The SAG-AFTRA Strike: A Writers Retrospective

By Damanpreet Lobana ‘25

Photo Courtesy of Matthew Simmons and WireImages

It has been three months since the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) Strike came to its conclusion after six weeks of strenuous negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). You might have heard about this strike while scrolling through Instagram posts of celebrities expressing solidarity with the movement and news articles regarding delays in productions of your favorite TV shows. However, the conflict can be boiled down to the difficulties writers face in modern landscape of television with the advent of streaming platforms.

Before the streaming boom, broadcasting on cable television was the norm, with television seasons starting in September and ending in around May for an average of twenty-two episodes and forty weeks of employment for writers. If you look at popular TV shows like Seinfeld, Friends, Law & Order, the involvement of writers in the production would be significant, considering that episodes would be written while they are being produced. The collaborations between directors, actors and writers became necessary when scripts require changes if they are not consistent with the season and themes of the show. However, streaming shows require shows to be written early, isolating the writers from the production itself. The number of episodes in streaming services are much shorter, with an average of eight episodes, meaning that a typical season would mean only eight weeks of work. Therefore, the writers would have to find multiple shows to cover up their typical working year. Moreover, the streaming services limit the number of writers they need for shows, making it even harder for writers to find employment.

Now the typical medium through which writers sustain themselves during lean season is residual checks. Whenever a television channel re-runs an episode that a writer has contributed to, the writer would get a partial payment in residuals from the broadcasting company. The greater number of times the episode is broadcasted, the more residual checks you would get. The streaming services, on the other hand, would pay a fixed percentage of the revenue to the showrunners and producers of the show. So, the residuals check that are given to writers would also be fixed annually based on how much time the show remains on the platform according to the contract. Therefore, no matter how many views the show gets on the platforms, the writers would not benefit from the re-viewing of their episodes. This would create huge disparities in the income that they would generate from streaming services and cable television. One example, according to a writer from Law & Order, described how they would get paid $400 annual residual checks for participating in a streaming show, compared to previously getting around $12500 annually for television season re-runs on channels.

Hence, the tentative deal that led to the end of the writer’s strike provided solutions for all these problems. The deal saw minimum compensation increases, unprecedented provisions for consent and compensation that will protect members from the threat of AI, establish a streaming participation bonus, and longer employment guarantees. With actors and writers finally crossing the picket lines, the inevitable delays of major projects were bound to happen. The question remains on the future of streaming services and their motives of affecting even the movie landscape, where releases are skipping theaters and directly done on these platforms. We know that these companies would have definitive roles to play in the future of content.