Script to Stream: Deciphering the Writers' Strike
Is our concern with technology and jobs misplaced? It is the platformization of work that we should be worried about, not AI.
While it is true that automation will be increasingly affecting the nature of work, including jobs of skilled workers, the impact of platformization or gig work is already keenly felt by some individuals. The conditions of gig workers are far from ideal when considering typical examples of gig work, such as delivering food, driving for Uber, or labelling images on platforms like Prolific. These jobs come with a great deal of instability and low pay. One may argue that such work does not require specific skills, meaning while there is a high demand for such work, there is also a high supply of workers, which keeps pay low. But the argument holds only in part; in reality, some jobs that do require specific skills and that used to be stable have now become increasingly more like gig work due to the rise of platforms.
A case in point is the job of a TV and film writers in the USA, where platforms like Netflix turned the idea of having a career in screenwriting on its head. In the past, TV networks would hire writers as staff for their shows. For writers this ensured stable income since a show would run for about 40 weeks, usually from September to May. Being a staff writer also allowed for upward mobility; if a show ran for multiple seasons, a writer could advance from a staff writer to an executive producer or showrunner.
Over the past 15 years, streaming has come into prominence. Streaming first shortened the length of a season, while TV network shows would run for 22 episodes, a show on Netflix often has 8 episodes. Not only did seasons become shorter, 40 weeks of work became 20 weeks of work or less when writing for a show on a streamer, but the nature of work also changed. For streaming platform shows, all the writing is completed before filming begins. In broadcast TV, writers would work on set and rework scripts during production in collaboration with actors, which is what kept them busy for those 40 weeks.
Another major distinction between broadcast TV and streaming lies in residual checks, which refers to payments made to writers for the continued use of their work. Residuals depend on factors such as the length of a show and the production budget, among others. When a show is rerun on broadcast TV, a writer is paid a certain amount that gradually decreases with each rerun. However, on a streaming platform, a writer receives a single payment regardless of how many times the show is rewatched. The difference in residuals paid for a show rerun on broadcast TV versus a streaming platform is orders of magnitude apart. In the latter case, it can be as little as 200 US dollars, compared to 100 times more in the former case.
Considering all this, it is no surprise that writers and other creatives went on strike in the USA this May. And although AI emerged as a theme during the writers’ strike, the strike is not about AI. The strike is about streaming having made writing jobs increasingly more precarious. It appears that one does not need to build an all-powerful AI, not even a good-enough AI, one just needs to build a platform as well as not share profits and viewership data with creators.
Is there a way forward? The answer seems to continue the strike. Thus, the writers’ strike persists, as of this writing, in its third month. Hopefully, negotiations between writers and studios will yield improved conditions and greater job security for writers. However, one may also ponder to what extent this is “when one door closes, another opens” type of situation. If one can no longer make a decent living when writing for TV and film, can they make a living crafting stories for video/computer games? (Human) writing and storytelling will not disappear, no matter the advances in tech, but the industries that offer the best outlets for one’s creativity may not always remain the same.