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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast.

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Speaker 2: I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway.

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Speaker 1: Tracy, you watching anything good on TV these days? No,

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Speaker 1: I'm serious.

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Speaker 2: I just finished watching The Bear, which I know you

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Speaker 2: also watched, right I did.

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Speaker 1: I switch off usually between watching like some new show

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Speaker 1: and then going back and watching all six seasons of

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Speaker 1: The Sopranos, and then watching a new show and then

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Speaker 1: the Sopranos again. So I think I recent right before

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Speaker 1: The Bear, I did my seventh viewing of The Sopranos.

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Speaker 1: It's one of these things I never I don't know

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Speaker 1: what to watch now. I don't have a new show.

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Speaker 2: Do you need suggestions?

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Speaker 1: I need suggestions.

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Speaker 2: Actually, I just finished watching all of Cheers, which I've

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Speaker 2: never seen really like it was kind of it was

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Speaker 2: always in the background. I was a big Frasier fan,

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Speaker 2: so I thought I should try Cheers, and I really

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Speaker 2: enjoyed it.

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Speaker 1: I want to watch Northern Exposure, but it's not on

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Speaker 1: any of the streaming sage.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I would love to rewatch that too. I remember

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Speaker 2: my mother loved that show. Okay, well we are not

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Speaker 2: actually doing TV reviews, are we?

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Speaker 3: We?

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Speaker 4: Good?

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Speaker 3: But you know.

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Speaker 1: It is true, there is a lot of archive TV

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Speaker 1: material to watch. You don't even need to watch new shows.

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Speaker 2: No, that is true. You could endlessly watch the back

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Speaker 2: catalogs of old TV, which is fun and entertaining, but

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Speaker 2: has also given rise to a new issue for us

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Speaker 2: to worry about.

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Speaker 1: Right, and so you know, right now we are in

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Speaker 1: the midst of sort of, I think at least two strikes.

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Speaker 1: I think that the writers, the screenwriters in Hollywood have

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Speaker 1: been on strike for at least a few months now.

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Speaker 1: The actors are on strike. So while there's plenty to watch,

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Speaker 1: and actually people are excited about going to the movies

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Speaker 1: again for the first time in a while, Like, my

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Speaker 1: understanding is that basically nothing is getting made right now.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, this is actually I know we said there's tons

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Speaker 2: of TV to get through, but I do also worry

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Speaker 2: about what if some of the good stuff shuts down?

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Speaker 2: But more broadly, and.

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Speaker 1: I do want to know whether the guy gets out

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Speaker 1: of the freezer after in the Bear, right, because he

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Speaker 1: got caught in the freezer at the end. So I

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Speaker 1: hope there's a third season that resolves that.

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Speaker 2: You know how they call everyone chef on the Bear,

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Speaker 2: It's like, yes, chef. Okay, chef, should we start calling

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Speaker 2: each other?

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Speaker 3: Co host?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, yes, co host, guest host, guess host okay.

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Speaker 2: All right, okay, So there is a concern over future content,

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Speaker 2: but this also fits more broadly into some of the

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Speaker 2: more active labor discussions and things that we've seen going

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Speaker 2: on recently. And we just finished up that episode about

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Speaker 2: the United Auto Workers Union and their fight against the

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Speaker 2: Big Three, and it feels like these are two very

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Speaker 2: different industries car manufacturers and you know, content creators for Hollywood,

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Speaker 2: but there are some similarities and also key differences underlying

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Speaker 2: both of these labor movements.

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Speaker 1: Yes, host, let you know what, let's just get started.

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Speaker 1: We have two perfect guests to describe to help us

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Speaker 1: understand what's going on with Hollywood and the unions right now,

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Speaker 1: both of them in house. Here are colleagues. We're going

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Speaker 1: to be speaking with. Lucas Shaw, here's the managing editor

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Speaker 1: for Media and Entertainment at Bloomberg and the author of

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Speaker 1: the excellent screen Time newsletter. And we also have Josh Iidelson,

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Speaker 1: senior reporter for Bloomberg and BusinessWeek, who covers organized labor.

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Speaker 1: So Lucas and Josh, thank you both. So much for

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Speaker 1: coming on o.

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Speaker 4: Locks, thanks for having us, Thank you for having us, Lucas.

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Speaker 1: Why don't you give us the state of play generally

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Speaker 1: right now on Hollywood, Like how many strikes are going on,

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Speaker 1: who's on strike, who isn't on strike, Where are talks?

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Speaker 1: How long have they been going on? Give us like

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Speaker 1: the quick summation of where things stand.

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Speaker 3: There are two strikes happening right now, which is the

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Speaker 3: first time that that has happened since nineteen sixty. The

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Speaker 3: first union to go on strike was the Writers Guild,

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Speaker 3: which was at the beginning of May, so they've been

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Speaker 3: on strike for about three months. The last writer's strike

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Speaker 3: was in two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight

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Speaker 3: that lasted for one hundred days. This one looks almost

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Speaker 3: certain to blow past that. The actors join the writers

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Speaker 3: on strike in the middle of lie and so that's

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Speaker 3: been going on for a couple of weeks. The other

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Speaker 3: guild that had a deal coming up this year that

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Speaker 3: was a big deal with the directors. They did make

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Speaker 3: a deal with the studios, and so they are not

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Speaker 3: on strike. But you've now got you know, we've had

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Speaker 3: months of writers on the picket lines outside of studios

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Speaker 3: chanting and getting attention, and now the actors have joined them,

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Speaker 3: and the studios haven't made a lot of progress in

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Speaker 3: trying to sort it out with the actors. They are

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Speaker 3: now trying to get back at the table with the writers.

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Speaker 3: But from everything we've seen, the studios and the writers

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Speaker 3: were really far apart, not even close. The studios and

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Speaker 3: the actors were a little bit closer, but still a

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Speaker 3: lot of ground to make up, and nobody's really certain

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Speaker 3: when this is going to end, which is incredibly disorienting

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Speaker 3: and de stabilizing for most of the people who work

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Speaker 3: in the entertainment business and all of the industries that

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Speaker 3: work around it, whether it's you know, restaurants or stylists

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Speaker 3: or transportation.

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Speaker 2: So talk to us a little bit about the issues

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Speaker 2: at play here, and you know, Joe brought up the

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Speaker 2: idea of the back catalogs, which I guess have become

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Speaker 2: more valuable given the right of streaming, and it seems

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Speaker 2: like writers or actors involved with those want a bigger

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Speaker 2: piece of the pipe. So what exactly are the complaints

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Speaker 2: here and how do they tie in with the way

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Speaker 2: the media business has sort of changed over time.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so the writers and actors have slightly different asks

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Speaker 3: or proposals, but the unifying theme under girding this dispute

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Speaker 3: is there's been this dramatic transformation in the entertainment business

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Speaker 3: which every consumer, every viewer knows about because it's streaming.

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Speaker 3: Streaming has replaced cable TV, or is in the process

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Speaker 3: of replacing cable TV. That has changed how projects are made,

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Speaker 3: how they are funded, and how talent gets paid. And

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Speaker 3: the writers and actors feel that they are not receiving

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Speaker 3: enough money from these big media companies and from streaming

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Speaker 3: services in particular, and that the ways in which they

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Speaker 3: are paid make the job, which was already not the

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Speaker 3: most secure position, even less secure, and so they are

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Speaker 3: looking for ways that protect themselves a bit more. At

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Speaker 3: the same time, the biggest reason that I think there's

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Speaker 3: so much labor unrest is because of that transition. Most

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Speaker 3: of these media companies also are not making as much

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Speaker 3: money as they used to because their cable networks are

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Speaker 3: less profitable, and they're pooring a ton of money into

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Speaker 3: the streaming services, most of which other than Netflix, lose money.

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Speaker 1: Josh, let me bring you in. You know, one of

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Speaker 1: the themes that we've been talking about on recent episodes and

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Speaker 1: just out a lot. Is this sort of like this

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Speaker 1: idea of newfound energy in the labor movement more broadly?

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Speaker 1: And I don't know if there are actual number of

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Speaker 1: strikes is up, but we definitely see a new attitude,

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Speaker 1: or we saw it with the ups we see with

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Speaker 1: UAW et cetera. When you look at the unions in Hollywood,

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Speaker 1: how similar is this, Like, you know, is the vibe

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Speaker 1: is these sort of political stance sort of similar to

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Speaker 1: what it was maybe in two thousand and six, or

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Speaker 1: has there been also a change to and the sort

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Speaker 1: of leadership and tactics that we see with some of

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Speaker 1: these Hollywood unions.

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Speaker 5: So, having covered the labor movement for more than a

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Speaker 5: decade now, it has often felt like every six months

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Speaker 5: or year or so, someone wants to grab something to

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Speaker 5: declare that the long declining labor movement in the US

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Speaker 5: is revived. And so I come at this generally with

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Speaker 5: a sense of skepticism. And we could go year by

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Speaker 5: year and I could tell you what the cool thing

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Speaker 5: was that was supposedly going to reverse the decline of

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Speaker 5: US labor unions and didn't. That said, what's been happening

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Speaker 5: in the past year and a half really is remarkable.

