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Hollywood Hit With Writers Strike After Talks With AMPTP Fail; Guild Slams Studios For “Gig Economy” Mentality
- Thread starter bitbydeath
- Start date
ProtoByte
Member
You've not explained anything, because you don't actually know what you're talking about. Throughout the entire thread, you've actually responded to none of the logistic or financial realities of the situation. You've asked semi-rhetorical questions in hopes of displaying some moral high ground, and have failed to respond to the legitimate responses you've received.
1. A24 is in streaming by proxy as it pertains to their TV programming - e.g. Euphoria on HBO. They have a bunch of deals to produce for larger services/networks. Otherwise, their trade is primarily film. And film is not the focus of this dispute.
2. Schulz is behind the curve. Everybody who's paid attentuon has known for years that viewership metrics for these streaming shows are mostly inflated. It was public knowledge that Netflix boiled their viewership metrics down to "watched 2 minutes". That's not what really has been boosting the stock profile of the likes of Netflix. The stock price was so high for so long, because what Netflix was doing was a digital efficiency play, where profit margins were supposed to be astronomical after some years or losing money and raking up cheap debt (in the billions) at a time when everyone was benefitting from cheap debt. In order for those margins to be astronomical, the cost of things was going to have to come down. No more greenlighting frenzy, and much lower budgets. It's not a coincidence this streaming debate happens not a year after Netflix in particular starts to pump the breaks, and not in the preceding decade of streaming being a big and growing thing.
You're reading what you want to with this. How do you get that they could "easily" pay more when what you just quoted says that the perception of viewership numbers are way higher than they actually are, and when the likes of Disney, Amazon, WB, Hulu, and Netflix are or have been losing money in the 9-10 figures range?
If you wanted to get rid of shitty television that doesn't get significant viewership (because let's not pretend like network TV was the holy grail), office politics and activism, you'd be better off trying to dissolve the Hollywood unions.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
That's life.
I work in the finance department and don't even know all the metrics and calculations. Only the execs do. Nobody even knows exactly how the annual bonus is calculated. It just spits out one day from the CEO it gets applied to each person's personal evaluation and base bonus rate %.
It's a cycle as every department withholds info from one another. We dont like telling the sales department detailed product costs data because we dont want them leaving the company and telling a competitor whats going on. And sales people dont want to tell finance any weird deals they got with the Walmart buyer. The only way we know is just by luck one of the analysts notices some weird financials that happened and digs into it.
Sales people dont even like telling other sales people what they are doing because they dont want the other guy to know in case they copy them or try to upstage them doing a mega deal a week before the other guy. In fact it's so hush hush, each sales person only has visibility to their own customer data. But for my finance department we can see everything with full data access.
It sounds weird since you'd think all the employees hold hands and work together, but I've never worked at a big company that has 100% transparency.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
It's that conspiracy theory where big corporations do magic accounting trying to make it look like everything they sell is at a loss, so they never have the budget to pay for stuff and can hoard up tax loss credits.
So the goal is to make the company have a negative EPS in every earnings report. The crappier the negative P/E ratio the better.
Ya, that's sure going to prop up any stock which a lot of CEO bonuses and stock options rely on.
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Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
Exactly, its all about revenue sharing from these new markets.
The dispute though is levied through the AMPTP, and who exactly is calling their shots?
I mean all I know is its this kinda dummy front used by Hollywood producers to outsource handling trade disputes, and A24 apparently operate outside of it...
Well to be fair his tweets were largely musings about what the ramifications are for SAG-AFTRA/WGA if they "win" at a price of the revelations resulting in fewer shows getting greenlit and at lower budgets than under current conditions.
I suspect a big element is everything getting a boost under pandemic conditions and now the chickens have come home to roost as life's returned to normal. That spike in viewership will no doubt have been taken as validation that non-linear TV is the future, rather than purely a natural reaction to swathes of the globe being forcibly locked-down.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
I'm not following whats going on with this A24 thing. So why can they keep operating while the rest of SAG shuts down? They arent considered part of SAG contracts and striking?
Torrent of Pork
Banned
Stay strong everybody.
FunkMiller
Member
A24 agreed to the terms SAG AFTRA asked for, recognising that they can pay the writers and actors fairly, and still turn a profit with their movies.
FunkMiller
Member
Why do you keep comparing whatever it is you do for a living with the TV and movie world? Do you understand what residual payments are? Do you understand how residual payments provide transparency about viewing figures for TV shows? Do you understand how that transparency has only disappeared because of the streaming ‘revolution’?
