The exploitation of Hollywood screenwriters is one more symptom of digital feudalism

The ongoing Hollywood writers’ strike has drawn international attention to the plight of film and television screenwriters in the age of streaming.

Much has been made of the golden age of television, during which the platforms of streaming have provided audiences with an abundance of well-written and highly produced television programs, often referred to as “prestige.”

While old TV shows used to be sitcoms or crime dramas, the newer ones more closely imitate 19th-century serial novels, with abrupt endings that encourage binge-watching.

But not everyone in the industry has reaped the same rewards. Although it is true that there are more jobs for writing, these tend to be lower paid and writers have short-term contracts.

In addition, the incessant demand for content, as more and more platforms compete for subscriptions, has trapped writers in what I call “digital feudalism.”

Echoes of medieval Europe

I use the term digital feudalism because today’s version of capitalism increasingly reflects the transition from feudalism to capitalism in 16th century England.

Beginning in the 16th century, the English Parliament passed a series of enclosure laws, abolishing common land and defining it as private property that the government reallocated to elites.

These laws expelled peasants, known as serfs, from the lands where they had lived and worked for generations. Many of them ended up leaving for the cities in search of work. The ensuing oversupply of workers drove down wages, and many former serfs were unable to find work or housing, becoming vagabonds.

In other words, the serfs lost stability in their daily lives as they were forced into a new economic system.

Precariousness, indebtedness and lack of stability are once again the dominant issues in today’s digital economy.

Much of the blame lies with the sharing economy, in which people juggle two or three part-time jobs to make ends meet. These jobs often do not offer full-time benefits, living wages, or job security. Functions – whether it’s working as an Uber driver, delivering food for DoorDash or cleaning houses via Task Rabbit – are often handled through digital platforms owned by large corporations that give their workers a pittance for their labor.

Hollywood’s servants

So why are TV writers feeling the pinch of digital feudalism if this is the golden age of television?

The platforms of streaming like Netflix, Hulu and HBO Max ushered in the golden age. But the search for gold has slowed, as the number of prestige TV shows seems to have reached saturation point.

As of the 2010s, the platforms of streaming They began to hire more and more screenwriters. To attract customers, the platforms needed quality content; otherwise, viewers would not continue to pay the monthly cost of a subscription.

The platforms couldn’t market their content like mainstream network sitcoms, so they had to constantly develop new ideas for their shows. Large groups of creative writers became the core of studio strategy.

However, as TV writers flocked to Los Angeles and New York, entertainment companies took their cue from the sharing economy in a way that hurt writers’ livelihoods.

The contracts were short and the salaries were lower. The formats of the programs streaming –more one-off miniseries than comedies that could last up to a decade– rarely guaranteed work for long.

In addition, shows on platforms often have fewer episodes per season, with longer intervals between seasons, known as “short request” (short order)”. An eight-episode season of a popular show with two-year gaps between seasons leaves TV writers scrambling to figure out how to pay the bills in between.

Then came covid-19. As people stayed at home watching TV, it became difficult to produce television. There was a significant delay in production due to difficulties shooting in studios while complying with covid-19 health regulations.

This caused a significant slowdown in television production. At the height of the pandemic, television studios closed to limit the number of people inside. With the slowdown in production, there was no demand for screenwriters. As a result, many of the television writers who had recently moved to Los Angeles and other large cities with high costs of living had difficulty finding work.

basic claims

The writers want to solve this problem by increasing the minimum wage; they want the scriptwriters of the platforms streaming receive the same royalties as movie scriptwriters; and they want to end the practice of mini-rooms, where small groups of writers craft scripts but are often less compensated for a series that may not even get commissioned.

Another key demand is to limit the use of artificial intelligence in television production.

Writers fear that studios will use AI to hire workers, select which series to produce and, in the worst case, replace the writers altogether. Interestingly, the limits to AI have been the only point of contention that the studios have not even wanted to discuss.

It will be interesting to see if screenwriters are able to regain some of the financial security that has disappeared in many industries, or if the larger economic forces that have driven the gig economy will favor studio executives.

David Arditi, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Texas Arlington

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original.