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Speaker 5: The most stunning thing that we've seen is at longtime

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Speaker 5: non union companies, the most famous companies in the United

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Speaker 5: States in many cases where for the first time workers

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Speaker 5: actually won union recognition at Starbucks, Amazon, Apple, other places

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Speaker 5: like Trader Joe's, Microsoft, and those workers so far have

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Speaker 5: not won union contracts. But the fact that these places

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Speaker 5: that were seen, often including by union organizers, as impregnable,

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Speaker 5: suddenly now have legally recognized unions is a very significant shift,

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Speaker 5: and one that has impacted how workers think about their

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Speaker 5: jobs and about what's possible at other places, and also

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Speaker 5: I think has impacted the sense of ambition and possibility

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Speaker 5: for workers who've had a union for a long time.

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Speaker 5: And some people may remember in twenty twenty one there

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Speaker 5: was discussion about what was being called strike Tober, where

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Speaker 5: there were lots of union members authorizing or going on strikes.

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Speaker 5: What's happened since then is more significant. By the numbers,

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Speaker 5: this year has been a big year for strikes already,

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Speaker 5: not compared to the nineteen fifties. If you go to

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Speaker 5: When I Love Lucy was on, we may remember that as.

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Speaker 2: It's a great show, which I have rewatched.

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Speaker 5: Probably on streaming. I'm guessing, although there could be an

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Speaker 5: I Love Lucy channel, I don't know about because I

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Speaker 5: cut the cord a long time ago. Every year that

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Speaker 5: I Love Lucy was on TV, there were, by current standards,

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Speaker 5: tons of people going on strike in the US. There

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Speaker 5: were close to or over a million people involved in

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Speaker 5: work stoppages every one of those years in the fifties.

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Speaker 5: We are far from that because unions are a much

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Speaker 5: smaller share of the US workforce these days in terms

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Speaker 5: of the workers they represent. But by recent standards, this

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Speaker 5: has been a big year for strikes and for potential

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Speaker 5: strikes like the one that almost happened at UPS, the

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Speaker 5: ones that could happen in the auto industry, the one

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Speaker 5: that hypothetically could still happen at UPS if the teamsters

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Speaker 5: rejected the contract. And I think we're seeing that for

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Speaker 5: a number of reasons, including how the pandemic changed people's mindsets,

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Speaker 5: including what's been going on on with the labor market,

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Speaker 5: and also changes in leadership at some of these unions,

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Speaker 5: as workers have elected more militant leaders to represent them,

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Speaker 5: or as with the actors, members have been pressuring the

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Speaker 5: leadership to take a more aggressive posture so I think

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Speaker 5: it's fair now to say that, at a minimum, the

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Speaker 5: vibes have shifted here.

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Speaker 2: So one of the things that came up in our

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Speaker 2: recent episode on the UAW strikes or potential strikes was

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Speaker 2: this idea of you know, workers actively banding together, but

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Speaker 2: not just in their own industry, but with other industries.

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Speaker 2: And I think this is something I actually learned a

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Speaker 2: term for it, horizontal solidarity. There's a new phrase, but

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Speaker 2: this is something that we've seen also in relation to

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Speaker 2: some of the Hollywood actions. I think we've seen members

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Speaker 2: of the Writers Guild like show up to the Teamster

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Speaker 2: rallies and vice versa. You know, teamsters refusing to make

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Speaker 2: deliveries to the studios and stuff like that. But how

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Speaker 2: much of that is a sort of new tactic and

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Speaker 2: how does it make these actions more effective?

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Speaker 5: Well, if you go far enough back in US labor history,

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Speaker 5: you can find examples of attempts to shut down a

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Speaker 5: whole city in a general strike with workers from all

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Speaker 5: sorts of industries. But more recently there has been more

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Speaker 5: work stoppages and more high profile labor disputes and potential

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Speaker 5: or existing strikes and organizing campaigns than we had seen

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Speaker 5: in a while, particularly at really prominent companies, where lots

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Speaker 5: of people notice what's happening, whether it's because they see

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Speaker 5: it on TV, or because they know someone who works there,

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Speaker 5: or because they depend on their UPS delivery person and

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Speaker 5: have a conversation with them. One of the phenomena that

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Speaker 5: our colleagues Spenser Soaper, has been writing about is the

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Speaker 5: role of UPS in Amazon's supply chain and that the

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Speaker 5: drivers for Amazon will now have more interaction with drivers

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Speaker 5: from UPS who just got this contract deal that includes

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Speaker 5: very significant raises. And so Starbucks workers, for example, have

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Speaker 5: inspired people at all sorts of companies, including Apple. We've

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Speaker 5: seen workers at places that some people don't think about

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Speaker 5: when they think about the labor movement historically, like graduate

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Speaker 5: students doing teaching and research who have come to think

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Speaker 5: of themselves more as workers and as having more in

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Speaker 5: common with workers they see taking action other places Lucas.

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Speaker 2: Just on the specific Hollywood actions that we've seen, is

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Speaker 2: it significant at all that SAG and the WGA are

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Speaker 2: striking at the same time, and should we think of

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Speaker 2: those two different strikes as two different labor disputes or

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Speaker 2: do the share similarities.

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Speaker 3: It's incredibly significant. I mean again. It hasn't happened in

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Speaker 3: six decades, and it has shut down the industry for

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Speaker 3: months now. You know, the writer's strike prevents a lot

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Speaker 3: of development of new projects. It prevents studios from buying

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Speaker 3: things from writers because writers in studios are not supposed

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Speaker 3: to be communicating. It shuts down work on a lot

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Speaker 3: of TV shows because those are often sort of written

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Speaker 3: as you shoot them. The actors adds to that because

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Speaker 3: you know, you could have a movie that was in production,

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Speaker 3: like the new Deadpool movie with Ryan Reynolds. The script's done,

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Speaker 3: their in production, it's supposed to come out next year.

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Speaker 3: The actor's gone strike that has to shut down. Suddenly,

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Speaker 3: Disney has no big tent pole movie for next year.

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Speaker 3: Actors can no longer promote their projects. So you have

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Speaker 3: a bunch of movies coming out in the fall where

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Speaker 3: some studios are pushing because if the talent in them

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Speaker 3: can't promote them, they fear that it will impact how

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Speaker 3: that performs. And so the combo strike means that it's

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Speaker 3: not just something that's an inside Hollywood story, it's something

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Speaker 3: that starts to affect the average person can see and

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Speaker 3: feel as to whether you can see them as sort

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Speaker 3: of distinct strikes or one of the same. I think

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Speaker 3: it's a little bit of both. You know, there are

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Speaker 3: issues that are very specific to writers around being on

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Speaker 3: set or the number of people in a writer's room

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Speaker 3: or all these things that the actors don't care so

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Speaker 3: much about. And same deal with the actors. You know,

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Speaker 3: the actors have some issues with their pension plan, which

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Speaker 3: the writers do not have. But there are a number

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Speaker 3: of kind of big picture thematic problems that unify them.

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Speaker 3: That includes residuals, payments for projects being re aired, it

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Speaker 3: includes how much they get paid for people watching overseas

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Speaker 3: on streaming services. It's being able to share in the

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Speaker 3: upside of a successful show, and is also one of

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Speaker 3: those issues that has been unifying across the different US.

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Speaker 1: I definitely want to get into AI a bit more

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Speaker 1: on how it affects writers and actors and how the

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Speaker 1: studios are thinking about it. But I also just want

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Speaker 1: to go back to this question of like Lucas within

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Speaker 1: the context of these unions, like some actors make an

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Speaker 1: insane amount of money and we all know that, and

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Speaker 1: then some actors, like you know, they have to take

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Speaker 1: a side job waiting tables or attending bar or teaching

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Speaker 1: an acting class or something like that. I think it's

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Speaker 1: probably the same with writers and so forth, and so

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Speaker 1: of course, like when we talk about say ups so

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Speaker 1: the United Auto Workers. Of course, this tearing question, how

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Speaker 1: do the Hollywood unions maintain solidarity when the economics of

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Speaker 1: their own members are so skewed and so diverse.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean solidarity is one of the bigger challenges

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Speaker 3: for these unions. You know, Josh was talking about some

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Speaker 3: of the changes in the approach and the membership of

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Speaker 3: these of these unions, and I think, if you know,

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Speaker 3: you talked to both members of the unions and the studios,

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Speaker 3: the unions in Hollywood today feel very different from how

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Speaker 3: they did ten or twenty years ago, you know, far

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Speaker 3: more progressive, far more activists, and at least in the

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Speaker 3: case of the Writers Unified, You're right that there are

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Speaker 3: a lot of people in these unions who make a

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Speaker 3: lot of money, which I think sometimes makes them sort

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Speaker 3: of unsympathetic figures, because it seems like, you know, rich

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Speaker 3: Hollywood actors and writers fighting with rich Hollywood studio chiefs.