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Unknown Soldier
Member
I don't see any difference between this script and the average Marvel movie TBH
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
I'm just telling you how businesses work and transparency is hit and miss. The union may win on streaming info and payments, they may not. Not every facet of a business is 100% transparent to every employee.
FunkMiller
Member
You're telling me how your business works. So bizarre that you think its the same across all industries. It isn't. Broaden your knowledge horizons a little. I'm not going to bore you with the specific ins and outs of how the entertainment industry functions, but just believe me when I say the strikes are happening because the business has been changed for the worse very recently, by the introduction of streaming companies - and the traditional companies who have copied them, thinking it was a nonstop cash producing strategy. It wasn't.
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Dr.D00p
Member
I don't understand how the creative heart of the business, those that determine everything we see on screen, can be treated so badly.
Without the writers, there is nothing. You'd have thought they would have learnt how to properly leverage the power they have over the Studios by now.
Without the writers, there is nothing. You'd have thought they would have learnt how to properly leverage the power they have over the Studios by now.
FunkMiller
Member
Problem is, it's not the writers and actors that have changed, it's the executives. Up until the last 10 years or so, you could at least count on some of the studio execs being 'movie' people. These days, hardly any of them are.
And frankly, the top of the tree writers and actors were quite happy making a great deal of coin, so they didn't rock the boat - until now, when they see a threat to themselves. They moved too slowly, and this strike is the end result. It was always coming.
Nobody at Amazon Studios is asking what kind of stories they can tell. They're asking what kind of content can they produce that creates the most Prime subscription sign ups.
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^Timecoded
Nolan talks about why the strike is necessary due to how Hollywood has changed in the streaming era.
"It's not about Robert Downey Jr. or Matt Damon or myself, it's about working writers and working actors trying to pay their mortgages, trying to keep food on their table. The companies we all work for have changed their business models over the past few years, unilaterally, and the deals have not been changed to accommodate that. It's just one of those moments that comes along every few decades where action has to be taken and hopefully it can be as swiftly resolved as possible."
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
Not a conspiracy. "Hollywood accounting" is a real thing that loads of industries use when they've reached a critical mass of asset ownership and vertical/horizontal integration. As someone who is so versed in how corporations work and loves to tell us about it, you should know this is one of the oldest accounting tricks in the book, but perhaps corporations in Canada are just nicer than the ones in America.
The company that matters is not the one losing money, obviously. The "real" ones make money by siphoning off the profits from the "fake" ones that they also conveniently own using accounting tricks. Do you think "Return of the Jedi" is a failure? An unprofitable movie? Well, according to their bookkeeping it is, which is why David Prowse (Darth Vader) isn't getting any share of the "profits" of that movie because that movie on paper has zero "profits".
How Hollywood Accounting Can Make a $450 Million Movie 'Unprofitable'
Most corporations try to make a profit by limiting costs. Movies corporations manage to record a loss by maximizing fees to their studios
www.theatlantic.com
When you are a vertically integrated monopoly, or oligopoly as much of Hollywood is, these expenses are bullshit because they're basically paying themselves for services that they're selling to themselves. Your bosses probably do this too in some form or another, which is why you're also confused about the concept of corporate transparency. How meaningful are the terms "gross" and "expense" when the buying and selling contracts have the signature of the same dude on both contracts?
'Hollywood Accounting' Losing In The Courts
If you follow the entertainment business at all, you’re probably well aware of “Hollywood accounting,” whereby very, very, very few entertainment products are technically “p…
www.techdirt.com
This video also goes over a lot of aspects of how this works and how it also works among other corporations with a specific example being Twitch and Amazon.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Looks like my businesses I’ve worked in are closer to media than you think. Because both the industries aren’t 100% transparent with employees with everything that goes on.
Just because companies are in different industries doesn’t mean everything is different. In fact most companies will operate pretty similarly with similar goals. It’s just that it involves different products or services.
As some of us have said, the biggest issue isn’t greedy management. Money is there. If execs were Scrooge Tom Cruise wouldn’t get $100M for top gun and Margot Robbie wouldn’t get $12.4M for Barbie.
The issue the everyday worker has in media is they are expendable, and their own members (any person in any role who can negotiate beyond the rate charts) hogging the money doing their own side deal. There’s only so much cash in the bank. The traditional union deal is something all members are supposed to abide to, not people doing their own contracts on their own.
