How Big Streaming decimated the screenwriting profession

WGA members picket outside of Netflix HQ in LA. Photo courtesy of the WGA.

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Hey friends, we’re back from a mid-season break to serve you up a fresh batch of thought-provoking and hopefully not too dystopian episodes.

Since May 2, the Writers Guild of America has been on strike, shutting down film sets across the country and demanding a fair shake in the face of a changing Hollywood landscape that, if we’re being honest, looks a lot like the one that we’re dealing with over here in the media industry. Hint: It has a lot to do with the ways that some of the world’s biggest tech companies — including Netflix, Apple TV, and Amazon — have transformed what it looks like to make a living as a film or tv writer. 

With issues like shrinking residuals — or payments writers receive when their work is re-aired  — increased job insecurity, and the looming threat of automation and AI, it’s a story that brings together many of the issues we touch on this show. So we brought on two key players from the front lines to give us a candid peek into what life as a screenwriter in 2023 actually looks like: Mason Flink, a TV writer and WGA guild captain based in LA who has worked on shows like Minx, Special, and Love, and Sara David, a former colleague of ours from VICE who has worked at Netflix and Paramount+ and is currently serving as the VP of online media for the WGA East. 

Mason and Sara tell us about how Hollywood labor conditions directly impact the quality of the film and television we consume (and who gets to produce it), the long history of deregulation and financialization that set the stage for this moment, and why this fight has big consequences for creative workers of all stripes — not just in the writers’ room.

Mason Flink (left) and Sara David (right). Images courtesy of our guests.

Learn more about Mason’s work with Third Space, an artist collective he helped found, here

Follow Sara on Twitter

Visit the WGA on Strike website for updates on the contract negotiations and a picket line schedule

Recommended reading on the writers’ strike, courtesy of Mason

“Hollywood writers say their bosses make too much. This is what our analysis found” (Brian Contreras, Wendy Lee, Thomas Suh Lauder)

“The Luddites of Hollywood” (Gavin Mueller)

“Time to break up Hollywood” (Matt Stoller)

Photo courtesy of the WGA.