by making their own movies. My advice to today's writers? DIY. Own your product soup to nuts and license it out. Building a streaming service isn't so hard technically. That's why they are popping all over the place. That's a lot of buyers. Netflix is just a room full of servers. It's big, but it is no longer the only game in town.
16
@Frederick
Book authors have gone that way with self publishing. They get out their work that publishers are ignoring and keep most of their sales $$ instead of paltry commission.
Oh, then there’s the catch. For every famous rags to riches story, there are literally thousands of books languishing. Zero times any sales commission however big is still zero. (And maybe a reason no publishers picked up those products.)
The reality of the craft is that most writers don’t even make a living at it. They teach English, or sell insurance.
3
This is not a sustainable business model for writers. The ability to get health insurance and a pension from the writers union, the Writers Guild, is based on how much you earn.
With these ridiculously short seasons, no one can earn enough to "win" benefits.
So now there are entertainment conglomerates, worth billions, where employees don't make enough money to go to the doctor or pay the high deductibles come with Obamacare. But, hey, that's showbiz kid!
I quit writing in Hollywood due to corruption that I could no longer tolerate. But lack of benefits, while Hollywood CEO's make 40 million dollars a year, is truly the greatest "evil".
29
@WS This is untrue. The WGA minimum for earning insurance is around 40k a year.
@Blue I know that there's a minimum to getting insurance. But that doesn't help the WGA members that are unemployed. And the short, short script orders have been a disaster for writers.
A labor lawyer told me that she believes that easily 50% of WGA members fail to secure work during any given year.
1
Is this why no one adequate could be hired for the last two seasons of Game of Thrones? Anyone worth their salt was locked into something else?
17
@someone The creators didn't hire women to write. GOT was a very sexist show. They hired next to no female directors. The egos of those men and their own greed and misogyny made for two terrible seasons. HBO didn't care. @someone The creators didn't hire women to write and had next to no female directors. The egos of the white male team and their greed and misogyny made for two terrible seasons. HBO didn't care.
1
I've made my living as a freelance writer for over 20 years -- without ever cracking the market for episodic TV or streaming video
I mean this in the nicest way, the 'problems' these writers face are problems that any *other* writer would love to have.
21
@Mark Gardiner So true. I have zero empathy for them.
1
I have no frame of reference for pay in this industry, but let's just break down what this article stated:
"Netflix offered Kay Reindl and her longtime writing partner a substantial sum — in the mid-six figures"
I'll just say "mid-six figures" is $500,000 for argument's sake.
$500,000 / 18 months = $27,777 per month before taxes.
To me, that's not a sum to scoff at.
15
@AW As a tv writer I need to inform you that six figures for a writing team probably means 250K - max 300K. That would be for the pair, known and paid as a "team". So let's say 150K per writer. Subtract 25% for agents and managers. Subtract 33% for taxes (which is the rate for that tax bracket). Spread that paycheck out over the course of 18 months and you are making approximately $8375 per month. If, after 18 months, you can't get on another show then that $ has to last up to a full year. It's not great for a business that generates billions a year for its companies.
52
@AW Split in two. So, they're still making the same as a staff writer but with all the pressures of running the show.
10
@flowergirl
For an individual filing at the single rate, none of a $150,000 income would be taxed at more than 24%. After taking the standard deduction, the effective tax rate on that income is closer to 18%. And tell me again, what do agents do to earn 25% of a writer's salary? Maybe it's time for writers to start having their own #i'mgettingtaken movement.
8
Hollywood writers is an oxymoron.
4
@Tee Jones - Says the guy in Portland who hasn't a clue what a Hollywood writer's job is all about. But pithy comment, Mr. Jones.
6
@Tee Jones Seriously? The best Hollywood writing is easily the equal of the best fiction or theater. The faux snobbery is completely undeserved.
6
@Tee Jones
Why?
2
I spent more than 30 years working on the production side of episodic television. I had a good run. I didn't get rich but I got comfortable and I enjoyed the work most of the time. But over the course of those 30 years I came to the conclusion that the writers - the successful ones and the unsuccessful ones - have the toughest job in film & television...and now it's just getting tougher---not unlike so many careers in the modern economy. The game gets tougher and tougher and upper management holds all the face cards.
39
@R.F. To be fair, as a writer on hour-longs, I'd say that the hour-long actors also have an extremely tough gig. Especially the non-star, supporting level actors.
4
Welcome to the digital age: supersizing of content and Downsizing of payment.
Streaming demolished 1000’s of music careers. Bar replacing ‘A penny a play’ from the radio days to 1000th of a penny a play on streaming services, Mechanical right and become a joke and farce. Songwriting is a professional hobby.
If the music business is any template, Hollywood is in for an even more rude awakening and spiraling.
14
Writing for a living is an artistic choice. For every show writer “scraping by” on $10-20k an episode, there’s an MFA graduate teaching part time in order to write short stories for basically nothing. For every superstar author making multi-million dollar book deals, there are literally thousands of artistes hanging on to their day jobs while their fictions ship from Amazon in droplets.
In another era, three networks ran a few shows a night for a nine month season. Many were variety shows with relatively little scripting compared to dramatic episodes. The amount of product today immensely exceeds that, creating huge volumes of work. The number of writers in just one sub-specialty such as kids cartoons is probably more than all the past network staffs of all TV dramas.
The end result is a sizable industry that, in many ways, didn’t significantly exist in another era. (Unless you were Rob and his partners in the imaginary world of the Dick Van Dyke show.) In that past business model, the majority of today’s TV writers would be writing ad copy or selling refrigerators.
