Why You Should Care About the WGA Strike
The economics of entertainment have changed dramatically.
This illustration was generated using the Jasper.ai prompt, “Cartoon about Writers Guild strike.” Read Sree’s three essays on AI: 1, 2, 3. This newsletter is produced with Zach Peterson (@zachprague), with the Digimentors Tech Tip from Robert S. Anthony (@newyorkbob). Thanks to our sponsor, Armory Square Ventures.
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YOUR FAVORITE AMERICAN TV SHOW just stopped production on its new season. The Writers Guild of America is on strike.
Michael Schur, creator of Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and The Good Place (what a trio of shows!), was on The Distraction a few weeks ago to talk sports, but he ended up providing probably the best and most concise analysis of the situation that I’ve heard. He’s a member of the WGA negotiating committee, and it’s good to hear it from the source. Essentially, the Wall Street-ization of the entertainment industry has led to levels of profit-chasing that the industry has never really seen before.
Alissa Wilkinson (@alissamarie) has a great explainer at Vox that has a lot of the nuts and bolts, and the numbers are jarring.
Meanwhile, according to the WGA’s calculations, industry profits have ballooned from $5 billion in 2000 to $28-$30 billion from 2017-2021. Spending on original streaming content grew from $5 billion in 2019 to $19 billion in 2023 — the lion’s share of it by Netflix, which reported $6 billion in operating profits in 2021 and $5.6 billion in 2022.
This is a lot of money that is staying largely out of the hands of the talent creating it—and now it is getting harder for artists to get paid for previous successes. Residuals are a huge part of success in the arts, and streaming has obliterated that system almost entirely.
From Eric Thurm at GQ:
Residuals refer to money paid to people who worked on a piece of media when it gets repackaged, resold, or re-aired. That’s why syndication used to be such a big deal: getting to the point where your show was being aired on TBS or Comedy Central meant that you were sharing in the profits and success of the show, and getting guaranteed, repeated checks for years. The system set in place that ensured creatives this level of sharing in the profits from their work was decades in the making.
But that level of financial security has largely evaporated. Streaming services pay single, fixed residuals that aren’t tied to viewer numbers, and there’s no additional payment that comes when shows shuffle between different streaming services. (As an example, writer Valentina Garza recently shared residual checks for writing two episodes of Jane The Virgin… for literally one and two cents.)
Here’s a list of the WGA proposals, via Adam Conover of the groundbreaking “Adam Ruins Everything”:
It’s crazy to think that a show that has been out of production for 5 years could get sold from Netflix to Amazon Prime and it would have little-to-no effect on the creators of that show. Just 10 years ago, if TBS bought the syndication rights to a show from CBS, the people who worked on that show would be popping champagne bottles.
It’s easy to see the eye-popping numbers that are being invested in original content and see that as a genuinely good thing for people working in film and television. $19 billion dollars being poured into the industry offers an unprecedented opportunity for the arts, and, as consumers, we’ve been rewarded with far too many shows that are truly can’t-miss-level shows. It’s overwhelming for sure, but it’s also incredibly impressive.
For those doing the writing and production work, it’s a tenuous situation. Episode numbers are down from 20-26 to maybe 8, or 10 if we’re lucky. There’s little predictability that there will be another season, let alone five or six more. According to the WGA, the majority of its members are working for the minimum allowed under the previous deal. This report by Katie Kilkenny (@katiekilkenny7) at The Hollywood Reporter has a very detailed breakdown of the economics at play for the people working on even the most prestigious of prestige shows.
You should care about this strike, because it almost certainly affects you. Here are some numbers that show just how much we Americans love our streaming entertainment:
86% of Americans subscribe to more than one streaming service.
The average person subscribes to 2.8 streaming services.
We spend an average of 3.1 hours a day streaming media.
This affects you because good entertainment is in high demand, and the people capable of creating those occasionally masterful works of art deserve to be compensated for it. On the consumer side, we are doing our part, but the corporate-investment layer is blocking significant sums of money from ending up in the pockets of the very people responsible for the successes of the streaming era.
The other way this affects us is a bit more existential. As I wrote in The Liberal Arts have Never Been More Important, the human touch is becoming a very precious thing, and the creativity, intelligence, and raw work that goes into creating a smashingly successful piece of art is the perfect embodiment of that. Sure, ChatGPT can give you some great ideas for your next marketing presentation, but it still lacks true, human creativity.
The arts play a fundamental and important role in our shared humanity, and it’s time to embrace it. That starts with supporting the people putting their creativity and humanity on full display, for all of us to see.
— Sree / Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn | YouTube
I am prepping my first public workshop on generative AI (ChatGPT, DALL-E, Midjourney, etc). If you’d like to attend, please LMK! I’ve also been writing a lot about AI recently (1, 2, 3), and plan to continue to do so. Thank you so much for your thoughtful notes and comments on this crucially-important topic. If you have any stories to share about how AI is affecting your life, send me an email sree@digimentors.group.
DIGIMENTORS TECH TIP: HIFIMAN SVANAR Wireless Earbuds: Look Audiophiles! No Wires
By Robert S. Anthony
Each week, veteran tech journalist Bob Anthony shares a tech tip you don’t want to miss. Follow him @newyorkbob.
Sometimes the road to audio perfection requires some give and take. That seems to be the case at HIFIMAN, makers of high-end audio products, as it introduced new Bluetooth wireless earbuds it promised would satisfy even the most demanding audiophiles.
While wireless earbuds are nothing new, units that claim to match the audio clarity and purity of high-end “reference-class” wired headphones are rare, but that’s exactly what HIFIMAN promises with its $499 SVANAR Wireless earbuds.
Dr. Fang Bian, founder and CEO of HIFIMAN, met with the media in New York recently to show off new products and talk about the research that went into them. He noted that by eliminating one key component, the designers of the SVANAR Wireless gained the room and the extra power to improve on others.
He explained that conventional wireless earbuds use tiny, but power-hungry electronic switches between their controller circuitry and their simple, one-bit digital-to-analog converters (DAC) which create the actual sounds we hear.
“What we did is we got rid of the switches,” he said.
By building unique components that eliminated the need for switches and adding HIFIMAN’s sophisticated Hymalaya-brand, multi-bit “ladder DAC” and a matched amplifier, the designers were able to create earbuds that could generate audiophile-quality highs and lows while consuming little power, he said.
The result, he added, is a wireless product which performs almost as well as HIFIMAN’s $1,999 SVANAR in-ear monitor when connected to its $529 EF400 desktop amplifier/DAC, a much more expensive solution.
The SVANAR Wireless offers active noise cancellation (ANC) for incoming audio as well as artificial-intelligence-based voice-enhancement technology to clarify outgoing audio for those on the other end of a phone call.
The unit, which features 10mm dynamic drivers, can run for up to four hours per charge when ANC is on and seven hours when “transparency mode,” which allows sounds around the user to filter in, is enabled. The battery in the charging case provides up to three extra charges, according to the company.
No, $499 earbuds aren’t for everyone, but the innovative technologies that go into high-end audio products often offer hints as to what budget-conscious consumers might see in cheaper devices in a year or so. The HIFIMAN SVANAR Wireless earbuds will be available in June.
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The strike signs are fantastic.