Week-to-Week: Sympathy(?) for the Devil, or, revisiting how we felt about a Writers Strike in 2007

Do I really wanna know what I felt on November 5?

Let’s begin this newsletter with a very simple statement: I support the Writer’s Guild of America in their fight for fair compensation and a sustainable living in an era where major studios and distributors have actively conspired to build their businesses on their work while enacting policies that disenfranchise and limit writers at every turn. If they go on strike tonight, I will be doing whatever is in my power to support them.

That being said, given my audience for this newsletter, I don’t think I necessarily needed to make that statement. If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you—like me—follow dozens if not hundreds of writers on Twitter, and have had a front row seat to the changes affecting the industry. You probably listened to Shawn Ryan’s guest spot on THR’s TV’s Top 5 podcast where he talked about the possibility of a strike, and you may have even also signed up for fellow Substackians The Ankler’s Strikegeist newsletter to keep up on the developments should the strike come to fruition. And even if you don’t count some of those writers among your friends like I’m fortunate enough to, there’s a good chance the parasocial dynamics of our social media era means that this is a battle of billionaire executives pushing back against people who have not only written your favorite shows, but who also feel like a part of your online existence through their social media presence.

To put it simply, while I would be naive in thinking that everyone shares my contempt for the capitalist system we’re expected to participate in and the corporations that abuse it, I don’t really see a clear path to a person who is part of this community not supporting the writers in this conflict. Just look at how Seth Meyers talks about the strike in his YouTube “Corrections” segment, reflective of a show where the writers are characters alongside the host.

That said, I’ve been thinking about whether the same was true back in 2007. When the WGA last went on strike 16 years ago, I had just begun my foray into pretending to be a television critic. I was in my final year of my undergraduate education, and my blog Cultural Learnings was an ongoing project of writing reviews like the ones you find here and pretending my self-taught knowledge gave me a position to comment on matters of industry. It was a time before Twitter, where chasing clout was a matter of posting your articles on Digg and trying to find a way for every article to appeal to the one, singular fanbase that had inexplicably found your blog months earlier (mine was CBS’ Jericho, it was a whole situation).

And to be very honest, I had no recollection of how 2007 Myles had responded to the Writer’s Strike. I worried that the different context might have made me more supportive of the studios’ position, since from an audience perspective the 2007 strike had an immediate impact on our favorite shows. Broadcast seasons—at that point the dominant form of television we consumed—ended early, disrupting an increasingly serialized medium. The discourse I remember from the time was about the scripts that couldn’t be worked on, and the episodes produced without writers on set, and the potential lost for shows like Lost that weren’t able to tell their story the way the writers intended. As a 21-year-old, I considered it very possible that I felt the loss of that flashback episode for Charlotte more deeply than my solidarity for people I didn’t know and whose job I didn’t fully understand.

I’m happy to report that this was not the case, at least publicly. On November 11, 2007, I published a post entitled “In Support of the Writers Guild of America” in which I emphasized my steadfast support of writers’ work, writing the following:

“In my time working with fans of CBS’ Jericho, the way many fans caught onto the show was through watching episodes online through the network’s Innertube service. In some cases, it was the only way they watched the show as they were unable to watch the series live thanks to other commitments. The idea that the writers of that episode, the individuals responsible for crafting those words, get nothing for every time someone watches it through this medium makes me wonder whether the service is really assisting the state of television in the long run. Because it should be: there lies amazing potential within the internet, but if it is being realized to the detriment of the writers I believe its value is primarily lost.”

First and foremost, let’s acknowledge that next-level pandering to the Jericho audience that was driving up my blog stats—truly vintage 2007 Myles behavior. However, when we move past this, we see that as someone committed to covering the TV industry, I was still very much tuned into the issues at stake, probably more than an average viewer.

“The studios aren’t evil in this situation, and part of me can’t blame them for hoping that they are able to strike a deal like the home video one that has writers earning pennies to the dollar on the millions of TV DVD sales. But with every single network and production studio developing new ways to reach the internet consumers, there is no feigning ignorance to the role this is going to play. Their actions contradict their words, and eventually that fact will lead to a resolution.”

