As negotiations between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers begin, all eyes in Hollywood are on the possibility of the first writers’ strike since 2007-08.
Driving this prospect are the wrenching changes the rise of subscription streaming has had on the industry. As Variety Intelligence Platform makes clear in the special report “Time to Strike?” the scripted-content world has been rewrought for writers, often in ways less hospitable to them.
Chief among them is the demise of TV syndication. The traditional gold mine of scripted television has been gutted by a combination of consumers having more new content to watch, viewing less television and more streaming and there being fewer shows commissioned on traditional TV.
Exclusive VIP+ analysis of Luminate Film & TV data shows that while streaming has fed a content boom in terms of total output for live-action comedies and dramas, the number of episodes produced has actually fallen.
This is a key point in what the WGA is looking to change: Streaming has reduced the number of paying opportunities for writers. Factor in the decline of TV syndication and the increasing gaps between the release of new seasons for many shows, and it is not hard to imagine why the WGA is demanding changes to how scribes are paid for streaming content.
VIP+’s special report examines the current state of writer employment; trends across TV and streaming residuals; the aforementioned exclusive data and analysis on the number of scripted live-action TV and streaming shows in 2017 and 2022; the average number of episodes produced by both source (broadcast, cable, streaming) and genre; breakdowns of genre by source; and which streaming services and TV networks aired the most domestically produced live-action scripted content in 2017 and 2022.
The report also foresees the headwinds that should be considered regarding the road ahead for scripted content, such as the trends in pay TV subscriptions, younger consumers favoring alternative entertainment formats over TV and streaming, and the impact cutbacks in content spend will have on scripted versus unscripted content.
