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come from makes watch season

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two of the stars original comedy series

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now only on stars and the stars

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app

0:14

actors

0:15

and writers are on strike together

0:17

and it looks like he could last a while there

0:20

are deep divide in hollywood over issues

0:22

including how creative people should be compensated

0:25

in the streaming era how work is structured

0:27

and how artificial intelligence will be used

0:30

production of tv and film has largely

0:32

stopped only a few years after

0:34

an interruption during the early part of covered

0:37

that unsettled viewing habits and delayed

0:39

both movies and shows i'm

0:41

going to homes and today on npr pop

0:43

culture happy hour we're going to explain

0:45

some of what's at stake and the

0:47

different ways that might and and

0:49

how the strike could impact viewers

0:56

support for this npr podcast

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Sign up for your trial today at noom.com

2:03

Joining me today is NPR's

2:05

TV critic Eric Deggans. We're grabbing Eric

2:07

in the airport lounge. So thank you for being

2:09

here. Welcome back

2:10

Yeah, if you hear, you know a musaki

2:13

version of careless whisper, yeah We're

2:16

planes taking off or someone being pulled back

2:18

to security to pick up their phone All right So

2:21

let's talk about the development of what

2:23

is now this double strike by the actors and

2:25

the writers we should stress by the way That this is a double

2:28

strike and not a joint strike These are still

2:30

two separate unions that will negotiate

2:33

two separate contracts The WGA

2:35

represents the writers sag after represents

2:38

the actors These two strikes will

2:40

probably end at different times just

2:42

as they started at different times Sag

2:44

after only went on strike last week.

2:46

The WGA has been on strike since

2:49

May 2nd Both strikes are

2:51

against the AMP TP, which is

2:53

the kind of bargaining group that represents

2:55

the studios and the streamers So like

2:57

Paramount and Disney and also Netflix

2:59

and Apple and so forth Both

3:01

of these unions have been on strike before

3:04

at different times But the last time they were

3:06

on strike at the same time was 1960

3:09

that too was a strike that went to some

3:11

very basic Structural

3:13

issues about at that time the rise

3:15

of television and it led to really

3:17

the whole idea of Residuals

3:19

as we now know them which are payments creators

3:22

or actors get when things are used on a new

3:24

platform like When a movie is broadcast

3:26

on TV or when a TV show is in

3:28

reruns or on cable or on streaming Residuals

3:32

for streaming services though are very limited which

3:34

is true for a bunch of reasons

3:36

one is that companies behind? services

3:40

like Netflix and Disney Plus and Apple

3:42

TV are And

3:44

always have been very very hesitant

3:46

to give out any information

3:49

about how much money they're actually making on

3:51

streaming how many people are actually watching

3:53

and That makes it hard to share

3:56

Revenue with performers and creators

3:58

the way they do on cable and browser

3:59

broadcast and things like that. So for instance,

4:02

according to variety, SAG

4:04

after had a proposal that 2% of the

4:06

revenue from a streaming show would

4:08

be shared with performers, but the studios and

4:11

streamers basically say that's impossible because

4:13

nobody can possibly know how much money a streaming

4:16

show makes. This is where I want to start with you, Eric.

4:19

I've heard you say that you suspect

4:21

a lot of this fundamental conflict,

4:24

this hangup they have is about

4:26

that kind of transparency. Can you talk

4:28

about that?

