The Stage is Set for the New New Hollywood
Andy Marken December 6, 2023
0 Comments
It doesn't matter whether they are tall, short, ugly, good-looking It turns me on that they talk to me about things I don't know. - Tokio, Money Heist (La Casa de Papel), Vancouver Media, 2017 2011
With the SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) strike coming to an end - still waiting for the agreement to be formally signed, the entertainment industry is going to be changed forever.
Neither side totally likes the agreement but that means it's a good agreement because there was give/take on both sides.
The industry (companies and people) has been anxious and needing to get back to work since the writers' strike went on back in May.
With the directors and writers' agreements wrapped, most folks didn't think the agreement would take long since insiders and outsiders thought they had a partially written script - at least the plotline - to follow.
The directors and writers were satisfied with having the negotiators negotiate but the actors wanted to adlib and said nope we need to talk with the bosses.
All went well until it didn't.
There was supposedly a soft agreement on both sides until the SAG-AFTRA negotiators discovered the agreement was missing a page.
It added a new wrinkle borrowed from John L. Lewis when he told the declining mining industry his folks needed to be paid for each ton his boys (they were obviously mostly male) mined.
SAG/AFTRA edited his script so that actors would be paid for each streaming subscriber they helped dig up.
The actors' negotiators referred to it as a tiny portion of the action, while studios/streamers called it a levy.
To say the studio/streamer bosses didn't like the idea of revenue sharing would be putting it mildly especially since all of the streamers (except for Netflix) were already leaking profits and were struggling to figure out how to make money in the new entertainment arena other than simply firing folks left n' right.
Of course, the bosses also knew that once they broke from tradition, all of the rest of the entertainment unions were going to expect/demand their cut.
Sure, there's some question of the value of a subscriber who is in this quarter and gone the next. Or why Hollywood content was more valuable to the streamers' audience when refreshingly different/exciting shows/movies were coming from creators in other countries.
Those questions didn't get addressed because once the writers' negotiator, Crabtree-Ireland, said they wanted 57 cents per subscriber, the studio/streamer bosses left the room.
As the door was slamming shut, he added it was only a starting point. But the studio/streamer heads described it as an ultimatum too wide to cross.
A cooler head, not involved in the negotiations, suggested maybe 10-20 cents per subscriber would be a more palatable change in the whole revenue sharing idea.
He was sorta right because the Hollywood entertainment industry is different from any business model you want to look at since everyone is a contract worker building her/his portfolio rep moving from project to project.
Range - Superhero, western and rom-com shows may have faded from popularity, but there are still a wide range of video stories ready to be told and watched.
But writers are all back in their rooms coming up with, editing, polishing and finishing scripts that will hopefully meet the constantly changing entertainment tastes of folks for films/shows in every possible genre.
The industry won't come close to the 2023 $26.7B value that it was originally projected to produce.
That shortfall has, and will, continue to impact the thousands of professionals who don't get a magical front-end and back-end payment but will only get paid for the days they work.
Broader, Deeper - The directors, writers and actors gained all of the headlines during the strike, but a growing number of people were idled during the break and they were the ones most affected.
Film industry researcher, Stephen Follows, noted that film and show crews have grown steadily over the past two decades with 48 percent of the individuals working on-set while others are involved in the pre- and post-production work.
As films/shows have improved and gotten more complex, the number of crew members have increased over 51 percent, according to film analyst Stephen Follows.
Unseen Numbers - The majority of the people involved in creating a show/movie are never shown on the credits, not listed on IMDb and never considered for one of the statues.But their numbers grow.
Unfortunately, if you stick around and watch the credits - as we do - you won't see most of these people listed.
Flatline - Shutting down video content production projects in the US dramatically affected thousands of professionals and many had to drop out to make ends meet. The rest have to try and recover lost income.
The revenue sharing proposal/agreement won't affect these folks, other than the fact that they'll be able to get back to work and begin digging themselves out of the financial holes they've been forced into over the past 200 days that they were forced to sit by and watch the parody parade pass them by.
Somehow, they're supposed to be fortunate because the joint strikes cost the industry an estimated 45K jobs.
Milken Institute's analysts estimate that the strikes cost Southern California and studio centers across the country more than $6B.
While SAG-AFTRA's head, Fran Drescher, spoke eloquently about changing the world for actors, their settlement will be of little consolation to the thousands of service people and professionals who lost paychecks, retirement funds and more.
It bothered us just a little that the AMPTP
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
The Stage is Set for the New New Hollywood 
