The Screen Actors Guild joined the Writers Guild in coordinated strikes. The writers demand protection from Artificial Intelligence.
Actors Join the Writers Guild of America Strike
Bloomberg reports Writers and Actors Strike Together
Actors joined the Writers Guild of America in a strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers, which represents studios including Netflix Inc. and Walt Disney Co., marking the first time in more than 60 years that Hollywood writers and actors struck together.
Writers Guild of America
The WGA has been on strike since May 2 when talks with Hollywood studios fell apart. The union is demanding an increase in base pay and a greater share of earnings from shows that appear on streaming devices, as well as a minimum of six writers and 13 weeks commitment of work for each show, plus monetary benefits that reflect a show’s popularity.
Writers and actors alike are demanding protections against AI, which could be poised to take their jobs. The WGA estimates the strike is costing $30 million a day across the industry.
Screen Actors Guild
Actors have a very similar list of demands, with the added requirement that they be compensated for auditions they record themselves.
The SAG strike has also halted film premieres, awards shows and other events. It also puts reality-TV actors in a bind because although they are not required to join the action they may feel pressured to do so.
Hoot of the Day
The writers guild not only demand protection against AI, they demand a minimum of six writers per show.
If you cannot come up with a better script than a robot, why should anyone pay you?
TV Stats
A quick check of TV Stats shows how much time people waste in front of a TV. On average, it’s about 3 hours a day. That totals to approximately 15 years of the average lifespan. About 80 percent watch some TV every day.
The BBC reports Young Watch Almost Seven Times Less TV Than Over-65s.
16 to 24-year-olds spend just 53 minutes watching TV each day, a two-thirds decrease in the past 10 years.
Meanwhile, those aged 65 and over spend just under six hours on average watching TV daily.
This “generation gap” in viewing habits is wider than ever before, according to Ofcom’s annual Media Nations report.
11 Reasons You Should Stop Watching Television Now
If you are a TV addict, you may wish to consider 11 Reasons You Should Stop Watching Television Now
The last time time TV was turned on in in this house for more than an hour was the midterm election coverage last November. That’s 8 months ago.
On occasion, we have watched major sporting events. I believe we attempted to watch the tail end of the Super Bowl. But given that we subscribe to nothing, I recall struggling to find a way. I had to look just now to see who was even in the game.
Those are the last two times TV was on in this house.
Speaking as someone who watches almost no TV and hasn’t seen a movie for years, I would just as soon have the strike last forever.
Kids have too much screentime, just not “TV”
They watch YouTube and social networked crap. Unmoderated and even more mindless.
But it doesn’t have a union
It’s not like writers are on the bread lines for their work. Of course, if you want to hobnob in Malibu and the surrounding areas, then you are going to need higher incomes but that should be on you, not everyone else.
Here are the union writers pay rates from this NYT article:
“According to the guild, roughly half of writers were paid the weekly minimum rate last year — about $4,000 to $4,500 for a junior writer on a show that has received a go-ahead and about $7,250 for a more senior writer — up from one-third in 2014.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/20/business/economy/writers-strike-hollywood-gig-work.html
This is the problem with strikes anywhere in the USA. Reporting rarely discusses what the current pay rates and benefits are and how much more the strikers want an increase to.
Strike reporting in the USA always adopts the POV that: ‘Strikers good, management bad’.
“This “generation gap” in viewing habits is wider than ever before, according to Ofcom’s annual Media Nations report.”
It’s not really a gap in the amount of time spent ‘viewing’, it is a differentiation in the mode of viewing. Staring at a glowing rectangle for a number of hours each day isn’t terribly variable across the generations in a lot of “developed” nations.
Labor relations & unions in the Anglosphere defy comprehension.
Hollywood wants protection from AI. Did John Henry get protection from the steam hammer? Did Chris Craft get protection from the builders of fiberglass boats? Did NASA get protection from SpaceX? There is no such thing as immunity from a better technology because better tech drives lower cost, and money makes the world go ’round, even if what people call money is actually just fake money.