4:29

Sure. And this is an ethic that

4:31

I think the streaming services imported

4:34

from Silicon Valley, where Silicon

4:36

Valley companies are stingy about

4:38

giving away any kind of information

4:40

that they don't have to about how

4:43

their company is performing. One

4:45

of the first things that Netflix did was

4:47

it refused to share viewership data

4:50

with almost anyone outside the

4:52

company, including the producers

4:55

and showrunners who were making their

4:57

programs. There's a story where

5:00

actors from Orange is the New Black talk about,

5:03

you know, many of them didn't get paid that much. And

5:05

even one of the showrunners said

5:08

that they didn't find out the viewership for the show

5:10

until the day after they had a

5:13

party for the finale

5:15

season. Yeah, supposedly, Genji Cohen,

5:18

the show's creator said, I want to renegotiate

5:20

my contract. So this is information

5:23

that could really help showrunners

5:26

and show creators and writers and

5:28

actors

5:29

negotiate their fees. And if they don't

5:31

know this, it's really hard to figure out

5:33

what a show is worth. When you have a show

5:35

that's a cable or broadcast, everybody

5:38

knows it. Because Nielsen does the

5:40

TV ratings and everybody buys Nielsen

5:42

TV ratings, so everybody knows.

5:44

Right. And I mean, at the beginning of streaming,

5:46

there were creators who said, I like the

5:49

fact that I don't constantly get ratings

5:51

reported to me. I like the

5:53

fact that, you know, I'm not constantly

5:55

being told your show is reliant

5:57

on the ratings that you get, but it didn't take

5:59

very long and I remember Jenji Cohen from

6:02

Orange is the New Black being one of the

6:04

first people who really made this point that you can't

6:06

really negotiate from a position

6:08

of what the value of your work is if nobody tells

6:11

you how many people are watching. The other

6:13

thing that I find so interesting is that when they say

6:15

something like,

6:16

we have no way to tell you how much revenue

6:19

there is from different shows. It's like that, from

6:21

a business perspective, feels to

6:24

me

6:24

like it can't possibly be true. Do

6:27

you know what I mean? Like that's not how businesses

6:29

operate.

6:30

I feel like

6:33

a lot of this does go back to the fact that a

6:35

lot of the people, the actors and writers

6:37

are negotiating with our

6:39

tech companies. It's Apple and Netflix

6:41

and Amazon and Comcast,

6:44

which now owns the whole NBC Universal

6:47

empire. So at the tippy tippy top,

6:49

you're not dealing with people who are primarily

6:52

in a creative business as these folks would describe

6:54

it. You have actors and writers

6:57

and their representatives negotiating

6:59

with people who answer to tech

7:02

executives. And I don't know how you

7:04

solve that. And the other thing that

7:06

is interesting here that makes it even more complex,

7:09

Amazon Prime video, you get access

7:12

to their original content by paying

7:15

for Amazon Prime. But

7:17

Amazon Prime also gives you all these other

7:19

services. So how do you break

7:21

out what percentage of what you pay

7:24

for Amazon Prime goes

7:26

to fund the TV shows?

7:29

Apple TV plus is a different sort

7:31

of paradigm where they're charging

7:34

what I think is probably a low price

7:36

for subscription to that service because

7:39

it's an add on. They're basically creating all

7:41

these shows to suck you into

7:43

the Apple universe

7:45

of products. The real stumbling

7:48

block is that none of these companies

7:50

want to reveal how much money they

7:52

are making or not making on these shows.

7:55

They will resist that. And I think it's

7:57

very possible that

7:58

Netflix

7:59

and maybe one other streamer may

8:02

be the only streaming service that's making

8:04

any money on their shows. And

8:06

nobody wants to admit that because then Wall

8:08

Street will stop investing in the shows

8:11

and the whole enterprise will

8:13

collapse.

8:14

The understanding in creative

8:16

businesses, and this goes for television, it goes for

8:18

film, it goes for publishing even,

8:21

is that to a certain

8:23

degree, and I want to be clear, this does not

8:25

apply across the board, but to a certain

8:27

degree, if you get involved in

8:29

a project and it's a hit and it's really

8:31

successful and more money

8:34

is made off of it by the people

8:36

you made it for, then some part of that

8:38

comes back to you. That's

8:41

what residuals are with a show like

8:43

Law & Order that runs for a billion years

8:46

and reruns all the time. The fact

8:48

that you are on that show and it's successful

8:51

and people keep watching it and they keep showing it, and

8:54

so money keeps coming in that you

8:57

get a chunk of that money. And so

8:59

when the streamers and the

9:01

studios now are saying, we just don't

9:03

have any way of measuring

9:06

that money, their solution is that

9:09

whole thing goes away and you'll just get paid whatever

9:11

everybody gets paid. And there's kind

9:13

of no financial

9:14

benefit for you for

9:16

making something that's a hit, that's really successful.