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Speaker 3: And there's a degree to which that's true. Obviously, you

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Speaker 3: have movie stars who are in these unions, or you

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Speaker 3: have writers like Shonda Rhimes and Ryan Murphy who've made

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Speaker 3: hundreds of millions of dollars who are in them. But

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Speaker 3: that's a really small layer at the top. Most of

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Speaker 3: the people in these unions are very much working class.

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Speaker 3: A lot of them have second and third jobs, which

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Speaker 3: ironically makes them able to sort of hang on a

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Speaker 3: little bit longer. There's not the same pressure to reach

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Speaker 3: a deal really quickly. This strike can go on for months,

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Speaker 3: and it seems like everybody sort of figures out a

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Speaker 3: way to make it work. They've been able to really

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Speaker 3: get the wealthier members, especially in the Actors Guild, on

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Speaker 3: their side. There was a famous letter signed by a

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Speaker 3: few hundred of the richest and most famous actors in Hollywood,

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Speaker 3: basic telling the leadership of the Actors Guild, like, don't

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Speaker 3: make a big compromise, or don't compromise your values, go

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Speaker 3: for a big deal. We support you. I think the

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Speaker 3: writers it's a little murky yer. You do have some

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Speaker 3: writer producers who are maybe not on board with everything,

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Speaker 3: but they're not going to come out and say it.

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Speaker 5: And that letter ended in an interesting way because they

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Speaker 5: were telling the leadership of the Actors' Union, we're concerned

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Speaker 5: you may not be as willing to go out on

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Speaker 5: strike as we are. And the leader of the union,

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Speaker 5: fran Dresher, responded by adding her own name to the

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Speaker 5: letter to herself.

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Speaker 2: Can I just ask on the actor's side? There was

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Speaker 2: one demand that I saw and it kind of reminded

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Speaker 2: me of some of the issues Joe that we saw

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Speaker 2: with truckers titling at the port, and you know, they

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Speaker 2: sign up for a job that's for X amount of

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Speaker 2: money and supposed to take X amount of hours or days,

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Speaker 2: and then they wind up spending a lot of time

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Speaker 2: just waiting to take on the loads. And the actors

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Speaker 2: are complaining about not being paid for audition times, which

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Speaker 2: if anyone has ever done acting or modeling, you know

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Speaker 2: that you can spend all day going to castings and

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Speaker 2: come away with nothing in some cases. How thorny is

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Speaker 2: that issue? And what are the proposals actually to fix that,

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Speaker 2: because it seems like a difficult one.

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Speaker 3: The issue of free labor is one that I'd say

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Speaker 3: both the writers and actors are unified in. Obviously the

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Speaker 3: type of labor is different, but writers don't want to

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Speaker 3: have to do a bunch of drafts of something without

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Speaker 3: getting paid more money. Actors don't want to have to

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Speaker 3: spend all this money going for auditions without getting paid

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Speaker 3: something in return. I'm not sure how that's going to

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Speaker 3: get solved. There are a bunch of asks that the

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Speaker 3: writers and actors have made that are fairly fundamental structural

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Speaker 3: changes to how the industry works. Those being some big examples,

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Speaker 3: and I don't get the sense from the studio side

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Speaker 3: that there's a lot of interest in giving on them.

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Speaker 3: You know, they feel like if they give the writers

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Speaker 3: and actors more money on some of the core issues,

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Speaker 3: that the free labor things may be overlooked. But there's

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Speaker 3: no question that Hollywood has long preyed on the fact

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Speaker 3: that there are thousands, if not millions, of people who

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Speaker 3: would love to be famous, and so they can get

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Speaker 3: them to do a bunch of work for free.

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Speaker 2: Well, this was going to be my other question, which

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Speaker 2: is how much leverage do the studios actually have here,

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Speaker 2: because it seems there is this endless stream of starry

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Speaker 2: eyed want to be stars who potentially would be more

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Speaker 2: than happy to, I guess, break union lines and go

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Speaker 2: for things.

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Speaker 3: It's a really good question, and I'm not sure I

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Speaker 3: know the answer. I think that the conventional wisdom is

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Speaker 3: that the studios and big media companies have more leverage

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Speaker 3: than the writers and actors, because at a certain point

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Speaker 3: you're going to have a lot of these writers and

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Speaker 3: actors who have bills. If they don't work and they

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Speaker 3: don't make money for months and months and months, it's

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Speaker 3: going to start to negatively impact their lives in ways

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Speaker 3: that they won't be able to make rent. They are

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Speaker 3: all these things that horrible things that could happen to them.

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Speaker 3: The media companies, they will suffer a little bit from

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Speaker 3: not having new product and not being able to make money,

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Speaker 3: but a lot of the ways those companies make money

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Speaker 3: are unaffected. Right. They have deals for their cable networks

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Speaker 3: with PayTV distributors where they get paid fees every month.

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Speaker 3: They get paid no matter what, right, as long as

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Speaker 3: the ratings don't fall off a total cliff. They have

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Speaker 3: backlogs of programming in library that they can put on.

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Speaker 3: CBS doesn't have as much new programming to put on

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Speaker 3: in the fall because of the strike, but they can

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Speaker 3: still do reality TV, which is not part of these

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Speaker 3: so there's going to be survivor. They can still do

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Speaker 3: news so they'll be ninety minutes of sixty minutes. They

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Speaker 3: can still do sports, so they'll be football coming in

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Speaker 3: the fall. And then they're part of a company where

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Speaker 3: they can take a show like Yellowstone that's a big

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Speaker 3: hit for the Paramount network and put it on CBS

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Speaker 3: to an audience that probably hasn't seen Yellowstone before.

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Speaker 1: What about international TV? I mean that's a huge thing.

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Speaker 1: I like when I like turn on Netflix, you know

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Speaker 1: it's like, here's a hot show that's in Korea, or

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Speaker 1: a show from Israel, or a show from Poland or

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Speaker 1: something like that. Does that implicitly like undermine the bargaining

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Speaker 1: position of the US based actors and writers that presumably

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Speaker 1: there are a lot of people working internationally who are

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Speaker 1: not engaged in the same actions right now.

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Speaker 3: I don't know that it's undermining them, but it has

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Speaker 3: put some of the unions abroad in an uncomfortable position,

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Speaker 3: right I think people in the UK in particular are

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Speaker 3: a little uncomfortable because they want to show solidarity with

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Speaker 3: their peers in the US, and there have been marches

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Speaker 3: famous actors like Brian Cox from Succession shouting AI will

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Speaker 3: not replace us, or to screw you Studios but if

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Speaker 3: you have productions that are filled with actors that are

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Speaker 3: not in the US unions, they can continue, right like

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Speaker 3: House of the Dragon, the Game of Throne spin off

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Speaker 3: for HBO. Pretty Much all the actors in that work

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Speaker 3: in the UK, and so they can keep shooting that,

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Speaker 3: or in South Korea, which has become a huge producer

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Speaker 3: of film and television. Those productions continue. And that's why

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Speaker 3: a service like Netflix is in a fairly good position

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Speaker 3: relative to some of its peers because so much of

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Speaker 3: its productions come from outside of the USA.

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Speaker 2: Josh, I'd be curious to get your thoughts on the

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Speaker 2: leverage held by corporations in you know, twenty twenty three

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Speaker 2: versus say a decade or even two or three decades ago.

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Speaker 5: Well, to take a step back, sure, the US legal

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Speaker 5: system gives companies a lot of leverage over workers with

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Speaker 5: or without a union. People in the United States generally

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Speaker 5: can be fired for almost any reason, with a couple exceptions.

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Speaker 5: That's not the case in most of the industrialized world.

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Speaker 5: The process of forming a union and getting it recognized

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Speaker 5: is difficult, as we've seen it places like Starbucks. Even

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Speaker 5: when workers successfully legally formally form a union, actually getting

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Speaker 5: a union contract can be difficult and may not happen

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Speaker 5: for years, if at all, And in contract negotiations, both

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Speaker 5: sides are legally required to negotiate in good faith, but

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Speaker 5: the penalty for not negotiating in good faith if you're

439
00:23:03,920 --> 00:23:07,639
Speaker 5: the company, generally is being ordered to come back and

440
00:23:07,880 --> 00:23:11,520
Speaker 5: negotiate in good faith. There are no punitive damages for

441
00:23:11,680 --> 00:23:15,040
Speaker 5: violating labor law as a company the way that there

442
00:23:15,119 --> 00:23:19,040
Speaker 5: could be if you were polluting the river or something.