True. Even if the strike ends and they work out an agreement, what’s going to stop someone out of the union from creating content? Netflix buys stuff from all over the world. I would guess cost of programming is a big factor in what they buy.
Got my first Hollywood job during the 1980 actors strike. Worked on two of the four shows that were not affected by the strike. Both by George Shlatter, producer of Laugh In during the 1960’s. Hollywood has changed a lot since the 1980 strike. The movie studios bought up TV networks or created their own, as networks could now own the shows they aired. The audience is now splintered, with dozens of cable TV networks, internet streaming channels and Youtube, Rumble, etc, to watch all manner of home grown videos.
To those who work in production, it is not a regular 9-5 job. The second show i worked on for Shlatter lasted 6 weeks. One person working the same job as me, was laid off. If one is not a staff writer, one is always looking for their next writing job. Anyone remember the crusty old water boy from the movie Longest Yard, starring Burt Reynolds? I once worked where he had his day job, between acting gigs. Once, i was waiting to cross Santa Monica Blvd. in Hollywood, when actor Richard Mulligan (co-starring in SOAP) walked up next to me. He was headed to the unemployment office, up the street. I guessed he was entitled to unemployment benefits while the show was on hiatus.
Sounds like how the AAA games industry. Build it, get laid off, repeat. Mobile Games aren’t much fun to work on, but that cash keeps rolling in year after year
Ever work in the aerospace industry?
Same difference.
Staff writers nowadays are always looking for their next writing job.
As are most Gig workers. Point being that writers deserve more sympathy?
Speaking of the threat of AI to writers, I wonder if you didn’t mean to write “I would just as soon” instead of “I would just assume” the strike last forever.
I’ve been a member of the Writer’s Guild for almost 40 years. I’ve played around with AI as a tool for writing screenplays. Even providing detailed prompts about character and story AI lacks subtext and nuance. It also has a lousy sense of humor. But that’s now, where it’s basically a flip phone. What happens when it evolves into an iPhone 14?
All the stuff I’ve had it write reads as crappy fan fiction. The code it generated was similarly uninspired. Made some kind of funny songs, but it drew the line at filthy limericks, which was a crushing disappointment.
I don’t think it’s the writers who have much to worry about. I think it’s about realistic looking AI characters. AI characters don’t receive royalties and never hold up production.
Our TV died when I was around 8.
Father was smart enough to not replace it for 10 years or so.
Mother did have a nice piano.
I spent ~20+ years carefully crafting a DVD collection of 350+, mostly classic, DVDs. I watch a bit of TV foreign news around 17:30. But there is little on TV worth my time. Just bought “Holiday” by the Criterion Collection. Has a second disk with the original 1930 film with Mary Astor and Robert Ames. If I want to relax with video I put on some of my own good entertainment, without commercials.
How much of your DVD collection is obsolete because it’s still in old standard format?
Pretty much anything that’s not 1080 is only useful as a drink coaster because it looks awful on modern 60+ inch TV’s.
Who spends money for a big TV?
Better off spending the money at a gym (or misc cooking tools).
Besides, I’m old and with glasses.
My eyes don’t make much of 4k.
You also might consider investing in a high quality player with capable upconversion.
Poor players choke on 720p to 4k.
I watch a lot of cable TV and netflix. I have a 7.4.4 dolby atmos sound system for my 83″ OLED TV. 4K HDR looks amazing. I watch a lot of YouTube and sports on my TV.
I have 2 brothers who don’t watch TV. They look down on me for it. As if not watching TV somehow makes you superior. They’re both weird, I make a lot more money than them, and my kids, who watched a lot of TV, are doing better than their kids.
Proving, once again, that bigger is better.
I never miss a baseball game, I love the sport. Although, I agree that movies to often have a political have a message and pro football/basketball is a bore. Call me an idiot and I’ll call you an elitist.
