In 2007, about 12,000 film and television writers represented by the Writers Guild of America went on strike, fighting for issues like DVD residuals and their stake in “new media,” which covered content written for the internet or distributed through new technology like streaming.
That strike lasted 100 days and was “massively disruptive,” says Kevin Klowden, chief global strategist at the Milken Institute, and the previous head of the economic think tank’s California Center. The work stoppage resulted in an estimated loss of 37,700 jobs and $2.1 billion in economic output, according to a Milken Institute report. “The 2007-2008 writers’ strike had ripple effects not only during the strike itself, but also for months afterwards,” he adds.
Now, Hollywood writers are once again on the precipice of a strike, which would be the first since 2007. The WGA’s contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, a trade association that represents more than 350 Hollywood film- and TV-production companies, is set to expire May 1. The union’s members have already authorized a strike, and if there’s no negotiation by that date, 11,500 writers will go on strike May 2.
But the entertainment world today looks different than it did in 2007, in part because of how dominant that “new media” has become. “The 2007 strike is how the Writers Guild won jurisdiction over the internet, and that’s now where half our members work,” says Laura Blum-Smith, director of Research and Public Policy at WGA West. (Fast Company’s editorial newsroom is unionized through the Writers Guild of America East). “Now we’re sort of dealing with the ways the studios have taken advantage of that transition to impose worse pay and working conditions on writers at every level.” AMPTP now represents not just studio giants like Warner Bros. and Paramount, but major streaming services including Netflix, Amazon, and Apple TV+.
Television production and release schedules can also look different today: Streaming services now often release entire seasons of a show at once rather than dropping weekly episodes, and shows may not follow a typical fall release schedule like what used to be the norm on broadcast networks. “In this age of streaming services, you can release [a show] whenever you release it,” Klowden says. Studios have used this “lack of a season calendar” to separate writing from the production process, Blum-Smith says, which impacts not only writer pay during the production process but also the experience they can gain to move up in their careers.
During the 2007 strike, networks faced holes in their content, and shows were forced, in some instances, to air reruns, or cut their seasons short. Streamers have the advantage of backlogs of content, and are investing more heavily in international shows, which wouldn’t be impacted by a strike (Netflix just announced it will invest $2.5 billion into Korean content over the next four years, for example). These sources of content can fill gaps in ways that weren’t available to broadcast networks during the 2007 strike—though they are still just “placeholders” for U.S.-written content, Klowden says. “Nobody’s expecting that, say, Netflix, is going to fill the entire void with a whole bunch of k-dramas,” he says. “There’s only a certain amount of appetite and audience in that. . . . It helps, and it certainly does make a difference in terms of diversification, but there are limits.”
But though streamers may have a deeper bench of content, and may benefit from the fact that new shows tend to come out with all episodes at once, those companies are still intertwined with broadcast networks, with weekly shows making up a part of their content lineup. Abbot Elementary, for example, airs new episodes weekly on ABC, but viewers can also watch those episodes on Hulu the next day. For network shows set to start this fall, the writing process starts around May or June, so those shows would get delayed by a strike, affecting not just broadcast networks but also streaming companies.
Without such content, viewers may cancel their subscription services. According to a 2022 NPR poll, 87% of respondents who use streaming services cited specific shows or movies in their decision to subscribe to a service, and 83% cited a “change in content” as a factor for why they would cancel.
“The transition to streaming as the dominant market for content introduces different dynamics,” Blum-Smith says. In 2007, she notes, the strike resulted in the loss of nearly 25% of primetime scripted programming in that network season, a drop in broadcast network ratings, and NBC even returned money to advertisers. “There could certainly be similar effects for a work stoppage now, but in 2007 people didn’t necessarily cancel their cable bundles,” she notes. “To contrast with now, streaming services are the key growth businesses, and they’re much more vulnerable to churn.”
That’s just one potential impact of a work stoppage. There are also still shows that do rely on weekly writers, like late night or daily comedy shows, which would feel an immediate impact from a strike. And a strike would still affect every aspect of production, which would have long-lasting ripple effects. If shows are disrupted or delayed, that could affect which actors are able to be involved in projects, if, for example, a star’s schedule is full by the time production resumes.
Other Hollywood unions including SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists), IATSE (the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees), and the Directors Guild of America have voiced their solidarity with writers. Though they may not strike themselves, they may refuse to work on non-WGA scripts.
Though writers are on the picket lines, anyone involved in Hollywood is heavily affected by a strike too. The 2007 strike affected those in hospitality, business services, transportation, and more, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars per sector. It’s difficult to predict how much a work stoppage would affect other roles today, though. “The real issue you have is how long is the strike, how universally does it get taken up in terms of its effect, and then who is affected?” Klowden says. “It’s not just the people in production, it’s all the people who are suppliers, contractors, construction, people, electrical people, caterers, and so on.”
Because of the global nature of production today, the impact of a writers’ strike on those other workers could be even more widespread than the $2.1 billion hit on California’s economy in 2007. Now, a large part of filming happens in Georgia, as well as international locations like Canada and New Zealand; those communities may be affected by a drop in production revenue.
Another difference between the current environment and that of 2007 has to do with the labor movement, the rise in the number of strikes, and the record-level public support for unions. In 2021, IATSE members voted to authorize a strike (though were ultimately able to avoid one), which marked the first nationwide strike authorization in that union’s history.
And just as the 2007 strike was linked to a rise in reality television as studios looked for content that didn’t require writers, a writers’ strike could spur different types of content today. Laurence Vincent, a marketing professor at USC Marshall School of Business who previously worked as the chief branding officer of United Talent Agency, points to all the different types of content people have at their disposal, from video games to YouTube to TikTok to Twitch. “It’ll be interesting to see, with the creator economy booming as it is, what effect this might have on that. Is this the moment where older audiences are more interested in things being streamed by creators on YouTube and TikTok?” he says. “We won’t know until the pressure is placed on the industry and consumers react.”
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