Adam Conover ’04 Spoke with WNYC’s All of It about the Recent WGA Strike Authorization Vote

After the Writers Guild of America voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike, Adam Conover ’04 spoke with Alison Stewart on WNYC’s All of It about what comes next and what is at stake for writers in the current set of negotiations. One of the primary reasons for the strike authorization vote, Conover said, was the discrepancy in residuals between work produced for traditional television and work produced for streaming. Contrary to traditional screenwriting, where writers are paid each time a work is rerun or rescreened, streaming media pays a flat rate to writers, which has “made it almost impossible for writers to put a career together and afford to live and work in Los Angeles or New York, where most of us have to live in order to do our work,” Conover said. Asked about potential lessons from the 2007 writers’ strike, Conover said, “The biggest lesson is when you fight, you win. [...] If we hadn't gone on strike that year, no streaming show would be a union show.”

Post Date: 04-25-2023