Elitist!
There’s a huge market for non-TV programming. Most of this market requires writers and some of it requires actors. MishTalk is part of all this (but certainly doesn’t require six writers). It all adds up to a much bigger waste of time than TV ever was.
Six writers are much better than 3 writers when 2 have writer’s block.
This is 2023. Theater, opera, symphonies, small jazz club engagements and festival rock concerts like Glastonbury and Coachella should all be available on the TV!
Currently, we can get a taste of these on an occasional PBS special but that is limited and relatively few and far between.
People should not have to get dressed up, pay exorbitant costs to eat/park in a downtown somewhere and endure crowds to enjoy artistic presentations
What is needed is a 24hr daily streaming channel that features such content. The channel would, like most streaming channels, be subscription driven although some content might be made available using an advertising model, if that could be made to work financially..
Not only would such a channel expose many more people to art and music that they may not otherwise encounter, it would also NOT generally require script writers, which might be a godsend for the entertainment industry looking for content to fill the writer/actor hole left by the current entertainment strike.
I work as a Costume Designer , UK based and we are being massively affected by it too.
More than 50 percent of production has ceased here .
The fallout from all of this is however the companies that supply to the various departments of a film unit
The network is vast and spreads out into hotels, caterers, food and wholesale fruit and veg suppliers, dry cleaners ,florists, prop houses, costume houses,drapery stores, haberdashery, building supplies…just about every sector of trade you can name.
This is causing huge hardship and staff lay offs at a time when society was just recovering from the blow dealt by the covid 19 pandemic.
It’s all the rest of the film crews and all the above mentioned, whole families now living in very difficult and uncertain times!
These are the ones I feel for !
– Adam Conover is writer himself and he explains in this video why the writers are striking:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIG0wSee0Xg
Since the strike will end up raising costs I wonder if this strike will cause movie companies to concentrate on making films that make money rather than ones that check all the boxes.
Do you have a guide that would help them achieve that on a risk free basis?
Playing computer games is just way more addictive! Bought Valheim for $25 – can spend a thousand hours more behind the computer.
TV for (Dutch) news, sometimes, and Formula 1… And as mentioned by others, this diversity being pushed is sometimes just too much. Watched the Netflix version of my favorite childhood book “The letter for the King” and they made the main hero gay. It’s just… too much pushing agenda’s.
The main problem I have with TV is the forced diversity to the point of annoyance.
Tv commercials will have a black-white couple with an Asian kid. Genetics 101 anyone? And an all white commercial is unheard of.
Blacks make up about 13% of the population, more in some states, a lot less in others, but they’re like 50% of an average show. The one I actually laughed out loud at was “Silo” on HBO. I liked the book so thought I would try the TV show.
Now this is a bomb shelter where 10K people have been locked up for 200 years, multiple generations. By that time there would be no distinct “races” as everyone would have intermingled. But no, we have lots and lots of blacks in secondary roles, whites in most the leads, and a few token Asians. Now a sci fi show really shouldn’t let that go, but they do. Even most of the couples shown are biracial, so thats not why there are still distinct races (makeup and prosthetics do exist in Hollywood).
My maybe two hours a day is getting less and less with crap like this, plus uninspiring story lines and of course general wokeness. I’m letting subscriptions expire as I do more summer things, don’t think I’ll go back.
How many kids did the gay couples have?
Asking for a friend.
Puerto Rico has never been the same since the cancellation of The Flying Nun.
I watch a fair bit of live sports (often illegally streamed).
The missus watches a lot of documentaries and science programs (especially the nature ones) which is essentially the same thing as reading a book.
The kids (teens) pretty much play video games and watch Tik Tok videos.
Once a week or so we’ll watch a movie as a family (often illegally streamed).
When I was young and poor I had no TV or car for three years – by far and away the best time of my life….
Reading the average comment here explains why I’m here. Unfortunately, I care because I sell to the studios. I wouldn’t mind giving it up if it helps humanity. I just think weak people will find another way to waste their time.
