A Brief History of Hollywood Writers’ Strikes
The ongoing Writers Guild of America strike, which brought Hollywood to a screeching halt in May, comes at a once-in-a-generation inflection point for the entertainment industry.
A decade of changes in viewing habits has resulted in a consumer base that wants to watch more content, but pay for less of it — and do so primarily on their own schedules without leaving the house. Hollywood’s pivot to streaming created a brief gold rush as legacy brands attempted to build up these subscriber bases with massive quantities of content. But the past year has slowly seen studios and networks come to the collective realization that their business model isn’t viable as it stands.
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The artists who actually make the content that fuels the Streaming Wars face an equally frustrating predicament. Streaming may have created more jobs in the short term, but it has eroded the residuals that once formed the bedrock of a writer’s income. Screenwriters are working more, earning less, and being asked to come to terms with the idea that their work can be removed from streaming circulation at any moment — and for any reason. The WGA went on strike with the intention of not just securing more resources for its members, but reaching a new understanding about the ways in which studios and artists can coexist in this unfamiliar and fraught era.
In some ways, the current situation is unprecedented. But the story of Hollywood writers striking when technological innovations threaten their established income sources is not new. The WGA has gone on strike eight times since forming in 1933, most recently in 2007. Many of the strikes were tied to emerging technologies that threatened to fundamentally alter the way Hollywood distributes entertainment — and were ultimately resolved once the guild felt that writers had been assured an appropriately-sized slice of the new pie.
Anyone looking for clarity about the current ambiguity facing Hollywood would be well advised to study the history of writers strikes. While streaming profitability (or the lack thereof) and artificial intelligence are uniquely 21st century problems, many of the previous strikes unfolded in similar ways. Keep reading for a chronological history of WGA strikes, including the ways that Hollywood resolved the first seven work stoppages — running alongside photos of the current actions still playing out in New York and Los Angeles.
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