443
00:23:19,960 --> 00:23:26,440
Speaker 5: And so workers go on strike in some industries largely

444
00:23:26,560 --> 00:23:30,399
Speaker 5: as a symbolic move away to galvanize workers and the

445
00:23:30,480 --> 00:23:34,000
Speaker 5: public and go after a company's brand. There are other

446
00:23:34,080 --> 00:23:38,879
Speaker 5: places like we're talking about, like UPS, the auto industry

447
00:23:39,000 --> 00:23:43,960
Speaker 5: and Hollywood, where workers have relatively more clout because they

448
00:23:43,960 --> 00:23:48,760
Speaker 5: can actually shut down the industry at least partially, or

449
00:23:48,760 --> 00:23:51,840
Speaker 5: at least for a while or both. I talked to

450
00:23:51,920 --> 00:23:54,720
Speaker 5: one longtime labor leader who said, when we look at

451
00:23:54,920 --> 00:23:59,080
Speaker 5: Hollywood and UPS and the auto industry, we're talking about

452
00:23:59,560 --> 00:24:02,280
Speaker 5: three of the top five or ten places in the

453
00:24:02,359 --> 00:24:06,439
Speaker 5: United States where workers really do have leverage over their conditions.

454
00:24:06,840 --> 00:24:09,959
Speaker 5: And even so that leverage is limited for all of

455
00:24:10,000 --> 00:24:13,680
Speaker 5: the reasons that Lucas mentioned the executives are not going

456
00:24:13,720 --> 00:24:17,720
Speaker 5: to have to worry about mortgaging their homes or being

457
00:24:17,720 --> 00:24:20,439
Speaker 5: able to pay rent in the way that some of

458
00:24:20,480 --> 00:24:24,600
Speaker 5: these workers are. And there are serious issues here about

459
00:24:24,960 --> 00:24:29,600
Speaker 5: the long term future of the industry and the money

460
00:24:29,800 --> 00:24:34,000
Speaker 5: and the discretion that management will have to navigate changes.

461
00:24:34,080 --> 00:24:38,479
Speaker 5: So those are not things that the company has reason

462
00:24:38,600 --> 00:24:42,399
Speaker 5: to budge on easily. That said, a lot of people

463
00:24:42,440 --> 00:24:46,400
Speaker 5: were expecting that the studios would try to weigh out

464
00:24:46,440 --> 00:24:49,240
Speaker 5: the writers and in the meantime get deals with everyone else,

465
00:24:49,240 --> 00:24:52,919
Speaker 5: including the actors, and they were not able to do that.

466
00:24:53,320 --> 00:24:54,800
Speaker 4: And the fact that the.

467
00:24:54,760 --> 00:24:58,040
Speaker 5: Studios did reach out to the writers about at least

468
00:24:58,080 --> 00:25:00,960
Speaker 5: talking about talking again is a good sign for the

469
00:25:01,000 --> 00:25:05,119
Speaker 5: writers because generally in a contract fight, you want the

470
00:25:05,160 --> 00:25:08,840
Speaker 5: other side to be more hungry to negotiate with you

471
00:25:09,240 --> 00:25:12,120
Speaker 5: than you are to be back at the table negotiating

472
00:25:12,160 --> 00:25:16,000
Speaker 5: with them, and so that may be a sign that

473
00:25:16,160 --> 00:25:19,639
Speaker 5: the studios would rather not wait out the actors and

474
00:25:19,720 --> 00:25:26,359
Speaker 5: writers forever.

475
00:25:37,840 --> 00:25:40,359
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask a really weird question, god Bar.

476
00:25:40,840 --> 00:25:44,160
Speaker 1: Prior to the strike years ago, I was like thinking,

477
00:25:44,160 --> 00:25:47,320
Speaker 1: like twenty seven team, maybe twenty eighteen. I seem to

478
00:25:47,320 --> 00:25:51,880
Speaker 1: recall a lot of like socialist red rose emoji DSA

479
00:25:52,040 --> 00:25:55,920
Speaker 1: types on Twitter, thinking of like fran Dresher as this

480
00:25:56,000 --> 00:25:59,840
Speaker 1: sort of like trade unionist socialist heart throb. But then

481
00:25:59,880 --> 00:26:01,560
Speaker 1: I think like at the beginning of the strike, do

482
00:26:01,760 --> 00:26:04,680
Speaker 1: was like some question like about how militant or how

483
00:26:04,800 --> 00:26:06,680
Speaker 1: like committed she would be, and I think you sort

484
00:26:06,680 --> 00:26:09,760
Speaker 1: of hinted at this, Josh like ideologically like how does

485
00:26:09,840 --> 00:26:12,960
Speaker 1: she fit in with past presidents of the Screen Actors Guild.

486
00:26:13,200 --> 00:26:17,080
Speaker 5: Fran Dresher occupies an interesting place here because at both

487
00:26:17,119 --> 00:26:22,399
Speaker 5: the UAW and the Teamsters you had the incumbent faction

488
00:26:22,520 --> 00:26:27,560
Speaker 5: in the union lose and someone come in. Both happened

489
00:26:27,600 --> 00:26:33,520
Speaker 5: to be guys named Sean who ran on being a

490
00:26:33,560 --> 00:26:37,560
Speaker 5: more aggressive bargainer, someone who was more ready to take

491
00:26:37,600 --> 00:26:41,879
Speaker 5: the fight to the companies, someone who was against the

492
00:26:41,920 --> 00:26:44,879
Speaker 5: types of concessions that had been made in the past,

493
00:26:45,520 --> 00:26:49,080
Speaker 5: and whose election was a signal that the membership was

494
00:26:49,160 --> 00:26:54,640
Speaker 5: ready to go into tough fights and to not concede

495
00:26:54,680 --> 00:26:58,399
Speaker 5: as easily. That does not seem to have been the

496
00:26:58,440 --> 00:27:02,480
Speaker 5: case with the actor, and there was a perception among

497
00:27:02,520 --> 00:27:05,800
Speaker 5: at least some people in the membership that fran Drescher

498
00:27:06,000 --> 00:27:09,600
Speaker 5: was someone who was hoping not to have to go

499
00:27:09,720 --> 00:27:14,560
Speaker 5: out on strike, and someone who was not particularly militant,

500
00:27:14,840 --> 00:27:17,639
Speaker 5: and that's part of why we saw this letter emerge,

501
00:27:17,840 --> 00:27:21,560
Speaker 5: trying to push from below, so to speak, from the

502
00:27:21,640 --> 00:27:26,320
Speaker 5: membership for a more aggressive stance. Now, all of that

503
00:27:26,520 --> 00:27:29,680
Speaker 5: was going on while there was relatively these are celebrities,

504
00:27:29,720 --> 00:27:34,080
Speaker 5: but relatively less attention to this fight. And then once

505
00:27:34,119 --> 00:27:36,439
Speaker 5: they were out on strike, what a lot of people

506
00:27:36,480 --> 00:27:39,679
Speaker 5: saw who hadn't been paying attention from Fran Drescher was

507
00:27:40,760 --> 00:27:46,200
Speaker 5: very militant, loud, compelling, charismatic speeches that drew a lot

508
00:27:46,200 --> 00:27:49,680
Speaker 5: of attention because this wasn't what some people had expected

509
00:27:50,000 --> 00:27:51,160
Speaker 5: from the Nanny.

510
00:27:51,359 --> 00:27:54,240
Speaker 2: Even though the nanny was famously pro union.

511
00:27:54,359 --> 00:27:54,879
Speaker 4: Yeah right right.

512
00:27:55,840 --> 00:28:00,000
Speaker 3: For one, Fran Dresher doesn't have a ton of history

513
00:28:00,119 --> 00:28:03,280
Speaker 3: labor activist, at least in her personal life, and her

514
00:28:03,320 --> 00:28:05,800
Speaker 3: election to be the head of SAG was something of

515
00:28:05,840 --> 00:28:07,480
Speaker 3: a surprise. I think at the time a lot of

516
00:28:07,520 --> 00:28:11,359
Speaker 3: people thought the actor Matthew Modine would be the next

517
00:28:11,400 --> 00:28:13,400
Speaker 3: head of SAG, and he does have a little more

518
00:28:13,440 --> 00:28:16,320
Speaker 3: experience in that area. Fran won in a close election

519
00:28:17,040 --> 00:28:20,880
Speaker 3: that was fairly surprising. More broadly, that SAG doesn't have

520
00:28:20,920 --> 00:28:26,160
Speaker 3: a long history of striking or fighting with the Hollyode studios.

521
00:28:26,200 --> 00:28:29,280
Speaker 3: It's really been the Writers Guild that is kind of

522
00:28:29,560 --> 00:28:33,440
Speaker 3: famous for agitating and for asking for more and fighting

523
00:28:33,800 --> 00:28:35,800
Speaker 3: with studios. You know, it was the Writer's Guild that

524
00:28:35,840 --> 00:28:38,360
Speaker 3: went on strike in two thousand and two thousand and seven,

525
00:28:38,400 --> 00:28:39,640
Speaker 3: two thousand and eight, that was sort of at the

526
00:28:39,720 --> 00:28:43,360
Speaker 3: dawn of streaming, which was a big part of those negotiations.