They have been recycling the same plots for decades. An AI trained on the body of existing scripts should be able to generate a new script.
Headline from an article picked up by The New York Times in 2012 …
“The Old and Uneducated Watch the Most TV”
I suspect not much has changed in eleven years.
Why shouldn’t people be compensated for their work? The entertainment industry generates billions in profits and it’s all being funneled to executives/producers and shareholders of these companies.
David Zaslov made half a billion dollars in the last five years. Bob Iger of Disney makes 31 million a year and yet he has the nerve to tell the people that are responsible for creating the content and creating their wealth that we have to make do with less.
Tell me how much actors and writers make.
– I don’t know how much actors and writers make but I DO know that these people also have seen their “compensation” being squeezed. More and more of these writers have to take a second job to make (financial) ends meet.
– AI is NOT the same as “creating new content”. AI simply gobbles up A LOT OF data (a.k.a. text) and then blends that all and spews out new data (a.k.a. text) that’s different enough to look like “creative content”.
– Adam Conover is a writer and in the following video he provides the details why there is a strike of the writers.
16 bucks an hour, on average. https://www.indeed.com/career/actor/salaries
See my post down below.
“Why shouldn’t people be compensated for their work? The entertainment industry generates billions in profits and it’s all being funneled to executives/producers and shareholders of these companies.
David Zaslov made half a billion dollars in the last five years. Bob Iger of Disney makes 31 million a year and yet he has the nerve to tell the people that are responsible for creating the content and creating their wealth that we have to make do with less.”
——–
Why not take the same rational to business? Apple,Meta/FB, Google, Microsoft, etc. upper management all make FAR more than the numbers you are quoting. They are able to make their astronomical numbers because of the work of everyone below them. Why shouldn’t every worker, everywhere also demand increases consummate with what their bosses make?
I’ll answer for you. Because that isn’t the way capitalism works.
I through a brick through our television after watching CNN years ago.
Still haven’t fixed it.
Best thing I ever did.
yeah amd I almost “threw up” when I read your post
And everyone clapped!
“16 to 24-year-olds spend just 53 minutes watching TV each day, a two-thirds decrease in the past 10 years.”
Maybe so, but they spend 10-20 hours a day watching tik toks or playing video games. So with that said, the last strike ushered in the era of reality TV, this one will probably elevate the Tik Tok and youtube stars onto TV.
Or watching tiky toks of other people playing video games.
Yes, there is such a service – https://www.twitch.tv/
Tik tok is more like watching a video of someone watching a video of someone playing video games.
The “Rural Purge” of TV happened in the early 70’s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_purge
It was an era of very successful shows being cancelled by and large for no good reason other than spite for small towns and middle America. They were replaced with more urban and diversity variety shows.
The Waltons was even put in the death time slot as a final stab in the face but it backfired. People loved the show. It went on for 9 seasons.
Same thing is happening today but not with TV. It’s the actual rural people and small towns themselves. The hatred for these people and their way of life is very much real.
CBS did want to change it’s image in the early 70’s, but CBS did run a special promotional campaign on The Walton’s, after the show started with less than stellar ratings, as they knew it was a quality show.
Most people live in cities now. The country shows were no longer relatable. Conspiracy!
But blogs —now thats where the superior minds spend their leisure time.
LOL
The strike seems similar to one a few years ago on Broadway where the producers tried to substitute music recordings in place of the orchestra. The orchestra union won in that case.
As far as AI goes, it’s fruitless to battle technology. I’m glad the unions representing buggy whips & horse manure shovel companies lost out to Henry Ford’s Model T.
I personally would not care one spec
Over the last decade I’ve evolved away from watching “fill” TV shows/movies and into science shows or documentaries.
Truly good entertainment is becoming increasingly rare, I just saw Oppenheimer at the theater and it qualifies as such, yet “Barbie” is blowing it away at the box office.