9:19

And that's a complicated thing for people,

9:21

I think, to swallow. Yeah, I

9:24

do want to ask you about the part of this that's

9:26

playing out in public, because I think this is fascinating.

9:29

There have already been some pretty

9:31

intense moments for the studio

9:33

side on the PR front. The news

9:35

site deadline ran a story where

9:38

some anonymous sources said some pretty

9:40

harsh things about essentially intending

9:43

to drag the dispute out until the

9:44

writers started to lose their houses. The

9:47

AMPTP disowned these comments,

9:49

but obviously

9:50

when you have executives nobody really

9:53

knows in a dispute with the

9:55

people who make people's favorite movies

9:57

and shows, the unions

9:59

would say,

9:59

seem to have a natural advantage. And

10:02

that's true even though, as the unions

10:04

will tell you, these strikes are not really about what

10:06

superstars make, they are about what

10:08

regular working actors and writers make and

10:11

whether those people can build careers and

10:13

earn a living. But how do you

10:15

think the public side of this is

10:17

going to affect what happens?

10:19

Well, what's interesting is that

10:21

we have never been in a media

10:24

environment where the public has had

10:26

more power over what happens.

10:29

Because the streaming services

10:31

are so dependent on

10:33

constant use and

10:35

attention from the

10:38

audience. They can track it and

10:40

they can tell which shows are drawing that attention.

10:43

And if the public decides en

10:45

masse that they're fed up with

10:47

the streaming services because of how they're treating

10:50

the actors and writers and they decide to start

10:52

dropping these services, particularly when

10:55

the original content starts to wane at

10:57

the end of the year. That's going to be another

10:59

crisis point for the industry. Right

11:02

now, the advantage that writers

11:04

and actors have is that they're the public

11:07

face of the industry. And

11:09

so they are the people that folks have been

11:11

welcoming into their homes, or they are the

11:13

people whose stories have been

11:16

entertaining them for years, or they're the people who

11:18

they've gone to see at the multiplexes. And they feel

11:20

like they have a relationship with them.

11:22

So they're able to communicate

11:24

their message much more easily. They can also

11:27

talk freer because

11:29

they're negotiating teams, go

11:31

into a closed room and negotiate.

11:34

But the members of the union can go out

11:36

and speak as just members of the union.

11:39

The studio executives have more responsibility.

11:41

They can't

11:42

do that. And they're all sort of nameless suits.

11:45

And they're making tens of millions

11:48

of dollars a year. And it's hard for

11:50

them to go out there and articulate, hey,

11:52

this is our point of view. But

11:55

they may still be making money. They are

11:57

still getting paid while

11:59

this.

11:59

striking is going on. Right. And

12:02

so they might be able to make it last longer. And

12:04

I'll just say one other thing is that, you know, this story

12:07

that was in Deadline where they said they wanted to drag

12:09

out the strike, it came

12:11

just as the deadline was coming for

12:14

SAG to decide whether or not they were gonna

12:16

go on strike. It seemed like the worst

12:18

possible moment for anybody on the

12:20

studio side to say these things when the

12:22

actors are trying to decide whether they're gonna go out

12:24

on strike.