527
00:28:43,560 --> 00:28:46,360
Speaker 3: The Writers Guild went on strike in the nineteen eighties twice,

528
00:28:46,680 --> 00:28:50,320
Speaker 3: and so it's typically been the writers that go on strike,

529
00:28:50,600 --> 00:28:53,200
Speaker 3: and as Josh mentioned, the studios try to go to

530
00:28:53,280 --> 00:28:56,040
Speaker 3: the directors, and the actors sort of undercut the writers

531
00:28:56,080 --> 00:28:58,480
Speaker 3: and eventually forced them back to the table, which is

532
00:28:58,520 --> 00:29:00,520
Speaker 3: one of the reasons why the actors also going and

533
00:29:00,600 --> 00:29:02,880
Speaker 3: strike has become such a big deal because I think

534
00:29:02,880 --> 00:29:04,760
Speaker 3: now the studios are a little in a little bit

535
00:29:04,760 --> 00:29:07,040
Speaker 3: of disarray trying to figure out how they solve it.

536
00:29:07,160 --> 00:29:09,640
Speaker 2: Carmen, at some point in this episode, I'm going to

537
00:29:09,720 --> 00:29:13,360
Speaker 2: need you to insert a clip from friend Dresser's iconic

538
00:29:13,520 --> 00:29:18,120
Speaker 2: pro unionization speech from the nineteen ninety seven masterpiece The

539
00:29:18,160 --> 00:29:19,360
Speaker 2: Beautician and the Beast.

540
00:29:19,480 --> 00:29:21,320
Speaker 5: Coming right up, excellent, Now.

541
00:29:21,240 --> 00:29:22,520
Speaker 4: We'll have to work late tonight.

542
00:29:22,560 --> 00:29:25,640
Speaker 3: I'll miss my soft lesa be able to rack and

543
00:29:25,760 --> 00:29:26,680
Speaker 3: some good OVID time.

544
00:29:26,760 --> 00:29:28,720
Speaker 2: Man, what is over the time?

545
00:29:30,200 --> 00:29:30,720
Speaker 4: He kidding me?

546
00:29:31,520 --> 00:29:34,040
Speaker 3: Representative because Union.

547
00:29:36,160 --> 00:29:38,600
Speaker 2: Lucas you touched on this already. But there is this

548
00:29:38,760 --> 00:29:43,080
Speaker 2: sort of threat of artificial intelligence hanging over this, not

549
00:29:43,320 --> 00:29:46,200
Speaker 2: just over the long term, but the idea that well, actually,

550
00:29:46,240 --> 00:29:49,720
Speaker 2: if the studios don't have writers or actors, maybe they

551
00:29:49,760 --> 00:29:53,680
Speaker 2: could use AI in the interim to produce content. And

552
00:29:53,920 --> 00:29:56,520
Speaker 2: I'm kind of fuzzy on the timeline of how realistic

553
00:29:56,560 --> 00:29:59,120
Speaker 2: this is. We did have one guest, Josh Wolf, who

554
00:29:59,120 --> 00:30:01,760
Speaker 2: came on and said he thought we would see entirely

555
00:30:01,840 --> 00:30:05,520
Speaker 2: AI generated movies within a year. I think you said

556
00:30:05,520 --> 00:30:09,920
Speaker 2: a year or so. How realistic is that threat? Like,

557
00:30:10,000 --> 00:30:13,160
Speaker 2: both on the long time scale and in the short

558
00:30:13,280 --> 00:30:16,040
Speaker 2: term while this labor action is ongoing.

559
00:30:15,800 --> 00:30:19,320
Speaker 3: The short term threat is largely non existent. I don't

560
00:30:19,360 --> 00:30:22,480
Speaker 3: think Josh Wolf is right that you'll see movies that

561
00:30:22,560 --> 00:30:25,000
Speaker 3: are fully AI generated within the year, or I should

562
00:30:25,040 --> 00:30:27,680
Speaker 3: say you certainly won't see it from traditional studios. You

563
00:30:27,720 --> 00:30:30,960
Speaker 3: might see people at home making really low budget stuff

564
00:30:31,240 --> 00:30:34,680
Speaker 3: that could go viral on social media, but studios have

565
00:30:34,840 --> 00:30:39,640
Speaker 3: no intention of having chatchbt write an entire script for them.

566
00:30:40,040 --> 00:30:43,080
Speaker 3: Chat shipt cannot direct a movie. They're not going to

567
00:30:43,120 --> 00:30:48,080
Speaker 3: replace all these actors with synthetic characters. But there are

568
00:30:48,840 --> 00:30:51,920
Speaker 3: ways in which AI is already being used. It's being

569
00:30:52,000 --> 00:30:56,040
Speaker 3: used in post production to work on dubbing or takeout

570
00:30:56,080 --> 00:30:59,080
Speaker 3: swear words. It's been used to de age people. So

571
00:30:59,200 --> 00:31:02,840
Speaker 3: Harrison Ford in the new Indiana Jones movie appears as

572
00:31:02,880 --> 00:31:05,360
Speaker 3: a younger version of himself, and that younger version of

573
00:31:05,400 --> 00:31:11,720
Speaker 3: his face, well, yes, it.

574
00:31:11,720 --> 00:31:12,240
Speaker 1: Was a little weird.

575
00:31:12,640 --> 00:31:14,360
Speaker 2: It's very uncasual, I think.

576
00:31:14,440 --> 00:31:17,160
Speaker 3: But those are examples where the actor has sort of

577
00:31:17,200 --> 00:31:20,600
Speaker 3: blessed the use of AI to affect their face. What

578
00:31:20,720 --> 00:31:23,480
Speaker 3: a lot of the writers and actors are worried about

579
00:31:23,720 --> 00:31:27,560
Speaker 3: unsanctioned use of their work, either to train these large

580
00:31:27,600 --> 00:31:31,960
Speaker 3: language models or to create some synthetic person based on them,

581
00:31:32,320 --> 00:31:34,320
Speaker 3: or that studios will do something a little simpler and

582
00:31:34,320 --> 00:31:37,800
Speaker 3: sort of adjust their facial expression or what they say

583
00:31:38,040 --> 00:31:41,200
Speaker 3: without their consent. And some of that could happen in

584
00:31:41,240 --> 00:31:43,080
Speaker 3: the next year or two. But I think this is

585
00:31:43,160 --> 00:31:46,200
Speaker 3: more trying to establish some guardrails for what could be

586
00:31:46,200 --> 00:31:48,520
Speaker 3: a threat many years in the future. And since these

587
00:31:48,560 --> 00:31:52,520
Speaker 3: deals tend to run three years. There's concern that studios

588
00:31:52,560 --> 00:31:54,720
Speaker 3: will do things that the writers and actors don't like

589
00:31:54,800 --> 00:31:56,880
Speaker 3: in the next year or two, and they just won't

590
00:31:56,920 --> 00:31:57,440
Speaker 3: be protected.

591
00:31:57,640 --> 00:32:01,440
Speaker 5: And everyone should read Lucas's great covers Sorry about AI

592
00:32:01,560 --> 00:32:05,440
Speaker 5: and Hollywood. One of the important points I think here,

593
00:32:05,520 --> 00:32:08,560
Speaker 5: as Lucas is saying and Road, is that this is

594
00:32:08,600 --> 00:32:13,520
Speaker 5: about control. Many people in the industry who are working

595
00:32:13,640 --> 00:32:17,200
Speaker 5: as writers or as actors are not dead set against

596
00:32:17,800 --> 00:32:21,840
Speaker 5: technological change and AI, although some may be, but for

597
00:32:21,920 --> 00:32:25,360
Speaker 5: many people it's about this question of who gets to decide.

598
00:32:25,440 --> 00:32:29,080
Speaker 5: And these are like debates we see about automation in

599
00:32:29,200 --> 00:32:33,560
Speaker 5: all sorts of industries, where there are ways that technology

600
00:32:33,640 --> 00:32:36,800
Speaker 5: can make people's jobs easier, can make it safer, can

601
00:32:36,840 --> 00:32:41,360
Speaker 5: replace some not very fun or safe jobs with other

602
00:32:41,480 --> 00:32:45,280
Speaker 5: better jobs. But when workers don't have a voice in

603
00:32:45,320 --> 00:32:51,240
Speaker 5: how that's happening, often they get freaked out. And often

604
00:32:51,840 --> 00:32:56,720
Speaker 5: they have good reason to see technology making their conditions

605
00:32:57,080 --> 00:33:01,520
Speaker 5: potentially worse if it's all being dictated by management and

606
00:33:01,600 --> 00:33:05,080
Speaker 5: not by them. And some of this anxiety is about,

607
00:33:05,120 --> 00:33:07,800
Speaker 5: as Lucas said, what will happen over the next few years.

608
00:33:07,840 --> 00:33:10,760
Speaker 5: I mean, on picket lines in Los Angeles and New York.

