[image id: 25 May tweet thread by Jeffrey Lieber @/Jeff Lieber.
"hTe royal !#!@#!ing of the lower-level writer. So, in ye olde times, standard practice was that a STAFF WRITER had to stay a STAFF WRITER (least pay, zero compensation for scripts) for 22 episodes, which was fine because 22 episodes = 1 season. This meant...
...if you were skilled/lucky enough to get staffed AND the show got picked up for the full S1, a writer only had to spend 1 calendar year on the bottom of the economic totem pole. Then seasons got shorter, first 18 episodes, then 13 and yet the arbitrary 22 episode...
...threshold DIDN'T CHANGE. Suddenly 1 calendar year, turned into 18 or 24 months and meant that the show the STAFF WRITER was on not only had to get a full Season 1, but ALSO a S2 and then a S3. And THEN came cable and streaming...
...where 13 episodes became 10 or 8 or 6 and the time between seasons got longer, such that getting 22 episodes at STAFF WRITER could take 3-5 years, (assuming your cable/streaming show LASTED that long, which mostly it didn't) or you could stay continuously employed...
...by hopping between shows (yeah, right). Surviving 5 years with a Staff Writer's salary on a 6-13 episode order in Los Angeles is impossible, unless you are being subsidized by family...or the state. To succeed & still suffer? No. And this is why we strike.
Overtime: all the above intersects with the current work action, because it is the outcome of lowering the percentage of the budget allocated to writers, resulting in wage stagnation and smaller staffs. Shorter: profits and revenues are up, salaries and opportunities down." end ID.]