Writer's Strike Still Battling

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2023/09/01/tom-fontana-hollywood-writers-strike/

“People are not getting residual checks the way that they should, or any sort of compensation, because we don’t know what the hell’s going on,” Moayed says, waving his cigar. He blames the streaming subscription model, which did not consider the resulting loss of advertising revenue. “They keep breaking these systems and calling it ‘innovation,’ but it’s just the same old s---.”

Fontana adds: “Any kind of innovation, they go, ‘Well we don’t know if we’ll make any money off it. Can we just wait until the next contract?’ Then the next contract comes. ‘Well we’re not going to talk about that! We already made a deal about that!’”

“It’s all ‘Succession,’” Moayed says, laughing bitterly. “This is all ‘Succession.’”

And that’s why they’re viewing this strike as a battle for survival. This is Fontana’s fourth writers strike: the least consequential to his own well-being, perhaps, and yet the most important to his profession.

“I’ve been very blessed in my career,” Fontana says. “I got a job in ’81, and I have worked since. The bottom line is this strike will not affect me, pretty much at all. … But I feel I not only owe it to the people who went on strike in 1960 but my fellow workers. We’re at a time when we have to come together, or we’re f---ed.”

“ That’s where I think the bosses fail morally,” Fontana says. “They get so far away from the ordinary people who do the work, that they’ve lost all sense of them.”The dual strike is happening in part because companies focused on cost-cutting measures like shorter seasons and smaller writers rooms. There are more shows, says the Writers Guild of America, but fewer opportunities for a sustained career as a writer.

“There’s a lot of head-scratching going on at these media corporations, trying to figure out how to get out of the hole they dug themselves in,” Fontana says. “Part of the way they want to get out of the hole is to make us pay for it. They made mistakes, and they want us to pay for them.”

He doesn’t want to pay. He’s worked too hard to get here.

“I’ve seen myself go from peasant to — not a king — but a duke,” he says.

And sometimes dukes go to war.