Budget

• For the first time since 1960, actors and screenwriters are on strike at the same time.
• Screenwriters, who have been on strike since May 2, have similar concerns.
• Premieres are being canceled, and Emmy-nominated actors aren’t campaigning for those prestigious TV awards.

Rewind to the rise of TV

• The first hit shows on TV aired in the mid-1940s, but actors initially earned far less from television than movies.
• Around 1960, with the advent of hits like “Leave It to Beaver,” “Beverly Hillbillies” and “Bonanza,” TV became very profitable.
• Actors demanded that their craft be compensated for TV shows about as highly as for their film appearances.
• Residuals are a form of royalty paid to actors when movies and TV shows air on television after their initial run.

Fast-forward to 2023

• People consume different types of media through subscriptions and streaming technology than they do while watching broadcast TV and cable television.
• Actors and writers are concerned that their compensation hasn’t kept up with this transformation.
• And the actors who are on strike argue that the formulas in place since 1960 to calculate residuals don’t work anymore.

Ejecting regularly scheduled shows

• That’s because streamers started making shows with lower budgets, as it costs less to produce fewer episodes.
• Since actors are typically paid per episode in which they perform, their salaries have dropped by virtue of having fewer appearances in even the most popular shows.
• Another change has to do with the question of whether particular shows will keep going.
• And their contracts often stop them from working on other shows between seasons.

Will AI erase actors?

• Without a contract that says otherwise, once a studio films an actor, it can potentially use the actor’s likeness in perpetuity.
• It is dystopian.” Until now, actors and writers say, the studios have refused to negotiate over AI with actors or writers.
• But both unions see AI as a threat to their members’ livelihoods, a point SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher made on MSNBC.

No ‘pause’ for widening inequality gap

• The gulf between what actors and top executives earn is a major difference between today’s actors and writer strikes and the 1960 strikes.
• In 1965, executives made 15 times the average salary of their workers.
• By 2021 those top execs were earning 350 times more than the average worker – including actors.

Watching union action on repeat

• From Starbucks baristas to Amazon’s union organizers to the workers planning the pending UPS strike, more and more Americans are fighting for higher wages and more control over their schedules.
• In fighting threats to their livelihoods, actors and screenwriters are the latest example of a national movement for stronger labor rights.