Screenwriters take on media conglomerates

For the first time in 20 years, screenwriters on both coasts went on strike on Nov. 5. Television and film studios across Los Angeles County felt the heat when the rank and file didn’t show up to work.

Picket at Paramount Studios in Hollywood. WW photos Maggie Vascassenno

Universal Studios was one of 14 local production lots surrounded by picket lines when some 12,000 members of the Writers Guild of America hit the sidewalks.

After 11 hours at the bargaining table, the studios had called off negotiations late on Sunday night when New York writers walked off their sets and onto picket lines at midnight Eastern time.

Every gate of CBS was mobbed with picketing writers, who were joined by Screen Actors Guild (SAG) members. Teamsters dropped off donuts to support the union and several shows shut down production, walking off their sets in a show of solidarity.

Now a writer, Cy Kennedy was a production assistant on the other side of the picket line during the last writers’ strike in 1988.

“A lot of people don’t realize the history of this lot, but there’s a gate up there that no one uses that was for the other strike and they put that gate up just to get around the union,” he told this reporter. “They were gonna go non-union and they were so scared, they broke in a new gate. I just remember being on the other side and I thought, if this happens again, I’ll make sure I’m on the right side picketing instead of sneaking around the back gate.”

That 22-week strike cost the industry upwards of $500 million. Guild officials say they expect this strike will cost the studios more than $1 billion.

According to the Guild, rampant acquisitions and mergers in the 1990s put nearly 80 percent of the entire television and film industry in the hands of only five companies—GE, Disney, Viacom, News Corp and Time Warner. As a result of the consolidation, the bargaining power of writers has been radically diminished.

Entertainment is the third-largest employer in Los Angeles County, generating some $30 billion in annual revenue.

While the studios claim the strike will devastate the local economy, Pamm Fair, deputy national executive director of SAG, says outsourcing is a much greater threat to the industry.

“There’s a lot of talk about the economic impact that a strike will have down the road, but we make a lot of arguments about the economic impact of runaway production and the same media outlets don’t cover that. I find it very ironic that when there’s a labor dispute it’s all about this economic force, but when we talk about runaway production there’s sort of a ho hum feeling.”

The union voted to strike after negotiations came to an impasse in October over compensation for new media. The studios run entire shows on the Internet, calling it promotional, but this activity generates massive ad revenues.

Actress Justine Bateman says that both writers and actors have been shut out of this money. “If you show the entire episode and there’s pop-ups and banner ads, that’s no longer a promotion, you are peddling your wares. And the wares happen to be things we are involved with making and that’s not the structure of this business. So, no, you can’t show our stuff on another venue for free; what we do for a living is not volunteer work, it’s how we make a living.”

The entertainment industry employs 254,000 residents in Los Angeles County. The Alliance of Motion Picture & TV Producers warns a strike will shut down the city, but it’s a sacrifice Whitaker says the writers and actors are willing to pay for justice.