Writers' Strike Looms Large At ATX TV Festival

Austin, Texas (June 5, 2023) — The ongoing Writers Guild of America strike loomed large over the weekend's ATX TV Festival, held annually in downtown Austin. Planners of the four-day fest's 12th season shifted portions of its programming in solidarity with members of the union, who have been striking for weeks in search of better conditions from television studios in the streaming age.

A "WGA On Strike" panel was Saturday at the Stateside Theatre, featuring showrunners Beau Willimon ("House of Cards"), Julie Plec ("The Vampire Diaries") and Zoanne Clack ("Station 19"), along with WGA East Council Member and late night writer Greg Irwinski.

Panelists took the opportunity to educate festival goers and TV fans about what the writers are seeking and how the industry has changed since streaming took dominance over network TV.

"The streaming model of television that was so appealing lots of years ago…that system was destroying writer pay," said Iriwinski, a member of the negotiating committee "bringing arguments and presenting our solutions" to the Association of Motion Picture Television Producers. "We have to live in New York or Los Angeles, which are not cheap. You can be someone who writes on a hit television show and makes $80,000 a year and has to be on food stamps, even though your show is being nominated for awards that the studio is happy to take credit for."

Willimon added that "the big myth is that people that work in Hollywood are super rich, and most writers are living as squarely middle class, and sometimes hand-to-mouth existence."

Streaming has also altered job stability, said Clack, who now runs "Station 19" on ABC after years on "Grey's Anatomy. She told the crowd it "frightens me to the core of my soul" to leave the 22-episode format. "I think a lot of people are trying to get back to network TV because it's stable," she said. The fact that you could go out to streaming and maybe get a six-episode order and then not get a job again for two years, frightens me."

Plec agreed, citing friends "who worked 15 years straight who don't have jobs right now, and those that are taking the jobs are taking them at 30 to 60 percent less pay than they’re used to making after a 15-year career."

Negotiators say it will cost $450 million to end the strike. "It has already cost almost a billion dollars, the delays, production shutdowns and damage of the strike," Irwinski said. "So, we are already way past what it would’ve cost to give us the deal."

"It sounds like a lot [of money]," Willimon said, "but in the perspective of an industry that's making billions of dollars…if we got everything we asked for, we’re looking at less than two percent of their yearly [profits]."

Plec provided perspective on how things have changed since she and her fellow union members last went on strike in 2007. "The lack of care for the artists and the content creators of this business has reached a breaking point, not just in the writers’ guild but in all labor guilds," she said. "Before, we didn't [necessarily] have support of fellow unions…now there's this moment in time where everyone is as mad as we are. We are able to have this community of raw anger that is fueling the solidarity on the picket lines."

Protecting writers’ room size to avoid overworking showrunners is "in the center of these negotiations," Willimon continued. "Keeping writers' rooms alive [is] central to the creative process and to the business."

Other sticking points include a better residual structure for writers and protections against the the future artificial intelligence, which Plec called the "clarion call, the 'mockingjay' of this strike." As the audience applauded for the reference to "The Hunger Games," Plec added: "A writer wrote that."

The panelists said TV fans can also support writers by being vocal.

"Tell companies that you are not cool with what is happening," Irwinski said. "Continue this wave of public sentiment that says, ‘we like people who are making our stuff more than we like the people who are paying for our stuff.’ That is important, because they need to sell a product and you are the audience. So if you guys are saying no, they have nothing to sell. They have to convince you that it's worth it."

In general, the "WGA On Strike" panel drove home guild members’ belief that writers are undervalued for what they create, and the quality of artistic storytelling has not only taken a backseat to subscriber data and executive salaries, but has been essentially kicked out of the car altogether.

"In the past, executives stood by what they thought was good, they pushed for it and they became advocates of it. And if it didn't work, it didn't work, but they pushed," Clack said. "Now, you can film an entire season of things and they can just say, ‘we’re not gonna air it.’ This is not how it's supposed to go."

Plec said some executives used to "believe in the spirit of art and creating art and that there was money to be made for all and success, and I think that's all but gone. And that's not good."

"Writers start with something blank and then they give you a show like ‘The Office,’ that will be quoted for the rest of time and used in memes and culturally is important. All of these ideas came from a writer's brain," Irwinski said. "That is worth at least two percent and I would argue much more than that...There's no mythical world where every exec is just like, ‘I love art so much. Whatever it costs, go do your dream.’ This is a business. But it's cool if the person running a hamburger stand thinks burgers taste good and likes them."