12:25

Yeah, and I mean, I think that the double-edged sword, right, of

12:27

what we're talking about, which is that a lot of the people particularly

12:30

in SAG are familiar, famous

12:33

people. You've already seen pictures

12:35

of like Mark Ruffalo on the picket line

12:37

and, you know, Bob Odenkirk on the picket line and people

12:39

like that. But the question

12:41

becomes, is that a double-edged

12:44

sword? If it becomes a question of

12:47

the strike being about

12:49

the sort of high-end A-list people

12:51

and how much money they make, because if it becomes

12:53

perceived publicly as being about that, I

12:56

think that's very different from

12:58

if you can kind of make the

13:00

point that a large percentage of people

13:03

in SAG do not work enough

13:05

to qualify for health insurance. They've been talking about

13:07

that. So there is

13:09

this whole other population of people. So

13:12

you kind of want to leverage the PR potential

13:14

of all your famous's if

13:17

you're the union without kind of

13:19

having it turn into rich people versus rich people,

13:21

if that makes sense. Yeah. I

13:23

want to ask you one other thing. You've talked about this as

13:26

long-term fallout from COVID. Tell

13:28

me what you mean by that.

13:29

Yeah. So when the lockdowns

13:31

shut down production way

13:33

back in 2020, the streaming

13:36

services saw this huge influx of

13:39

attention from subscribers. And

13:41

I think that convinced a lot of media companies

13:44

to realign

13:45

all of their efforts towards streaming. So, for

13:47

example, at Disney, we saw

13:50

the ABC Broadcast Network kind of get

13:52

downgraded a little bit. An executive they

13:54

really liked who was heading ABC Entertainment. They

13:56

shifted her to overseeing streaming

13:59

and they put They put ABC's

14:01

broadcast division, supervision

14:03

of it, underneath the guy who was also overseeing

14:06

Hulu. And of course we saw that

14:08

legendary move where Warner Brothers had

14:11

a whole slate of films that they just put

14:13

on the streamer and didn't put in the theaters.

14:16

So that sends a signal to the audience

14:18

to tell them, hey, streaming is the next thing,

14:20

because there's cool stuff there. That's what

14:23

these companies are focused on. And so

14:25

people started to leave and cut the cord

14:27

from cable. And cable

14:30

makes money. And streaming doesn't

14:33

for as many companies. So they were

14:35

basically encouraging their audience

14:38

to leave a platform where they made money and

14:40

go to a platform where they either

14:43

weren't making money yet or might not ever

14:45

make money. And this is what I call sort

14:47

of the long tail of COVID. We're

14:49

still dealing with that. I mean, if

14:52

you look at the amount of cable TV

14:55

that people have in their homes, at one

14:57

point back in the day,

14:59

it used to be like 85% of homes that have cable TV. And

15:02

now it's below 50% and

15:04

it's accelerating. That's one of the big

15:07

problems too, is that

15:08

even

15:09

if people wanted to try and salvage

15:12

the economic model for television, the

15:14

audiences already decided to leave

15:17

the areas of television that make the most money.

15:20

And they're going to this area where

15:22

profitability is very uncertain.

15:24

Yeah, I have the same reaction that

15:26

other people do. When something disappears

15:28

from the library of a streaming service that I

15:31

have, and they move it, let's say to an

15:33

ad supported, streaming service or

15:35

whatever, they move it from Max to

15:37

Tubi or whatever it is. I have

15:39

the same kind of instinctive, like you're taking something

15:42

away from me, but I also

15:44

feel like the future

15:46

may hold some contraction in

15:49

what you get for a flat fee and

15:52

some increase in the cost

15:54

of some of these things as part

15:56

of whatever kind of systemic shift

15:59

we're talking about.

15:59

if it ever happens. As

16:02

a viewer, I'm trying to kind of

16:04

be cognizant of, not

16:07

assuming that the actual issue here is that the

16:09

studios have no money, but

16:12

trying to think about whether my expectations

16:14

for what a streaming

16:17

service subscription looks like and how it works

16:19

and how much it costs and what you get are

16:21

gonna have to change in the future.

16:23

Well, I mean, it's so interesting to me because

16:26

people complain that there's too many TV

16:28

shows out there and they can't keep up with

16:30

what's out there and they don't know what to watch because

16:32

they're just blinded by choice. And

16:34

then when they start yanking stuff off that people

16:36

don't seem to be watching, people complain about that too.