609
00:33:11,120 --> 00:33:13,000
Speaker 5: What I heard from a number of the writers is

610
00:33:13,040 --> 00:33:15,640
Speaker 5: that they see this as like streaming. When they were

611
00:33:15,680 --> 00:33:18,680
Speaker 5: on strike fifteen years ago, some people thought it was

612
00:33:18,680 --> 00:33:21,880
Speaker 5: premature as a time to be so concerned about what

613
00:33:21,920 --> 00:33:25,200
Speaker 5: would happen with streaming, and now streaming is everything, and

614
00:33:25,640 --> 00:33:28,320
Speaker 5: some people see AI having the potential to be the

615
00:33:28,360 --> 00:33:31,600
Speaker 5: same way, even if, as Lucas explains, there are some

616
00:33:31,640 --> 00:33:34,240
Speaker 5: significant obstacles to that actually happening.

617
00:33:35,120 --> 00:33:37,280
Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought up streaming, Josh, because that sort

618
00:33:37,320 --> 00:33:39,480
Speaker 1: of anticipated my next question, which is like a thing

619
00:33:39,520 --> 00:33:41,360
Speaker 1: you hear, is that no one has figured out how

620
00:33:41,360 --> 00:33:43,840
Speaker 1: to make money in streaming. And I can never tell

621
00:33:43,840 --> 00:33:46,960
Speaker 1: whether that's like one of those likes like hyperbole, or

622
00:33:47,000 --> 00:33:51,120
Speaker 1: whether it's Hollywood accounting that obfuscades making money. I mean,

623
00:33:51,160 --> 00:33:54,040
Speaker 1: obviously some people are doing very well, and I know

624
00:33:54,080 --> 00:33:57,520
Speaker 1: you've written about this. How do you sort of adjudicate

625
00:33:57,760 --> 00:34:00,560
Speaker 1: this question, like how big is the pot to even

626
00:34:00,640 --> 00:34:02,880
Speaker 1: be redistributed in some way?

627
00:34:03,120 --> 00:34:06,600
Speaker 3: The pie is very large, but the profit pie is

628
00:34:06,640 --> 00:34:10,279
Speaker 3: pretty small. So the amount of revenue being generated from

629
00:34:10,360 --> 00:34:13,640
Speaker 3: streaming is quite significant, tens of billions of dollars a year,

630
00:34:14,000 --> 00:34:18,359
Speaker 3: and the biggest player Netflix does make a substantial profit. Now,

631
00:34:18,360 --> 00:34:22,279
Speaker 3: it is not as profitable as cable TV was, and

632
00:34:22,440 --> 00:34:25,440
Speaker 3: one of the questions for all of these companies is

633
00:34:25,480 --> 00:34:29,240
Speaker 3: whether that is the result of streaming still being somewhat

634
00:34:29,320 --> 00:34:33,200
Speaker 3: nascent and that it will grow into larger and larger profits,

635
00:34:33,280 --> 00:34:36,320
Speaker 3: or whether it is a defect of the business model.

636
00:34:37,040 --> 00:34:41,359
Speaker 3: Even if streaming is not as lucrative as cable, it

637
00:34:41,440 --> 00:34:43,640
Speaker 3: can be profitable for a lot of these entities. But

638
00:34:43,680 --> 00:34:46,080
Speaker 3: I think what people lose sight of is that a

639
00:34:46,080 --> 00:34:49,160
Speaker 3: lot of these streaming services are new, and companies were

640
00:34:49,160 --> 00:34:54,080
Speaker 3: also encouraged by investors at the time to spend lots

641
00:34:54,080 --> 00:34:56,120
Speaker 3: of money just for the sake of growth, and they

642
00:34:56,120 --> 00:34:59,000
Speaker 3: didn't need to worry about profit. They only started to

643
00:34:59,160 --> 00:35:01,839
Speaker 3: be told to worry about profit in the last sort

644
00:35:01,840 --> 00:35:05,680
Speaker 3: of eighteen months. And because of the way that film

645
00:35:05,719 --> 00:35:07,680
Speaker 3: and television works, you can't just sort of flip a

646
00:35:07,719 --> 00:35:10,440
Speaker 3: switch and make these things profitable. They've committed lots of

647
00:35:10,480 --> 00:35:12,920
Speaker 3: money to projects that they're in the middle of developing

648
00:35:13,000 --> 00:35:14,759
Speaker 3: or in the middle of shooting, and so a lot

649
00:35:14,800 --> 00:35:18,160
Speaker 3: of these companies are now trying to slow down or

650
00:35:18,239 --> 00:35:21,600
Speaker 3: reallocate their spending, but they's somewhat limited because they've got

651
00:35:21,600 --> 00:35:24,719
Speaker 3: this melting iceberg, which is the cable TV networks, and

652
00:35:24,760 --> 00:35:27,640
Speaker 3: they're trying to transfer as many of the viewers and

653
00:35:27,680 --> 00:35:30,040
Speaker 3: as much of the money over to streaming, and we're

654
00:35:30,080 --> 00:35:32,400
Speaker 3: still in the middle of seeing how that transition is

655
00:35:32,400 --> 00:35:33,080
Speaker 3: going to play out.

656
00:35:33,200 --> 00:35:35,600
Speaker 5: That's interesting. I mean, we look at companies like Amazon

657
00:35:35,680 --> 00:35:38,560
Speaker 5: that for year after year did great in the stock

658
00:35:38,600 --> 00:35:41,120
Speaker 5: market while not being profitable because there was a sense

659
00:35:41,160 --> 00:35:44,480
Speaker 5: that they were getting big enough to become really profitable.

660
00:35:45,040 --> 00:35:48,640
Speaker 2: So that's really interesting that sort of shift in incentives

661
00:35:48,680 --> 00:35:51,319
Speaker 2: from growth to profitability. And this is something that has

662
00:35:51,360 --> 00:35:53,640
Speaker 2: come up on the podcast a number of times now,

663
00:35:53,680 --> 00:35:56,960
Speaker 2: but I'm curious if you see that kind of feeding

664
00:35:57,040 --> 00:36:00,440
Speaker 2: through into content choices, because this is one of the

665
00:36:00,440 --> 00:36:03,799
Speaker 2: criticisms in particular of Netflix. You know, they start a

666
00:36:03,840 --> 00:36:06,239
Speaker 2: season of a new show, and if it's not an

667
00:36:06,360 --> 00:36:09,640
Speaker 2: absolute monster hit, then they cancel it and a lot

668
00:36:09,640 --> 00:36:13,440
Speaker 2: of people get upset. Do you see an impact of

669
00:36:13,520 --> 00:36:16,239
Speaker 2: those decisions, like can you see people more focused on

670
00:36:16,320 --> 00:36:20,240
Speaker 2: profitability and that leading into I guess safer choices for content?

671
00:36:20,520 --> 00:36:23,480
Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting that you bring that up because streaming

672
00:36:23,560 --> 00:36:26,000
Speaker 3: has in some ways actually been more forgiving to the

673
00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:29,960
Speaker 3: creative process because they will commit to making and releasing

674
00:36:30,200 --> 00:36:33,200
Speaker 3: a full season on broadcast. There were shows that if

675
00:36:33,200 --> 00:36:35,960
Speaker 3: they didn't work, they could get canceled after four episodes.

676
00:36:36,000 --> 00:36:38,480
Speaker 3: They would never even finish the season. I think one

677
00:36:38,480 --> 00:36:41,120
Speaker 3: of the problems in streaming has actually been that they

678
00:36:41,120 --> 00:36:44,840
Speaker 3: have spent too much money on projects that people don't

679
00:36:45,000 --> 00:36:48,480
Speaker 3: watch and that are not financially lucrative. But to the

680
00:36:48,560 --> 00:36:52,040
Speaker 3: question about impacting what we see in companies being more safe,

681
00:36:52,080 --> 00:36:55,240
Speaker 3: I think that's absolutely a concern that companies will fall

682
00:36:55,280 --> 00:36:59,680
Speaker 3: back on, you know, franchises and non intellectual property and

683
00:36:59,680 --> 00:37:02,600
Speaker 3: will take fewer risks because the early days of streaming

684
00:37:02,880 --> 00:37:05,879
Speaker 3: you saw companies like Netflix and Amazon and then later

685
00:37:06,000 --> 00:37:11,239
Speaker 3: Apple take a number of risks with unknown creators or

686
00:37:11,239 --> 00:37:14,600
Speaker 3: with famous creators who just had an idea, because they

687
00:37:14,640 --> 00:37:17,160
Speaker 3: needed to convince them to work. With these new players.