We may have seen this trend reach it’s peak. The audience is finite and so is their watching time. If you can’t meet your rent, much less pay off your student loans in your artistic career choice, consider becoming a fireman.
9
@Fred Artistic choice? It's a job that huge companies need done. Have you seen Netflix's stock price? Have you noticed that new streaming services keep starting up? Seems like there's some money in it for someone. There's no reason the people doing it shouldn't be well compensated for the revenue they generate.
23
@Avraham Well, the reason these writers don't make much money is because the streaming services have the money and the power, and they know that a lot of people want to write for these shows. And the writers are replaceable, sorry to say. Fire one writer, and there will be another eager writer eager to get her foot in the door of Hollywood.
1
@Fred
All jobs are a choice.
Why you single out writers is perplexing.
5
What we are seeing is the collusion of content users to drive down the cost, making life much more difficult for content providers. I know many freelance writers who can no longer make a living at their craft. It is not unlike the failed expectation that wages should go up during periods of low unemployment. Employers, colluding with one another, have figured out how to get around this bogus economic principle.
On the other side of the coin, this may be one reason why I was able to recently drop my cable programming and switch to streaming for monthly savings of $110.
15
Yes, welcome to the gig economy. When I pointed out to a client that they were essentially expecting me to work for about $7 an hour as a freelance writer in one of the world's most expensive cities? "We have plenty of other options, yaknow."
28
Writers aren't the only ones in the production process with these problems. It's a freelance industry. At least some of the writers have a strong union to represent them. Production and post-production personnel are in the same boat.
I've spent over two decades editing "unscripted shows". I was lucky and had only one prolonged dry spell, but I would spend a major portion of my time seaching for the next no benefits gig. I'm retired no. I miss the creative high that the job gave me, but the anxiety and uncertainty were difficult. It seems like our whole society, not just the entertainment industry, has evolved into a gig economy. Great for the corporate employed higher ups, but those who are down the food chain have a constant battle with uncertainty.
44
@TB "As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody wanna see second prize? Second prize's a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired."
We are all salesmen for Glengarry Glen Ross now.
3
@Radioactive Banana- LOL! Glengarry Ross was great. And very apropos to the freelance gig economy.
I also won a statue with my name and Best Editing inscribed on it as a prize. In documentaries getting the message acknowledged is a very satisfying reward.
The producer has the writer under written contract, but the writer gets a "handshake deal" to be released if something better comes along. Guess who will prevail if there's a conflict.
11
@Pat -- that isn't exactly how this works. Your official contract says you're hired for 3 seasons (with your pay and title worked out). But, you can be fired at any time. Between seasons, if you are offered another job/sell a pilot (etc) you ask the showrunner (a writer) if you can be released. They generally say yes, so the studio CAN block that, but it doesn't make a lot of sense. No one wants a writer on a show if the writer doesn't want to be there. It isn't helpful and there are a BUNCH of other writers willing and able to step in (sometimes for less $ than the writer leaving). So. The handshake deal can and does win out.
8
@Karen
The point is a written contract is enforceable but a handshake is not. If push comes to shove the written contract prevails every time.
3
@Karen
Read the entire article -- I am referring to the specific situation described at the end.
This is all very well, but what about the writers of pilot scripts and treatments and all those other things that don't tend to lead to steady work on a series, regardless of length? Is this better for them, or worse?
Let us also not forget the heyday of "mini-series" when six to twelve hours of TV was produced in a mad dash. How did that compare?
5
My son-in-law has been writing scripted shows for television for more than 15 years. I'll just say that compared to him, Ms. Reindl is one of the very lucky ones. Simply finding a position as a writer on a scripted show takes endless stamina, as the writer must go to endless meetings to sell himself/herself (assuming the potential production company, studio or network will even grant a meeting), and suffer near-endless rejections. Assuming a job can be obtained, the pay is terrible, the deadlines are insane, and the higher-ups (head writers, show runners, studio execs, etc.) feel free to give "notes" on the scripts that show a total lack of understanding of the plot, characters, etc. and require endless rewrites, leading to a poorer overall work product. Opportunities for advancement are between slim and none.
My son-in-law graduated from one of the most elite universities in the country, with bachelor's degrees in English and mechanical engineering. How I wish he'd chosen a career in the latter discipline. He would have had a steady paycheck, been able to work himself up the ladder, and had far less emotional stress.
45
@ALB
Tell him to try to get a job at that or some other elite university. Even a non-elite one.
Scriptwriting is becoming a thing there and tenure isn't quite dead yet.
A little money distributed over what could become a very long and pretty lenient working life with the potential of virtual unfireability and the prospect of being virtually your own boss might appeal.
6
@ALB
Then again . . .
Three hots and a cot is how the immortal Jerry Orbach as Lennie describes prison in Law and Order.
3
@ALB
Showrunners don’t “lack an understanding of plot, character, etc.” as you claim, they spoon feed staff writers like your son-in-law everything they need to write a solid first draft. And real stress is staying up all night rewriting their scripts (after a full day of post production, casting, running the room, network notes calls and endless pitching and hand holding) when your son-in-law misses the mark. His failure to advance is entirely on him; showrunners love to reward strong new voices with greater responsibility, a better title and more pay. Those family dinners when your son-in-law whines about the industry and his terrible showrunner boss is just your elite-college-educated son-in-law deflecting his shortcomings. Because In-Laws.
22