“Barbie” could easily be written by AI and it’s fan-base would be oblivious, there is no possible way AI could capture the subtleties & tensions of a movie like Oppenheimer.
Hopefully this wakes up the sector to some reality, most entertainment now sucks, either let AI write it, or rediscover old school creativity.
.
“there is no possible way AI could capture the subtleties & tensions of a movie like Oppenheimer.”
——–
Currently. Check back in 5 years.
Isn’t that generation gap just replaced with kids on phones?
You know it! It’s not that they are using that 2/3 less tv time more productively; they are just spending it on Playstation or glued to TikTok on their phones
I don’t watch much TV and probably see one movie every 3 or 4 years. So I don’t care too much about the strike.
Still:
The US Media and Entertainment industry contribute 6.9% of US GDP.
Core copyright industries add $1.8 trillion (7.76%) to the US economy.
The industry plays a big role in bringing American perspectives, culture and influence throughout the world.
I find it hard to imagine copyright adds useful GDP.
It simply drives up costs and redistributes money to the original artists for work they’ve done a long time ago (TV, Music etc). If that money wasn’t given to them, consumers would just spend it on something else and so the affect on GDP would be a net-zero.
There are enough ‘Law & Order’ reruns to keep eyes glued to the TV for quite a long time.
I think they don’t understand how Optional they are.
Yank Joe Howmuchamonth’s cable and internet, and you’ll find out different. Morons can’t entertain themselves.
Out in Hollywood I think it’s interesting the way the left hates, rejects men being heroes as in The Sound of Freedom, and loves, embraces men being deadbeats as in the movie Barbie.
There is more to it than that. It’s the funding mechanism that has them freaking out
To say nothing of the raving, pants-on-head kookery. It’s fiction, but gospel for the q-tards.
You’re obviously as much of a cultist as them.
Disney has completely screwed themselves. Now, if they make a movie that’s critical in any way of men or white people, they get boycotted. Had they made Snow White with a Hispanic actress in say 2015, no one would have cared. People would have thought she auditioned and won the role honestly. But, now since Disney has come out as ultra woke, everyone is looking out for wokeness in everything they do. Barbie isn’t Disney, but it’s spread to all of Hollywood. Disney has made it so they’ll drive away half their audience unless they make something with no wokeness. Something they can’t do because they’re filled with ideologues top to bottom. They would rather go bankrupt than go against their woke dogma. And it’s not just the US. The whole world is so sick of wokeness, they’ll boycott at the slightest implication.
I think it’s interesting how the kookaboos are losing their minds over a movie about a plastic doll, and that the main character of a movie named “Barbie” isnt Ken.
Such rotund fragility.
It’s interesting how you always feel the need to project your smug superiority complex on anyone who disagrees with you.
You noticed that too NC. Nice to know there are still folks who are awake 😏.
Your mentioning the word “fragility” says quite a bit about you 🙄.
As with all strikes (and boycotts) … there will be collateral damage … but for the key players … as one who watches 1 to 3 movies per year and almost no TV … I am not the least bit worried for myself. I think the strike is as intelligent as if fast food cashiers formed a union and went on strike. 3/4 would no longer be needed as stores would embrace Kiosks. AI is too imminent a threat to them. Imagine taking one of several hundred plots (most of which were written decades or centuries ago and recycled and updated since) and the ability to take a person and make them the main star and others (friends, family, enemies) playing roles in the movies/shows … when Hollywood gets their act together, it could be too late.