But if that’s how the industry is you got to live with it. It’s one part union terms, one part free for all.
There would be a lot more money for the greater whole of celebs didn’t hog it. You can tell the union doesn’t even believe in it themselves because they are ok with people doing their own deal and the SAG 1% contribution is low. If they wanted more parity, let Tom cruise make $100M and for rich deals they have to donate 30%. Think of it like progressive taxes we all get grilled on when we work 9-5 jobs.
So the problem isn’t management. They just value celebs more and the union allows the stars to blow by everyone else.
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
Because the (good) writers, like most creatives, give a shit about the quality of their work, and the studios don't, which is reflected in their financial and corporate organization. Just like how the American healthcare industry is not interested in keeping you healthy but rather making a profit, most of the major studios out there are not necessarily interested in making good content because making good content is not necessarily congruent with making a profit. The primary responsibility of a corporation is to turn a profit for the shareholders. Nowhere in that agreement is a responsibility to make good movies and TV shows. If a studio's path of least resistance is to turn a profit by making mostly shit, they will do that.
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But I don't think a strike is gonna fix that kind of stuff, it would require government regulation and oversight. They can promise writers 20% of profit but 20% of 0 is stil 0.
And hollywood is hardly the only ones doing this B$, corporate overhaul in general is waaaaaaay overdue.
But writers and actors could enter a profit sharing agreement TODAY and the top 1% of actors/writers could make a little less and the bottom 99% could make substantially more. So if the top actors REALLY cared, why don't they do this?????? Margot Robbie could have accepted just a TEN PERCENT pay cut and the next TWENTY actors below her (minus Gosling I suppose) could have been paid SIXTY-TWO THOUSAND extra.....EACH, easily a livable wage for 2-3 months on set.
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
Why do you think America's tax laws are like this in the first place? For decades, the rich and powerful court the government and legally bribe them though lobbying and campaign contributions to make the laws favorable to them. This is why as a burger flipper you might still see a significant portion of your income get taxed by the government, while as a megacorp you have a vast array of tax write-offs available to you to push your effective tax rate way down. The government, or more accurately, the politicians in government have just as much incentive to kiss the asses of corporations because they're the ones taking them out to fancy dinners and fishing trips, not you. Labor actions like striking is historically one of the only ways that workers can leverage their power to enact real change. Do you like benefits such as a sick leave, a 40 hour work week, overtime pay, occupational safety standards, paid vacation, worker's compensation, and more? Unions and the threat of strikes is what got those benefits in the first place. If you read up on the Industrial revolution and how early industries worked, conditions were horrible, and the long history of worker organization is what got us to where we are today. People nowadays are comfortable enough to forget why we enjoy the benefits we have now. It's not because of the inherent good hearted nature of corporations. It's because workers fought tooth and nail to institutionalize these benefits for future generations.
I know. Did you read my whole post? I talked about how everyone does this. Just to be clear, this is an observation, not a justification.
There is no profit sharing when the executives pull accounting tricks to minimize the profits.
Why is it the worker's responsibility to make up for the corporation's stinginess?
Also, this does happen.
Chadwick Boseman Boosted Sienna Miller’s 21 Bridges Salary From His Own Pay
Sienna Miller spoke to Empire about her experiences of working with Chadwick Boseman on 21 Bridges.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
And nowhere in life does it say every person on Earth wants the highest quality product. Animated and superhero movies make the most money most of the time (Ok, movies like Titanic and Top Gun do too). These are all impressively loud, good looking movies with cookie cutter plots, dumb dialogue and they all wear Halloween costumes. No doubt you'll get a ton more clever plots in a thriller or oddball indie film.
But hey, people want mainstream stuff. It's entertainment, not brain surgery. People just want to have some fun and move on. Not everyone wants every media they watch to be crazy stuff like Memento.
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
What you said has nothing to do with my point. I'm not talking about what "every person on Earth" wants, or the subjective value of entertainment, nor is that relevant to the point I'm making.
I'm speaking to
Dr.D00p
's point of why writing is so undervalued and why the studios think they are justified in treating writers and other creatives like shit. Talk about that instead, because that's what I'm talking about.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Exactly.
