Even Away From Hollywood, the Writers Strike Is Top-of-Mind for TV Fans
Fifteen minutes before showtime, the crowd at Austin’s Stateside Theater was negligible. A few ATX TV Festival patrons were sprinkled throughout the theater, but the priority access and badge-holder lines amounted to just a few dozen fans. Soon, four WGA members would take the stage to explain why their guild was striking and detail the issues at stake — issues many consider to be a tipping point for the future of television.
But… it was a sunny Saturday afternoon. The festival, now in its twelfth season, is known for hosting major premieres and popular reunions. Panels break down various TV professions and topics, from discussions with casting directors to best practices for a safe production, but they’re often held in smaller venues or bolstered by high-profile talent. Would the same people who traveled to Austin for a “Cheers” reunion or the first look at “Justified: City Primeval” fill a 305-seat theater for an hourlong WGA event?
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Staring at those empty seats, one had to wonder: How much do casual TV fans care about the writers strike?
Minutes later, the answer arrived: They care a lot. Not only did attendance push the venue to capacity, with only a handful of open chairs by the time moderator Beau Willimon took the mic, but they were energized by the discussion, whooping and cheering as panelists Zoanne Clack, Greg Iwinski, and Julie Plec made their case for the writers.
“I’m a weirdo who loves television. A lot of you are as well,” Iwinski said. “That’s one of the real issues here. What we’re seeing with the studios is: What if it doesn’t matter if [TV] is good? If you don’t love TV — if you say things like some executives at streaming companies have said, like ‘I don’t believe in quality’ — does it matter if the A.I.[-written] movie sucks? Or if the A.I. director is making really bad shots, and the A.I. actors are kind of glitching out? Maybe it doesn’t to them.”
“So the threat of us being replaced is not about if A.I. can ever match our quality, it’s that our bosses don’t care.”
Fans conveyed their love of good television — and those who make it — via both the standing ovation that ended the WGA Strike panel and the perpetual buzz throughout the festival regarding the work stoppage. Conversations about aspects of the strike invaded event after event — and it didn’t stop with public speakers. People were talking about the strike while waiting in line, attending parties, and mingling backstage. The conversations weren’t always easy, but there was consistent support for the writers among industry guests and everyday fans alike.
Strike talk even popped up where you’d least expect it. Early Saturday morning, during a conversation with his wife, Mary Steenbergen, about their decades-long relationship on- and off-screen, Ted Danson brought it up unprompted.
“We’re in the middle of a strike, so I think it’s OK to say this: Streaming did to television what– I don’t know if it was Spotify or who did what first in music that de-monetized it — [but] all of a sudden you could download songs for free, and it became like the wild west. I think that’s where we are now,” Danson said. “Everyone’s scrambling to figure out how you can still make a living in this world of streaming, where now there are no residuals. […] It’s all developed in a way to maximize the money for the studio, the network, the streaming service. That’s the business model.”
While seemingly off-topic in a discussion focused on their marriage, such diversions proved common across ATX. Music supervisors expressed concern over ebbing work opportunities (though Maggie Phillips said at least a break would help the hard-working artist “re-juice” her music library). Directors of photography talked about how important it was to have writers on TV sets, echoing comments made by writers themselves. Support for the WGA was strong, whether the panel was designed to address strike subjects or not.
Off-stage, the banter was a bit more tense. One writer outside the guild wondered aloud if the strike was doing more harm than good to professionals who needed to be out there supporting new shows. “We just gotta bite the bullet,” a guild member told them, while conceding that young writers missing promotional opportunities was regrettable. In another room behind the scenes, an actor brought up ChatGPT, noting how impressed he was with its ability to create conflict in scripts. His fellow SAG members quickly pushed back. “I tried it, and it’s terrible, just terrible,” one actor said, as a quiet unease filled the space.
Artificial intelligence proved a touchy subject time and again. While some wanted to write it off as the enemy, others encouraged industry professionals to understand it better.
“We can be afraid of this technology, or we can embrace the fact of the matter: It’s moving at the speed of capitalism,” Javier Grillo-Marxuach said during the panel “Artificial Intelligence and Us.” “The fact of the matter is A.I. is going to write. So we need to teach people how to use the technology to enable us to make better choices — not to make choices for us. A.I. can help us find sources of information we didn’t know existed, but it is only as good as who is feeding it.”
“A.I. has become the face of the villain of this strike for many of the unions, and certainly us,” Julie Plec said during the “Writers on Strike” panel. “We were talking about the state of showrunners and stripping power and success away from showrunners by putting them in a situation where they don’t feel like they have any autonomy, authority, or confidence — or even experience — to do their job. And a writer I was talking to said, ‘We have been getting slowly dehumanized for so long in the streaming era, that no wonder we’re looking at the threat of a robot being our biggest villain here.’ I thought that was really profound.”
