It’s been a tough couple of years for the television writers’ community.
The Writers Guild of America (WGA) revealed that the number of TV writing jobs fell by 42% for the 2023/24 season. In a new report, the guild said that there were 1,819 television writing jobs during this season with 1,319 jobs compared to the 2022/23 season.
This comes after the WGA spent months fighting the studios for a new contract, something that the guild said was partly to blame for the new statistics. Other reasons included the decline in original programming across the cable networks and streamers pulling back from the number of shows “as Wall Street demands quicker streaming platform profits”.
There have also been a slew of cancelations and ending of shows. According to Guild data, approximately 37% fewer WGA-covered episodic TV series aired in the 2023-24 season.
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Most stark was the number of jobs lost for showrunners and co-exec producers, which saw 642 fewer jobs across the year. There were 378 fewer staff writer, story editor and executive story editor positions compared to the previous season as well as 299 fewer mid-level jobs, which include co-producers, consulting and supervising producers.
There has been a pretty precipitous fall since the 2018/19 season with 15,08 showrunners and co-exec producers compared to the 952 there were last season.
Screenwriting work has also declined, but to a lesser degree, with screenwriter earnings down 6% for the first three quarters of 2024 and the number of screenwriters working down 15%.
“Writing careers have always been difficult to access and sustain, but the contraction has made it especially challenging. We are all subject to the decisions of the companies that control this industry, who have pulled back spending on content based on the demands of Wall Street. Compounding that, the current administration seems intent on causing economic chaos and undermining our democracy,” the email said.
The report was sent to members by the WGA West board of directors and WGA East council.
The WGA, which represents over 10,000 writers, went on strike between May 2 and September 27 2023. The strike was the second longest strike in the guild’s history at 148 days, tied with the strike in 1960 but below the 153 days that the 1988 strike lasted. It coincided with the SAG-AFTRA strike, which ran from July 14 to November 9 2023.
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