Potentially tens of thousands of actors are about to go on strike after talks between their union and major streaming platforms broke down before Wednesday’s deadline.
Members of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) voted to join the Writers Guild of America (WGA) in their strike against major players in the streaming industry, as none of them can agree on issues related to pay and the use of artificial intelligence, BBC reported on Thursday. Writers started targeting their employers such as Disney, Netflix, Paramount and others over pay and working conditions back in May.
It now looks like actors, writers, and the studios themselves have all bitched their ways out of jobs, and none of it is making sense to me. Actors and streaming platforms depend on writers to create the shows that We The People want to watch. Actors then bring those shows to life, and leadership within these streaming giants pay for and distribute that work. Now, none of these demographics have a job, and we are all going to be watching reruns for the forseeable future … exactly what I predicted would happen back in June.
Get Prepared For A Year Of Reruns If The Writer’s Strike Doesn’t End By Friday | @DailyCaller https://t.co/Rl4M9fJaCo
— KAY SMYTHE (@KaySmythe) June 26, 2023
Thankfully, reality television doesn’t typically fall under the same category as the rest of mainstream entertainment. We are probably going to see a massive resurgence in non-scripted entertainment in the coming weeks and months, so get ready for more Kardashians, shows about UFOs, and probably a lot more news. A writers strike in the 80s gave us “Cops,” so maybe there’s a silver lining here.
Still, there are no winners in this situation. Streaming companies only exist to bring us entertainment, and they’ve pissed off the people willing to create it for them. Writers lose because now they’ll have to find writing work that pays them a living wage, like the rest of us. Actors lose because they’re always losers. (RELATED: REPORT: ‘The Last Of Us On Hold Until After Writers Strike. Here’s What We Know)
But we the viewers are also at risk. Other than a handful of shows that were already completed — “Special Ops: Lioness,” “What We Do In The Shadows” and “Reservation Dogs,” to name a few — we won’t have any new fiction shows to relax with for at least a year, if not more, and there is nothing that can be done about that.
And am I the only one who thinks the timing on this — right as global chaos ramps up, and the domestic cataclysm that will be the 2024 presidential election looms over us — is kind of suspect?