688
00:37:17,160 --> 00:37:19,120
Speaker 3: In streaming, there wasn't the trust that there is with

689
00:37:19,160 --> 00:37:21,520
Speaker 3: a Warner Brothers or a Disney, and so they had

690
00:37:21,560 --> 00:37:24,680
Speaker 3: to take some chances on risk your ip and I

691
00:37:24,680 --> 00:37:26,359
Speaker 3: think that was good for all of us. It led

692
00:37:26,400 --> 00:37:29,279
Speaker 3: to a lot of really interesting programming. I think over

693
00:37:29,320 --> 00:37:32,880
Speaker 3: the past few years that we already saw to some

694
00:37:32,960 --> 00:37:35,319
Speaker 3: extent a decline in quality because you saw too many

695
00:37:35,360 --> 00:37:37,600
Speaker 3: companies trying to make too much, and so there weren't

696
00:37:37,640 --> 00:37:41,360
Speaker 3: the same quality control mechanisms in place. And so the

697
00:37:41,440 --> 00:37:45,359
Speaker 3: question as they recalibrate is, on the one hand, they'll

698
00:37:45,360 --> 00:37:48,640
Speaker 3: probably be more conservative, and that may lead to slightly

699
00:37:48,719 --> 00:37:51,960
Speaker 3: less interesting storytelling. On the other if they're trying to

700
00:37:52,239 --> 00:37:56,960
Speaker 3: make slightly fewer projects and put more emphasis on quality

701
00:37:57,040 --> 00:37:58,960
Speaker 3: or making sure those work, that could actually be a

702
00:37:59,000 --> 00:38:04,200
Speaker 3: good thing, especially if the creative energy comes from outside

703
00:38:04,200 --> 00:38:06,239
Speaker 3: of the system. I think a lot of people, most

704
00:38:06,280 --> 00:38:09,440
Speaker 3: people don't expect your Netflix, their Disney's to really be

705
00:38:09,520 --> 00:38:13,759
Speaker 3: trailblazers in terms of edgy programming, but there will be

706
00:38:13,800 --> 00:38:16,560
Speaker 3: people on the outside who see an opportunity in this

707
00:38:16,840 --> 00:38:18,000
Speaker 3: to make something new and fresh.

708
00:38:18,200 --> 00:38:19,680
Speaker 1: Josh, I want to go back to you know, this

709
00:38:19,800 --> 00:38:21,719
Speaker 1: is something that we talked about, but you know, you

710
00:38:21,760 --> 00:38:24,960
Speaker 1: mentioned like grad students at more and more universities having

711
00:38:25,080 --> 00:38:27,759
Speaker 1: voted to unionize, and like, one way I think that

712
00:38:27,800 --> 00:38:31,799
Speaker 1: like grad students are sort of similar to actors is

713
00:38:31,840 --> 00:38:34,000
Speaker 1: that there really are only like a small number of

714
00:38:34,040 --> 00:38:37,640
Speaker 1: like really plumb academic jobs that you can get. But

715
00:38:37,680 --> 00:38:40,360
Speaker 1: if you get like a sort of a tenure professorship

716
00:38:40,360 --> 00:38:43,360
Speaker 1: at a big flagship state university. Certainly at like an

717
00:38:43,400 --> 00:38:46,360
Speaker 1: Ivy League school, that's amazing, but the vast majority of

718
00:38:46,480 --> 00:38:49,600
Speaker 1: academics never get them. And it feels like that's similar

719
00:38:49,640 --> 00:38:52,520
Speaker 1: with Hollywood in many respects, where yes, there are a

720
00:38:52,520 --> 00:38:55,160
Speaker 1: handful of actors that we all know who have just

721
00:38:55,160 --> 00:38:58,239
Speaker 1: like incredible careers and make tons of money, but the

722
00:38:58,320 --> 00:39:01,160
Speaker 1: vast majority of actors is like none of us have

723
00:39:01,440 --> 00:39:03,960
Speaker 1: ever heard of. And I'm curious whether you see like

724
00:39:04,239 --> 00:39:07,759
Speaker 1: unionization solidarity across like some of these like people at

725
00:39:07,760 --> 00:39:10,879
Speaker 1: different levels is like threatening maybe in a good way,

726
00:39:10,960 --> 00:39:14,080
Speaker 1: to like change the sort of like tournament nature of

727
00:39:14,080 --> 00:39:15,120
Speaker 1: some of these industries.

728
00:39:15,400 --> 00:39:19,760
Speaker 5: Well, for many years, sociologists have talked about exit versus

729
00:39:19,840 --> 00:39:22,040
Speaker 5: voice and this question of do you change your job

730
00:39:22,080 --> 00:39:24,960
Speaker 5: by leaving and finding another one or by staying where

731
00:39:25,000 --> 00:39:27,360
Speaker 5: you are. And one of the things that my work

732
00:39:27,400 --> 00:39:32,040
Speaker 5: has focused on is these questions of things that employers

733
00:39:32,120 --> 00:39:35,680
Speaker 5: do to limit the options that workers have, whether it's

734
00:39:36,239 --> 00:39:39,680
Speaker 5: a contractual clause where you have to pay in order

735
00:39:39,880 --> 00:39:43,879
Speaker 5: to quit your job early as a punishment early from

736
00:39:43,880 --> 00:39:47,200
Speaker 5: the company's perspective, or it's some kind of non compete

737
00:39:47,200 --> 00:39:50,879
Speaker 5: that restricts you from going somewhere else. And in all

738
00:39:50,960 --> 00:39:56,279
Speaker 5: sorts of industries, whether it's baristas or graduate student researchers,

739
00:39:56,520 --> 00:40:00,640
Speaker 5: we see often people making a mental shift from thinking

740
00:40:00,680 --> 00:40:04,640
Speaker 5: of their job as having some kind of particular issues with,

741
00:40:05,120 --> 00:40:08,840
Speaker 5: say their manager or the task that they're doing, to

742
00:40:09,160 --> 00:40:13,400
Speaker 5: more systemic ones that they can better address by changing

743
00:40:13,400 --> 00:40:16,640
Speaker 5: the job where they are than by going and finding

744
00:40:16,680 --> 00:40:21,840
Speaker 5: something somewhere else. And of course there can be tensions

745
00:40:21,840 --> 00:40:25,759
Speaker 5: and conflicts between groups of workers, and workers often are

746
00:40:25,960 --> 00:40:28,239
Speaker 5: set up to be in competition with each other, and

747
00:40:28,280 --> 00:40:31,640
Speaker 5: that's part of why solidarity is difficult, whether it's within

748
00:40:31,680 --> 00:40:37,120
Speaker 5: a company or across an industry or between industries. But

749
00:40:37,480 --> 00:40:42,319
Speaker 5: in some cases, whether it's the Academy or it's Hollywood,

750
00:40:42,680 --> 00:40:46,440
Speaker 5: or it's in the retail industry, you have workers looking

751
00:40:46,480 --> 00:40:49,480
Speaker 5: at the way that their job is set up and

752
00:40:49,560 --> 00:40:52,800
Speaker 5: saying there's a structural issue here. There are not enough

753
00:40:52,920 --> 00:40:56,640
Speaker 5: labor hours for the labor to be done. There are

754
00:40:56,680 --> 00:41:00,520
Speaker 5: not enough years to do the dissertation work that you're

755
00:41:00,520 --> 00:41:04,360
Speaker 5: supposed to be able to do and perform the labor

756
00:41:04,520 --> 00:41:08,080
Speaker 5: let's being asked of you. It's interesting that you have

757
00:41:08,160 --> 00:41:12,560
Speaker 5: workers both at Starbucks and at Grinder now demanding a

758
00:41:12,640 --> 00:41:15,160
Speaker 5: seat on the board of their companies, the kind of

759
00:41:15,200 --> 00:41:17,960
Speaker 5: thing that would be more common in Europe, and I

760
00:41:17,960 --> 00:41:22,520
Speaker 5: think as workers see what's happening in other places, in

761
00:41:22,560 --> 00:41:27,040
Speaker 5: a lot of industries, there are alternatives being voiced by

762
00:41:27,560 --> 00:41:30,360
Speaker 5: people doing the work about what the organization of the

763
00:41:30,440 --> 00:41:34,680
Speaker 5: work should look like and what the pipeline should be

764
00:41:34,880 --> 00:41:40,040
Speaker 5: for future workers coming in that they would argue would

765
00:41:40,040 --> 00:41:44,600
Speaker 5: make the industry more sustainable long term, and their bosses

766
00:41:44,719 --> 00:41:46,960
Speaker 5: in many cases do not at all agree.

767
00:41:47,920 --> 00:41:52,120
Speaker 1: Josh Eidelson and Lucas Shaw, such a fascinating topic, great perspectives.

768
00:41:52,239 --> 00:41:54,879
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. And

769
00:41:55,520 --> 00:41:57,440
Speaker 1: I guess if this is still going in three months

770
00:41:57,520 --> 00:41:59,319
Speaker 1: or six months, maybe we'll have you both back on.

771
00:41:59,400 --> 00:42:01,280
Speaker 1: But really appreciate it. Great conversation.

772
00:42:01,719 --> 00:42:16,920
Speaker 4: Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you, Tracy.

773
00:42:16,960 --> 00:42:18,160
Speaker 1: I think the first thing I want to do is

774
00:42:18,160 --> 00:42:20,520
Speaker 1: I'm going to go watch that video of The Nanny

775
00:42:20,880 --> 00:42:22,680
Speaker 1: or no, what was it.

776
00:42:22,120 --> 00:42:24,360
Speaker 2: It was in a movie, The Bututian and the Beast.

