Hello again everyone, and welcome to another Wednesday. Today I wanted to spotlight an article that Blue Adept (I think – apologies if I got that wrong) shared on Monday about the challenges faced by film and television writers even after the end of last year’s writers’ strike. 

This story sits at the intersection of so many PT interests – economics, politics, pop culture. It’s a deep dive into the experiences of writers and how venture capitalism has helped transform Hollywood over the past decade.

“The truth was that the forces that had opened doors for Smith were the same ones that had made her individual work seem not to matter. They were the same forces that had been degrading writers’ working lives for some time, and they were cannibalizing the business of Hollywood itself.

Thanks to decades of deregulation and a gush of speculative cash that first hit the industry in the late Aughts, while prestige TV was climbing the rungs of the culture, massive entertainment and media corporations had been swallowing what few smaller companies remained, and financial firms had been infiltrating the business, moving to reduce risk and maximize efficiency at all costs, exhausting writers in evermore unstable conditions.

“The industry is in a deep and existential crisis,” the head of a midsize studio told me in early August.^* We were in the lounge of the Soho House in West Hollywood. “It is probably the deepest and most existential crisis it’s ever been in. The writers are losing out. The middle layer of craftsmen are losing out. The top end of the talent are making more money than they ever have, but the nuts-and-bolts people who make the industry go round are losing out dramatically.”

As a companion piece, I also wanted to share this Hollywood Reporter article about grim prospects for TV writers.

For this showrunner, the recent salary gains secured in the new MBA are helpful but pale in comparison to the residuals that writers received from working on the type of long-running shows that boasted 24-episode seasons and were the bedrock of broadcast before streaming. “Writers at my stage a generation ago would have had much more money in the bank,” he says. “The fact that our earnings, up and down the ranks, have been diminished and the fact that we can’t rely on residuals to support us through the lean periods … people are in total survival mode. Even though we’ve made gains through the last two strikes, they don’t add up to what it used to look like for veteran writers.”

McNutt says many scribes have turned to the ECF’s career center to help identify skills that can transfer elsewhere. “We try to look at people’s transferable skills and identify other kinds of work they can do to bring in money on the side. Being a writer is the dream and the passion and hopefully the primary wage source, but if that’s not bringing in enough money you can create a parallel career consulting with nonprofits or editing fundraising proposals.”

“I’m scared. No one is making decisions,” says another veteran showrunner who has been waiting since October to hear back on multiple pilots. “You end up not being able to get paid because executives are not making decisions because they’re afraid to make the wrong ones.” This showrunner is now trying to figure out how to pay his mortgage after his overall deal expired and as his projects sit in limbo. “That’s where a lot of us are,” he notes. “Almost everyone I know who had a deal, that deal doesn’t exist anymore.” 

Agents, too, are feeling the pressure as clients come calling, looking for answers on when the downturn might end and when buying could perk up. But agents say they don’t have the answers. “It’s just hard. There are a lot less jobs out there and more people available than ever,” says one. Adds another: “There are no shows getting picked up and the shows that are getting ordered have very tiny budgets, and showrunners are getting 600 submissions for staffing on a light day when it’s usually half of that. There are more writers who are unemployed than ever before. It’s sad.”

Who knows what the future holds for the industry? The reliable moneymakers of the 2010s seem to have lost inertia, cable continues to lose subscribers, streaming searches for profitability (and there’s some indication that today’s younger folks may be opting for other forms of entertainment entirely). But all of that impacts the people who work and aspire to work in the industry, and I thought that was worth highlighting this morning.

And that’s without even going into the television journalism side of the house, which is facing its own challenges. Who knows how AV Club will fare under its new owners at Paste? That’s a story to probe at another Wednesday. For now, just be kind and thoughtful today. Cheers.