Chris Keyser called it ‘an existential strike’ and it is.” Swissvale native William Schmidt, a writer and co-executive producer on season three of hit cable drama “Yellowstone,” wasn’t a fan of past WGA strikes but this one he supports: “This is important. To get a better understanding of why this strike happened, multiple writers from Western Pennsylvania who have been walking the picket lines in front of the headquarters of Disney, Warner Bros., Netflix and other companies in Los Angeles explain the near unanimity behind the labor action.

The changes wrought by the hand-in-hand rise of cord cutting and streaming are at the root of the strike: Like a bull in a china shop, streaming tossed the economics of the entertainment industry into chaos. So far in this strike, now on day 15, the only immediate impact has been on late-night talk shows (“The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon,” “The Last Show with Stephen Colbert”), which went dark.īack in 2007, there was little in the way of streaming - Netflix launched original series in 2012 - so when shows dried up, there weren’t myriad entertainment options viewers now have with subscriptions to Hulu, Disney+ and others. Striking writers of scripted TV/streaming dramas and comedies have to make their case in an entertainment environment that’s changed radically since the last strike 15 years ago.ĭuring that previous 100-day Writers Guild of America strike that began in November 2007 - in the heart of the 2007-08 TV season - viewers saw a pretty quick impact when their favorite primetime broadcast and cable shows ended their runs mid-season (remember that truncated first season of “Breaking Bad”?).

Irrational game dan ariely