Now, 2007 Myles loses me a little bit with “the studios aren’t evil,” as while I remain unsurprised by the scourge of capitalism in 2023 there is no longer a part of me that doesn’t blame them for it. But overall, I am proud of 2007 Myles for this position, and reminded how much the issue of streaming bookends these strike conflicts—then as a nascent system where writers were being cut out entirely, and now as a dominant system where writers are trapped in a model built to diminish the value of their work.

However, beyond my attempts to play-act as a television critic, the post acknowledges another dimension to my position regarding the WGA’s strike action that may not have been common for other viewers at that time. In the preceding month, I had become embroiled in a faculty strike at Acadia University, where I was finishing my senior year. As 2007 Myles was writing this blog post, he had just finished a month of writing the university student union's “StrikeBlog,” breaking down the dimensions of the conflict for students, parents, and interested parties. You can read more about that process in this academic paper that hilariously anonymizes me, but the short version is that I was deeply immersed in the culture of labor action.

I remembered this, of course, but I wondered if it was possible that the neutral position I had to take in order to reflect the Student Union’s chosen tact might have made me more likely to “both sides” the Writers Guild conflict. However, I again had too little opinion of 2007 Myles, who saw a clear distinction:

“I mention all of this because I am not neutral about the recent Writer’s strike that has threatened the state of this year’s television season. If Acadia’s administration were facing dwindling enrollment and a grave financial position, Studios are facing a boon in the form of the ability to distribute content over the internet. Hollywood stands at a content-distribution crossroads, and the idea that the internet is “too young” to enter into contract negotiations is ludicrous. New Media is here, there’s no doubt about it, and something needs to be done to respect the work of writers within this medium.”

Now, having now spent over a decade working in higher education, I would no longer make such a hard distinction between Hollywood and university administrations, and send my solidarity to the striking graduate workers at the University of Michigan. But I do find it notable (yes, I almost wrote striking) how clear it was from the outside that the industry was willfully ignoring the clear future in order to protect their profits, and how much the current, unworkable circumstance reflects their willingness to develop systems that require writers but refuse to allow them to participate in them on even footing. And now that so many more of us are on the inside, I struggle to see how the studios would garner any sympathy from these circles.

As noted, though, the people reading this newsletter are not the masses. And this will be a different strike from a public perspective anyway because its impacts won’t be immediately felt: outside of talk shows and other weekly programming, the broadcast season will essentially be over, and streaming content is banked so far in advance that most viewers will likely see no interruption until September (at which point a potential strike could be resolved). And so while Cultural Learnings’ reviews during that period became a document of unplanned “Strike Finales,” there’s a good chance that a strike won’t have any impact on the shows we’re covering here at Episodic Medium beyond delaying their returns.

For that reason, I wanted to make my support for the WGA explicit, and to hear more from you about both your perspective on this labor action and your recollections of how you felt back in 2007. And yes, I fully acknowledge this means many of you will share stories about how you were in middle school, and I’ve decided that’s worth the risk.

Episodic Observations

• I was on the road again, which meant I didn’t get to finish up any of the recent shows I’ve started but not finished (Beef, The Diplomat) or keep up with Mrs. Davis (which we’re doing weekly discussions of among paid subscribers). I’ll be working to get caught up more in the next few weeks.

• I’ve long had the second season of Severance down as likely debuting sometime this summer, but recent reports about behind-the-scenes turmoil strongly suggest that it will be a fall launch, so I’ve tentatively penciled it in for later in the year. Meanwhile, we got dates for other shows we’re intending on covering, including an August 3 launch for season two of Netflix’s Heartstopper and—if Steve Martin and Martin Short’s live performance tells the truth—an August 8 return for Only Murders in the Building. As always, you can check the calendars for updated schedules (still waiting on June premiere dates to crystallize), and you’ll get the first review of any new season in your inbox.

• I have to leave you with this comment, the only one left on my 2007 post about the writer’s strike, because the phrase “To think that the writers are not getting paid a share each time I watch Jericho or The Bionic Woman makes me fume” is just the most precious time capsule.