Only rub is, how would Mish feel if every word he’s ever authored were being presented as Mish, himself. As I understand it, studios want to record every action, every word, every face – everything – and then use the motions, sounds, and gestures (we all walk differently, we all look different, and we all sound different), to recreate them. For example, Tom Hanks digitally represented, saying the words of a script completely indistinguishable from Tom Hanks because the avatar of Mr. Hanks, the digital ‘him’ only gets better as we throw computing power at the representation. How is this fair? Mr. Hanks will be a slave of the studios into perpetuity, generating revenue forevermore and receiving no recompense. Ludicrous? And what about character actors? Bit players in the grand scheme of things, they are largely powerless (unlike Mr. Hanks) to demand control over their avatars ( word I use to mean their digital selves). And I return to basic fairness. It’s not. Me? I support this strike 100%. It’s nothing to do with watching television or going to the movies, it’s Mish being done digitally on the cheap and being offered up as the real thing. And us? Being unable to distinguish, and his receiving zero in return. Nope, not fair . . . not right.
Who cares as long as the digital version is as good as the real version?
Also, if the actor being digital represented is very good, then using a digital representation might make the actors talents MORE available to MORE people.
“A quick check of TV Stats shows how much time people waste in front of a TV.”
C’mon, this is subjective. Who are we to judge how people care to spend their time as long as no one’s hurting anyone else?
TV sucks more than ever. Long live BOOKS !
On the rare occasions that I watch, it’s usually 40s film noir.
I watch a lot of older movies. Probably up to 2000s. Kanopy through library has classics. Newer films are pretty terrible from Hollywood and too expensive. Actors who now are Producers just do a lot of glam products.
The catalog is so huge you don’t need to watch a film that was just made ever again.
Some foreign stuff is fascinating, newer movies with some tough subject matter like Sound of Freedom could be good as it’s smaller budgets and doing interesting stories.
That movie made 12x it’s costs.
Indiana Jones retread made about breakeven-MAYBE. The last Bond movie LOST money. Disney has flopped about 3-4 successful franchises. Star Trek was ruined by Paramount.
” about 3 hours a day. That totals to approximately 15 years of the average lifespan.”
Only if the average lifespan is 15×8=120 years.
78 x 3/24 = 10 or so.
Logical person who can think. The enemy of the democratic party.
**The enemy of any political party.
It isn’t just a U.S. democratic thing.
but you sleep for 1/3 of the time. waking hours is what counts. 3/16 = 19%… and if you count only leisure time, time you aren’t working and it’s like 40%. And there you have to bath and gas your car and other stuff which makes it even worse.., and remember 3 hours is the average. For every person like Mish who watches zero there someone out there watching 6.
Whether it was true or not, Tucker Carlson said it best, ‘It’s [the TV] like having an unwanted guest or stranger in your house’.
Being as candid as that was probably one of the reasons he was canned.
Going to the movies is a more of a social spectacle than actually imbibing in whatever message the writers are selling nowadays.
Tucker also talked about covid vaccine injuries. A taboo subject that the MSM has completely ignored.
Should have said:, ‘It’s Tucker Carlson] like having an unwanted guest or stranger in your house’.
I couldn’t agree more Mish. Cancelling cable saves me money and does a lot for clearing up the mental dissonance the clown world media serves up. I recommend it to everybody I have the opportunity to. Frees up time to learn new things (just took up Ham Radio and birding), read more (Mish), and sleep better.
Already did that back in 1995. Back then, CNN was actually a real news network. Now it’s a CIA controlled propaganda outlet.
TV and Hollywood are DOOMED.
They placate the moron masses. It’s a critical job.
It’s vital service to society and democracy. Creating smokescreens is important. Very underappreciated.
The Romans called it Bread and Circuses almost 2000 years ago.
TV now fills the circuses part since we no longer attend the coliseums in person.
In Los Angeles we have the Memorial Coliseum, a site of the 1932 and 1984 Olympics, as well as Dodger Stadium. In the county we also have the Rose Bowl and SoFi Stadium, to fill the role of circuses, in the 21st century. The Pasadena Playhouse serves as the audition site for America’s Got Talent, if one is looking to cheer on actual circus like acts.
Hey Somebody has to write/”act” the woke/trans stuff that’s coming after your children …..
It’s job #1 for the DNC.
Toot toot!
50 years later and it’s plain to see that Archie was right about everything.
Nah, Jughead was correct.