Problem is this kind of union has a giant stated pay rates chart covering a ton of shit. Traditional union deals are supposed to cover everyone. Not have union member do their own side deal behind closed doors. So you can already tell the union members arent that serious about it. What's happened over time (like sports) is that having an open ended agreement should be good because you got the floor (contract) and no ceiling (side deals).
But what's happened is the all star cast (like all star athletes) blow away from the pack as they negotiate their own awesome package.
That can all come to a stop if the union held it's members to stick to the charts or progressively tax the high income earners more than 1% of SAG revenue they earn. Unions are the ones who originate union deals. No company ever is the first one putting up their hand wanting a union deal first. So if unions are so amped up on structured pay boxes, then tell every person making 1 penny more than a pay box to stop fucking around hoarding their own secret deal. It's so bad you dont even know how much more they get paid. At least in pro sports all player salaries are public. The more money the high media earners make means less for the rest as they are stuck in the stated rates.
The pie is only so big. What the union members at the bottom want is a magic pie getting bigger. What they should be advocating is sharing the pie more. And the first pie slice to target arent execs. They only make so much and there's only so many of them. It's their own union member red carpet stars making bank where many make more than Bob Iger himself.
But in life it always looks bad if you put a bullseye on your own team because that shows they dont know what they are doing and are being idiots infghting.
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StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Writing is undervalued because just as I said. Most consumers dont care about writing. No doubt they care about production values and star power. The blockbuster movies that make tons of money are mostly shit written scripts, but it doesn't matter as long as the viewers have fun watching their fav star jump around smashing stuff in spandex.What you said has nothing to do with my point. I'm not talking about what "every person on Earth" wants, or the subjective value of entertainment, nor is that relevant to the point I'm making.
I'm speaking to
You are overvaluing professional writing.
If paid writers are so important to people, people wouldnt so amped up watching everyday people's YT or Tik Tok accounts who are doing these uploads for free. There's only a small number making a career out of it and most arent pro media people to begin with. Just normal people doing stuff.
This kind of material is watched and read more than pro media staff. Ya, nobodies doing random content are beating writers on a payroll. Go figure. If writer's content is so awesome, everyone would be reading it and the media staff wouldnt be so desperate for jobs and pay.
So it goes to show if Brad and Bernice can get traffic to their home kitchen cooking channel and SniperX can get popular doing FPS tips and tricks from his basement, then traditional media workers are old news.
You can already tell because most newspapers have either disappeared, on its last legs or cut down half the size. People want news fast. And if it means a Twitter dude with inaccurate info that's fine. People dont care. They'd rather read that than a verified newspaper article the next day. And if that Twitter dude tweets accurate info for an engaging story faster than pro media writers, then hey they got beat by a nobody whose probably tweeting while eating at a pub.
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This one will confuse people, now that everyone's fave Nolan has supported it those who slated the strike but love his movies will have a dilemma.
FunkMiller
Member
FunkMiller
Member
You’d think people would change their minds based on the fact Nolan knows more about movies and the movie industry than they ever will.
But then this is 2023, and confirmation bias trumps experts every single time.
negator2vc
Member
I guess all good things don't last forever! 
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FunkMiller
Member
Sounds like they fucked the AMPTP nicely. Good for them.
Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
Lets see the terms of the deal first, as in what concessions have been made to whom.
I really don't see why the balance of power in negotiations would flip-flop so fast when nothing has changed on the face of it. In fact if anything the WGA's position would seem weakened by names like Bill Maher and Drew Barrymore announcing that they crossing the line and going back to work recently.
FunkMiller
Member
The reports coming out of the WGA itself suggests they are very happy with the deal they've struck, so I think they've done pretty well with it. They won't have got everything, but there must have been some major concessions by the studios to get to this point.
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Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
Hmmm, let's see. If you remember how the last WGA strike ended -and memorably mocked in South Park's "Canada On Strike" episode- what the union claimed, and what they actually got in terms of meaningful change were two different things.
Most important is how it relates to streaming economics, because that always seemed like where the biggest division was.
FunkMiller
Member
Yep. If they've secured more transparency around residual payments it'll have a potentially big knock on effect for the studios. Hopefully they won't be able to cover up how well a show is doing quite as easily anymore.
Can you imagine if we had more accurate figures for the way shows like The Witcher and She Hulk are actually performing?
DeafTourette
Perpetually Offended
And both Barrymore and Maher reversed their decisions after pressure from the writers
Those look like edits.Professional writers came up with this?
They do, and probably are. But I laughed.
