The two central disputes of the current Writers Guild of America strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers are technology-driven: the rise of streaming, and the looming unknown role artificial intelligence will play in the creative process. SAG-AFTRA may strike over similar concerns.
Technological innovations have been at the core of several strikes in Hollywood history and have led to some of the longest weeks on the picket line. The question now is whether the current strike, going on two months, will be tougher to resolve than past labor actions.
In 1946, when coaxial cable first linked New York and Washington, D.C., and gave birth to network television in the postwar era, few besides Lew Wasserman at MCA were savvy enough to understand the value of reusable content such as old movies. By 1960, everyone else got hip. That year saw two strikes, one by SAG (43 days) and the other by WGA (153 days), over the new economic realities of television: residuals and payments for show reruns and exhibitions of movies originally produced for theatrical release. Guilds sought a payment structure for productions going forward and indemnification for members who worked on movies prior to the emergence of television.