777
00:42:24,480 --> 00:42:26,879
Speaker 2: So there's a famous why do I know this, there's

778
00:42:26,920 --> 00:42:29,560
Speaker 2: a famous scene from The Nanny where she refuses to

779
00:42:29,600 --> 00:42:32,600
Speaker 2: cross a picket line. Oh yeah, and makes a big

780
00:42:32,640 --> 00:42:35,400
Speaker 2: point about it and then don't cross picket line. That's

781
00:42:35,440 --> 00:42:38,319
Speaker 2: exactly it. Carmen very good. And then there is a

782
00:42:38,520 --> 00:42:41,840
Speaker 2: lesser known scene from Beautician and the Beast, which is

783
00:42:41,840 --> 00:42:45,560
Speaker 2: an excellent, excellent movie in my opinion, and highly underrated,

784
00:42:46,080 --> 00:42:52,640
Speaker 2: in which she encourages a factory in Eastern Europe to unionize. Anyway,

785
00:42:53,000 --> 00:42:55,480
Speaker 2: I just remembered, you know, one of the first articles

786
00:42:55,560 --> 00:42:58,760
Speaker 2: I ever wrote was actually about labor conditions of teenage

787
00:42:58,760 --> 00:43:03,239
Speaker 2: models in Japan, and a lot of these issues were

788
00:43:03,280 --> 00:43:07,600
Speaker 2: ongoing back then, people coming over on pretty much exploitative

789
00:43:07,880 --> 00:43:11,319
Speaker 2: contracts into the country and then not earning very much

790
00:43:11,360 --> 00:43:14,040
Speaker 2: money but spending all day going to castings and not

791
00:43:14,040 --> 00:43:16,720
Speaker 2: getting paid for it and things like that. It's kind

792
00:43:16,760 --> 00:43:21,040
Speaker 2: of crazy how that system remains in large portions. I know,

793
00:43:21,080 --> 00:43:24,920
Speaker 2: I'm talking about modeling, but similarly in acting kind of unchanged.

794
00:43:25,520 --> 00:43:28,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was interesting to the point about how like

795
00:43:28,600 --> 00:43:31,840
Speaker 1: the last writer strikes in the sort of mid odds

796
00:43:31,960 --> 00:43:34,560
Speaker 1: were like at the very dawn, like barely at the

797
00:43:34,640 --> 00:43:36,879
Speaker 1: dawn of streaming, and I guess that, and that there

798
00:43:36,920 --> 00:43:38,600
Speaker 1: was some question of, like, well, is it too early

799
00:43:38,680 --> 00:43:39,600
Speaker 1: to be worried about that?

800
00:43:40,320 --> 00:43:41,920
Speaker 4: In two thousand and six or two thousand.

801
00:43:41,680 --> 00:43:43,960
Speaker 1: And seven, and then with AI now it's like, yeah,

802
00:43:44,040 --> 00:43:46,000
Speaker 1: I'm like skeptical that we're going to have like any

803
00:43:46,040 --> 00:43:48,360
Speaker 1: like decent quality like two hour movie where all the

804
00:43:48,400 --> 00:43:50,400
Speaker 1: actors are AI actors.

805
00:43:50,440 --> 00:43:51,600
Speaker 4: I'm just I don't think.

806
00:43:51,480 --> 00:43:54,120
Speaker 1: It's there yet, but who knows. But the idea is like, yeah,

807
00:43:54,239 --> 00:43:56,399
Speaker 1: at some point these issues are going to get more real.

808
00:43:56,440 --> 00:43:59,160
Speaker 1: And then the question of to Josh's point, like control

809
00:43:59,320 --> 00:44:01,440
Speaker 1: and like is the technology going to be used in

810
00:44:01,440 --> 00:44:03,640
Speaker 1: a way to like make the writer's lives worse or

811
00:44:04,080 --> 00:44:06,439
Speaker 1: can be made to make the writer's lives better?

812
00:44:06,520 --> 00:44:07,799
Speaker 4: Is like an interesting question, right.

813
00:44:07,880 --> 00:44:11,160
Speaker 2: The control aspect is something that I hadn't really considered

814
00:44:11,239 --> 00:44:13,239
Speaker 2: before but seems to be an important point. And who

815
00:44:13,320 --> 00:44:16,760
Speaker 2: gets to make these decisions? Do you own your own image,

816
00:44:16,960 --> 00:44:19,600
Speaker 2: your own work or does the studio? Seems to be

817
00:44:19,719 --> 00:44:22,840
Speaker 2: a very thorny issue. I guess the big question for

818
00:44:23,280 --> 00:44:29,000
Speaker 2: content watchers from an entirely self interested perspective is are

819
00:44:29,000 --> 00:44:31,040
Speaker 2: we going to get a flood of AI content or

820
00:44:31,239 --> 00:44:33,800
Speaker 2: reality TV and sports? And which is worse?

821
00:44:34,120 --> 00:44:37,680
Speaker 1: Well, I think, like, I mean, the writers strike really

822
00:44:37,719 --> 00:44:40,799
Speaker 1: did catalyze a lot more investment in reality, so I

823
00:44:40,840 --> 00:44:42,640
Speaker 1: wonder if we will or you know, in the two

824
00:44:42,680 --> 00:44:44,360
Speaker 1: thousand and six or two thousand and seven long so,

825
00:44:44,360 --> 00:44:47,080
Speaker 1: I do wonder whether, like in the short term, whether

826
00:44:47,120 --> 00:44:50,200
Speaker 1: we'll just see like way more reality programming or shows

827
00:44:50,239 --> 00:44:51,400
Speaker 1: dubbed from Korean.

828
00:44:51,920 --> 00:44:52,160
Speaker 3: Yeah.

829
00:44:52,640 --> 00:44:55,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, that seems to be the sort of easier one

830
00:44:55,120 --> 00:44:58,680
Speaker 2: at this moment in time, like there's huge catalog of

831
00:44:59,120 --> 00:45:02,240
Speaker 2: foreign content. Your already sing it on Netflix. Oh, speaking

832
00:45:02,280 --> 00:45:05,960
Speaker 2: of recommendations, crash landing into You, Joe.

833
00:45:05,840 --> 00:45:06,719
Speaker 3: I should watch that.

834
00:45:06,719 --> 00:45:07,839
Speaker 1: That's a good one.

835
00:45:08,960 --> 00:45:11,640
Speaker 2: Yes, it's a Korean love drama. I think you should

836
00:45:11,640 --> 00:45:11,920
Speaker 2: watch it.

837
00:45:11,960 --> 00:45:12,520
Speaker 4: I'll check it out.

838
00:45:12,560 --> 00:45:13,600
Speaker 2: All right, shall we leave it there?

839
00:45:13,719 --> 00:45:14,399
Speaker 1: Let's leave it there.

840
00:45:14,440 --> 00:45:14,760
Speaker 3: Okay.

841
00:45:14,960 --> 00:45:17,880
Speaker 2: This has been another episode of the au Thoughts podcast.

842
00:45:18,080 --> 00:45:20,640
Speaker 2: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on Twitter at

843
00:45:20,640 --> 00:45:21,440
Speaker 2: Tracy Alloway.

844
00:45:21,640 --> 00:45:24,360
Speaker 1: And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me on Twitter

845
00:45:24,400 --> 00:45:28,000
Speaker 1: at the Stalwart. Follow our guests Lucas Shaw He's at

846
00:45:28,080 --> 00:45:31,600
Speaker 1: Lucas Underscore Shaw. Also check out his screen Time newsletter.

847
00:45:31,880 --> 00:45:36,200
Speaker 1: Follow josh Idolson He's at josh Idolson. Follow our producers

848
00:45:36,239 --> 00:45:40,040
Speaker 1: Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Arman and dash Ell Bennett at Dashbot,

849
00:45:40,040 --> 00:45:42,560
Speaker 1: and check out all of the Bloomberg podcasts under the

850
00:45:42,560 --> 00:45:46,200
Speaker 1: handle at podcasts, and for more odd Lots content, go

851
00:45:46,239 --> 00:45:49,560
Speaker 1: to Bloomberg dot com slash odd Lots, where we have transcripts,

852
00:45:49,600 --> 00:45:53,160
Speaker 1: a newsletter, and a blog, and check out our discord.

853
00:45:53,200 --> 00:45:55,239
Speaker 1: We have an AI room in there, so maybe some

854
00:45:55,320 --> 00:45:56,880
Speaker 1: of this will come up. We talked a lot about

855
00:45:56,880 --> 00:46:01,200
Speaker 1: eco and labor market and stuff in there. Gg slash

856
00:46:01,200 --> 00:46:04,040
Speaker 1: Oddlogged listeners are chatting with each other at twenty four

857
00:46:04,080 --> 00:46:04,359
Speaker 1: to seven.

858
00:46:04,400 --> 00:46:07,480
Speaker 2: It's really fun and if you enjoy Odd Lots, if

859
00:46:07,520 --> 00:46:10,520
Speaker 2: you like discussions about the future of Hollywood and the

860
00:46:10,560 --> 00:46:13,840
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861
00:46:13,920 --> 00:46:16,680
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