Plec went on to compare not regulating the use of A.I. in current negotiations to not regulating new media during the 2007 WGA strike.
“If we don’t get something codified in language that a human being needs to do our jobs, we will never get that language, and we will never get any protections,” she said.
Plec and her fellow WGA members on the panel weren’t the only ones in Austin — far from it — but the writers’ level of participation at the festival was another subject of debate. The Opening Night Premiere of “Justified: City Primeval” kicked off with a message explaining why co-showrunners Michael Dinner and Dave Andron weren’t on stage.
“‘City Primeval’ is a work of love,” Sarah Timberman said, reading a message to the audience on behalf of the writers. “But because of the standoff in negotiations between the WGA and the AMPTP, we cannot be with you to honor the actors and collaborators who are our dance partners. We are members and supporters of the WGA. The members deserve a new contract and a fair deal, as do the members of the DGA and SAG. We look forward to the near future when these issues will be resolved.”
In accordance with the strike, the WGA discourages writers from participating in network-sponsored promotion. That means sitting out studio-backed Q&As, whether they’re part of the festival or organized with individual members of the press.
Dinner and Andron were in the Paramount Theater for the screening, but they did not partake in the post-show discussion. Instead, they watched their cast and Timberman, a non-writing producer, answer questions about their upcoming sequel. Andron also sat out an interview with IndieWire because it was organized by FX representatives. Still, he took part in various ATX panels that weren’t sponsored by a network or studio, as did many other writers in attendance. Others, like “Righteous Gemstones” writer and star Danny McBride, only attended the show’s premiere and did so only as an actor.
“Showrunners are the rock stars of this festival, and they always have been. We’ve always said writers have the best conversations,” ATX co-founder Emily Gipson said in an interview with IndieWire. “They’re the ones creating the story, so they have so much to say about what you’re seeing on screen, beginning to end. They’re the ones people are most excited to hear from.”
When the strike began May 2, festival organizers were left with barely a month to adjust their lineup. First came the cancellations: Panels centered on individual series with showrunners and/or writers couldn’t proceed, which eliminated big-ticket attractions like a 25th anniversary celebration for “Dawson’s Creek,” a “Tiny Beautiful Things” panel with Cheryl Strayed and Liz Tigelaar, a “Homeland” retrospective with Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon, a “Housebroken” panel with co-creators Gabrielle Allan and Jennifer Crittenden, and an “Andor” discussion between showrunner Tony Gilroy and series writer Beau Willimon.
“An advisory board member who, during this period where we were still figuring it out, said, ‘Oh my gosh, if you have a television festival without writers, what does that say?'” ATX co-founder Caitlin McFarland said. “And I wasn’t planning to have a television festival without writers, so [the question became] how do we do that in a safe way? We didn’t want to put anyone in a bad spot.”
Soon after, McFarland came up with the idea for the “WGA on Strike” panel, but before she could reach out to anyone about what that would entail, Willimon — who’s also an ATX advisory board member — asked if ATX would consider hosting a panel on the strike.
“Them being open to it and them wanting that platform — when I say we’re honored to be a place that gives them that voice, that was a very easy ‘yes,'” McFarland said.
Soon, other panels were adjusted to tackle pertinent issues of the strike. A conversation on A.I. was added, as well as a discussion on what writers do beyond writing. McFarland said ATX has always been designed with one eye toward Hollywood and one toward fans — a 50/50 split between industry and consumer attractions — but given the fact it had never been held under strike conditions, how attendees would react to the redesigned lineup was up in the air.
“Did we fear they wouldn’t care? No, we did not,” Gipson said. “I’m closely involved in our membership program where I’m talking to a large number of our attendees on a regular basis, and as soon as the strike started and they could see that we were pivoting, they were in our Slack channel asking, ‘How can we non-industry people support the writers?'”
“They knew it was a big deal, they knew it was important, and they understood the top-level [issues of the strike], but now they are going back to their lives armed with a better understanding of what’s happening,” Gipson said. “Now, they’re very educated on it, and they’re ready to talk to their friends and family about what the writers are fighting for.”
By Sunday morning, when news broke of the DGA’s tentative deal with the studios, the festival was coming to an end. Most industry attendees had left town or were on their way out of Austin. But the issues that riled up festival-goers remained. With sold-out theaters and standing-room only panels, ATX Festival not only helped enlighten TV fans on the state of the industry, it also helped prove just how invested they are in the strike.
The ATX Television Festival and IndieWire are both owned by Penske Media Corporation. The 12th Annual ATX TV Festival took place June 1-4 in Austin, TX. More information can be found at the festival’s official website.
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