16:40

I think we have too many series because

16:42

they've made all these shows that appeal

16:44

to different constituencies, no matter what

16:47

you pull, there are gonna be some people who like

16:49

it. And so the audience has to

16:51

prepare itself. You are gonna lose shows

16:53

that maybe you like. Hopefully you just

16:55

lose shows that you kind of like and

16:58

the shows that you love will remain,

17:00

but that's gonna happen. And the other thing

17:02

is these streaming services

17:05

started out with low prices to

17:07

suck people into memberships and

17:09

they are gonna get higher. But if the

17:11

payment model changes and actors

17:14

and writers get more money, they're really

17:17

gonna go up. People are not paying

17:20

what it really costs to make

17:22

these shows. That's

17:23

been amortized by a bunch of different things, but

17:25

including by trying to hold

17:28

down costs of production by not paying

17:31

people that much. So once that

17:33

changes, the audience is gonna have

17:35

to pay. So the audience has to get ready for

17:37

higher subscription fees

17:39

and less content. I think

17:41

that's inevitable.

17:42

Yeah, well, ultimately this is sort

17:45

of where we end up. What do you think the possible

17:47

end games are? Because obviously some

17:49

of this feels a little easier to

17:51

resolve. There may be compromises that are possible

17:54

on some of the issues around,

17:56

for example, the structure of writers'

17:58

rooms, the use of AI. and

18:01

from a process perspective, it's possible

18:03

for individual studios and streamers

18:06

to choose to break off from the AMPTP

18:08

and make individual interim

18:10

side deals with the union so they can go back into

18:12

production. That happened in 2007 into 2008 when the WGA was on

18:15

strike. But

18:17

I think that you and I agree that this feels

18:20

like it could be really long and certainly

18:24

stretch out past the kind of Labor

18:26

Day point that people are starting to identify

18:28

as like

18:29

this continuing past Labor Day is when it

18:32

really starts to interfere with

18:34

kind of the release schedule, the longer term,

18:37

kind of what people are going to be able to see and when.

18:40

Yeah, billionaire media mogul

18:42

Barry Diller did an interview where he said he

18:44

thinks if this strike goes into the fall

18:47

that the entertainment industry will fall apart and

18:49

that there has to be some kind of resolution

18:52

around September. I think the industry

18:54

will hang out for longer than that, but

18:56

I do think he has a great point. A

18:59

couple things strike me about this. Number one, I would

19:01

say there has to be some

19:03

sort of solution for paying people more

19:06

and it's going to be a solution that the studios

19:08

hate and that the writers and the actors

19:10

hate too because it's nobody's going

19:12

to get everything they want. And potentially that

19:14

viewers hate as we were just talking about. Yeah,

19:16

it will be some kind of compromise just

19:18

so that the wheels can stay on

19:21

the bus and you can keep going down the

19:23

street. And the question is how much pain does

19:25

each side have to undergo before

19:28

they're willing to bite the bullet and

19:31

do that compromise. The other thing that

19:33

I remember from the previous

19:35

strike in 2007-2008, a

19:38

lot of the agreements that came out of that were

19:40

more focused on DVD and

19:43

types of media that we were familiar

19:45

with then and people couldn't really

19:48

forecast or predict the

19:50

current home streaming business. And

19:53

so my fear is that we will

19:55

come out of all of this, Michigan, with

19:58

a new structure. that doesn't really

20:01

anticipate where media is going to go. Yeah.

20:03

The other thing they got to do, and we haven't really talked about this, is

20:06

artificial intelligence. Yeah. There has to be

20:08

a way

20:09

to control and lock down

20:12

how artificial intelligence is used. I

20:14

don't think that's as big a stumbling block as this other

20:16

stuff that we talked about, but they will have to figure

20:18

it

20:18

out. Yeah. All right. So I think

20:21

we're going to close on this. I think another thing

20:23

that people are really curious about, obviously,

20:25

is how this is going to affect what's available

20:27

for them to watch. We know that late

20:29

night is already shut down. It's looking,

20:31

I would say, increasingly dicey, whether you're going to get

20:34

the Emmy telecast in September, depending

20:36

on how this goes. Certainly, the fall

20:38

season of network shows is an obvious

20:41

jeopardy, or at least starting on time is

20:43

an obvious jeopardy. And there's kind of no

20:45

way, I think, to know

20:48

for sure what it's going to look like when, say, Netflix

20:51

maybe tries to bring in more productions from overseas

20:54

or services try to supplement with reality shows

20:56

or game shows. What are you thinking

20:58

about what people should expect this to

21:00

look like in terms of their viewing habits

21:03

over the course of the strike?

