Remember the Hollywood writers' strike a little over a year ago? This was something that was praised as a win by the union since it received much of what it fought for.
Unfortunately, these people did not understand the nature of disruption.
If it was such a win, how come the members are suffering. They received higher wages and protection against AI. Yet, in spite of this, Hollywood television writers are taking it on the lip.
Once again, if one does not know what is going on with technology, one does not know what is going on.
It seems the entire union falls into this category. Of course, management wasn't must better with their snafus along the way.
The End of Hollywood As They Know It
Hollywood is dead.
Naturally, the entire industry is not gone but we see the signs that, by the end of this decade, Hollywood will basically cease to exist. It will no longer be the entertainment epicenter.
In fact, a case could be made this is already the case.
When it comes to Hollywood writers, their "victory" was short lived. Certainly, those who are working, per the contract, are making more money. The challenge is there are fewer writers working.
There is a reason for this. The networks they write for are going under.
Warner Bros is one of the best known Hollywood names there is. It holds many television properties that use to draw millions of viewers. Those days are long gone.
At the same time, streaming took over. This completely changed the landscape for television writers. Of course, this was a known fact at the time of the strike.
“In most cases the writers’ rooms today are very different from 10 or 20 years ago,” says Matthew Belloni, an entertainment lawyer and former editor of the Hollywood Reporter. “Most shows have far fewer episodes. The days of 22-episode network sitcoms and dramas are mostly gone, with exceptions, and consequently the number of writers in a writers’ room is typically much fewer than it was. now, there are more shows than there were back then but the number of shows is coming down from the peak of three or four years ago.”
That era left a number of years ago. The number of episodes has been on the decline for a few years.
It naturally is going to have an impact.
A screenwriter, who has worked on several high-profile shows and wishes to remain anonymous, tells the Guardian that some of his former co-workers are no longer getting hired. “These are people who are not breaking in – they worked on the same shows that I did right before,” he says in a phone interview.
“Now they’re saying, ‘We’re not getting any work. Our agents and managers are saying staffing is tricky out there.’ Partly it’s because the strike brought us a lot of benefits – salaries have increased, mini-rooms are much better paid than before – and as a result of that there are fewer of them.”
This is what happens when disruption is occurring. Since everything is trying to protect their basket, a result of interest being misaligned, devastation takes place.
The net result is an industry, as it was known, in decline.
AI On The Rise
Make no mistake about it: the jobs are done. Even if Hollywood were able to somehow whether the storm, there is no way the writers are going to survive.
AI is on the rise and, unlike many claimed, it can create just as well as humans. Pixar laid off a number of employees as animation is coming under attack from AI programs. This is before Sora is opened to the public, something that many believe will surpass anything that is out there.
Even if there are protections in place with the Hollywood studios, companies outside those contracts are able to use the technology.
And this is exactly what is happening.
The major studios are taking a hit. Let us look at the aforementioned Warner Bros: (Yahoo Finance chart)
This is a bloodbath. Ignoring the 2021 pump, this stock is down 75% from its pre-COVID levels. As we can see it is now at levels that were not seen since 2008.
While markets can be irrational, this is reflective of many of the studios. Also, are dealing with almost 20 years of stock history. This is not a small sample size.
Does Warner Bros have a future?
Like most of these old time studios, there is a library of content that is worth a fortune. This is something that can be leverage. However, downsizing is going to occur. The entertainment world is rapidly changing and centralized Hollywood production studios are not going to be required.
This means that the people who are involved in this industry will find themselves in the same situation as those who were involved with long distance phone service or video cassette rentals.
The contract that was negotiated lasts another two years. It is important to mention that ChatGPT only came to market at the end of Nov, 2022. That means we are about 21 months in.
What this means is that we are like to see significantly more progress in the next two years than we did since GPT came out.
How will things look with this technology as 2026 is starting to draw to a close?
As they say 'forget about it".