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
How does your opinion change about this (if it does) if I tell you that they both backtracked on those decisions?
Kilau
Member
Apparently real. Some really stupid stuff here.
The best signs from the 2023 WGA Strikes
Nationwide striking between the WGA and the AMPTP has inspired writers to use their talents for something new - picket signs! Ahead, see some of the most creative picket signs from protests all over the country.
pagesix.com
Well hopefully the higher pay leads to dumb ones like that being squeezed out, with better pay comes higher quality standards.Apparently real. Some really stupid stuff here.
The best signs from the 2023 WGA Strikes
Nationwide striking between the WGA and the AMPTP has inspired writers to use their talents for something new - picket signs! Ahead, see some of the most creative picket signs from protests all over the country.
See, I don't think the studios would ignore actual ratings either way. They still gotta put out quota stuff, they know most of it will be junk since most of EVERYTHING is junk, they are not gonna throw good money after bad if a show tanked in the ratings. They still gotta decide to keep it, how much to shake it up, or toss it and move on. We've seen it with D+ and how they dumped the Willow TV show. "Transparency" would only force them to generate magic numbers to report or decide to throw some extra money at the writers/actors to bolster fake viewership numbers, it's basically a marketing budget item at that point. I don't think they will ever report unique account viewership, clear data on how long folks did watch, and amount of repeat views. All that stuff comes from secondary sources handling the bandwidth.Yep. If they've secured more transparency around residual payments it'll have a potentially big knock on effect for the studios. Hopefully they won't be able to cover up how well a show is doing quite as easily anymore.
Can you imagine if we had more accurate figures for the way shows like The Witcher and She Hulk are actually performing?
The thing that WILL force streamers to give out clean data is ads, the cost to market on certain shows will be a clear indicator of viewership.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Most stuff is junk, but propped up by cable or sub plan fees. It’s like an open world game with lots of filler. There’s only so many people who will do it all.
Whether it’s 200 channels or 2000 tv shows and movies, if given a choice most people would rather pay a smaller fee to cherry pick a small amount of content. Instead the company’s pool of content gets propped up because people have to pay a certain minimum monthly fee which will cover (assuming the company is profitable) the entire content pool. And make that offer blanket to all with a handful of choices instead of pure customization. NF kinds of companies don’t offer any customization.
Cable TV is the best example. If people could cherry pick $1 per channel, I know I’d pick maybe 10-15 channels skewed all to sports and news and that’s it. Nobody would choose $100 to pay for 100 channels. Even the most hardcore TV and sub plan watcher can only watch so much content.
Well sure, but that model is dying. And the "bulk cable" model allowed for LOTS of diverse content that otherwise couldn't survive on ratings alone. Hell, ESPN alone propped up damn near EVERYTHING, strip that out and we see that most stuff has no viable audience.
Streaming gives the companies CRAZY data, far far far more than they have ever had. They know EXACTLY who watches, when they stop, how long they watch, what they go back and rewatch, etc. We've already seen directors and writers talk about how the streaming model requires a lot of changes to how stuff is paced because the "networks" now have exact data for EVERYONE about how long they watch before punching out. It will take time for it to filter down to most shows but I think we will see a difference with how stuff is structured to maximize viewer retention, if not engagement. I'm hoping this puts the stake through the heart of all these INCREDIBLY slow prestige shows and we get back to more dynamic, plot focused ensembles, especially if bulk ep drops are going away and ad are coming back, shows need to be structured around these things, you can't just take a 9 hour movie and break it up into 50 minute chunks dropped each week with arbitrary ad breaks.
DKehoe
Member
It's going to be great when streaming services chasing retention and engagement using the data they get means they start churning out stuff like this
Nobody_Important
“Aww, it’s so...average,” she said to him in a cold brick of passion
Studios have in and gave them much of what they wanted.
Another win for Unions.
Another win for Unions.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Thats one thing I love about Arnie movies. The opening scenes are usually good!
And ya ESPN. We don’t have that here but I’m sure TSN and Sportsnet act the same. I never knew till the internet came about telling details that ESPN was a giant cash cow compare to other channels.
And then there was an article when CBC lost NHL license to Rogers I think the article said crap ass CBC network got 30% of its ad revenue from hockey alone. Although I might be wrong and it was 30% from sports telecasts. In any given week there’s hardly any sports shown at all across 168 hours, but the sports stuff was 30% alone!
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