21:05

Yeah, I think barring some sort

21:07

of miraculous resolution in

21:09

the next month or so, the Emmys are not

21:11

going to happen in September. They'll probably happen

21:14

in 2024. The networks

21:16

have already advanced fall schedules

21:18

that are filled with unscripted shows and

21:21

filled with shows that are not affected

21:23

by the current strikes. And so that's

21:25

what they're going to do. So

21:28

all your favorite scripted shows are not going to debut.

21:31

They're not going to have new episodes.

21:33

We're going to see an influx of shows from outside the country.

21:36

The CW, the scripted shows that they have

21:38

that are going to start in the fall

21:40

are off from overseas. So we're going to see that.

21:42

We'll see more content from overseas on streaming

21:44

services too, but it won't measure up

21:46

to the stuff that people are used

21:49

to seeing. And the streaming services are going to

21:51

start to run out of their premium content, I would say,

21:54

by the end of the year. And

21:56

as

21:57

the time keeps going, the coverage is going to look bare for every

21:59

sector.

22:00

of television in January. That's

22:02

when we're gonna start to see some real

22:04

problems. So that

22:07

deadline is when the pain really

22:09

starts to mount and it's going to push people

22:12

to make the kind of compromises that maybe now they're

22:14

not willing to think about.

22:16

And on the film side, you'll start to see, I

22:18

think, the release schedules get juggled

22:21

around the same time, I think, as this stretches into the fall.

22:23

They'll start to potentially change plans

22:25

for movie releases, even with stuff

22:27

that's already out there. Because remember, if

22:30

you do have a big movie that you plan to release before

22:32

the end of the year, if you release it during the strike,

22:34

you're very limited in how you can promote it. Because

22:37

SAG in particular has very particular

22:40

rules about, I mean, both the

22:42

unions do, about how much you can

22:44

do promotion. So if you've got a big movie, you don't necessarily

22:47

want it to come out during the strike, even if you

22:49

theoretically could have it come out during the strike. So

22:52

I'm gonna be very interested to see how it all goes.

22:54

But I think you're right that as this, barring

22:57

a big resolution in the next

22:59

month or so, it's gonna start to get real,

23:01

real messy around the end of the year.

23:03

Well, and the other thing we haven't talked about

23:05

is that right now the unions are not

23:08

asking audiences to stop

23:10

using streaming services or stop going

23:12

to movies.

23:13

But that could change too. Yeah, it absolutely

23:16

could. While NPR will be covering the strike,

23:18

we've got reporters who will continue to follow

23:20

these developments. You can find all that coverage from

23:22

Eric and other people, obviously online and

23:24

on air for however long this all continues.

23:27

Eric, thank you so much for being here. I hope you

23:29

make your flight.

23:30

Thank you so much for having me. And

23:33

it's a measure of how much I really

23:35

wanna talk about this that

23:37

I'm standing here in the middle, listening to Careless

23:39

Whisper come through the music, but I'm talking to

23:41

you about TV.

23:43

All right, bud, thank you so much. Thanks.

23:46

This episode was produced by Mike Katseff and edited

23:48

by Jessica Reedy. Thanks to Mandelit

23:50

Del Barco and Rose Friedman from NPR's

23:53

Culture Desk for their great reporting and editing

23:55

on the strikes. Hello, Come In provides

23:57

our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop

23:59

Culture.

23:59

happy hour from NPR. I'm Linda

24:02

Holmes and we'll see you all later this week.

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