The Two Strikes That Ground Hollywood to a Halt

Joe Weisenthal (0:10)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:15)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:16)

Tracy, you watching anything good on TV these days? No, I'm serious.

Tracy Alloway (0:20)

I just finished watching The Bear, which I know you also watched, right?

Joe Weisenthal (0:23)

I did. I switch off usually between watching some new show and then going back and watching all six seasons of The Sopranos, and then watching a new show, and then The Sopranos again. So I think I recently, right before The Bear, I did my seventh viewing of The Sopranos.

It's one of these things that I never, I don't know what to watch now. I don't have a new show.

Tracy Alloway (0:42)

Do you need suggestions?

Joe Weisenthal (0:43)

I need suggestions.

Tracy Alloway (0:44)

Actually, I just finished watching all of Cheers.

Which I'd never seen, really. Like it was kind of, it was always in the background. I was a big Frasier fan, so I thought I should try Cheers, and I really enjoyed it.

Joe Weisenthal (0:56)

I wanna watch Northern Exposure, but it's not on any of the streaming services.

Tracy Alloway (0:59)

Yeah, I would love to rewatch that, too. I remember my mother loved that show.

Okay, well, we are not actually doing TV reviews, are we?

Joe Weisenthal (1:07)

We could, but it is true. There is a lot of archived TV material to watch. You don't even need to watch new shows.

Tracy Alloway (1:14)

No, that is true. You could endlessly watch the back catalogs of old TV, which is fun and entertaining, but has also given rise to a new issue for us to worry about.

Joe Weisenthal (1:27)

Right, and so right now we are in the midst of sort of, I think at least two strikes. I think the writers, the screenwriters in Hollywood have been on strike for at least a few months now.

The actors are on strike. So while there's plenty to watch, and actually people are excited about going to the movies again for the first time in a while, like my understanding is that basically nothing is getting made right now.

Tracy Alloway (1:49)

Yeah, this is actually, I know we said there's tons of TV to get through, but I do also worry about what if some of the good stuff shuts down, but more broadly.

Joe Weisenthal (1:57)

And I do wanna know whether the guy gets out of the freezer after in the bear, right? Cause he got caught in the freezer at the end. So I hope there's a third season that resolves that.

Tracy Alloway (2:05)

You know how they call everyone chef on the bear? It's like, yes, chef. Okay, chef. Should we start calling each other co-host?

Joe Weisenthal (2:11)

Yeah. Yes.

Tracy Alloway (2:11)

Yes, co-host.

Joe Weisenthal (2:12)

Yes, host. Yes, host.

Tracy Alloway (2:14)

All right. Okay, so there is a concern over future content, but this also fits more broadly into some of the more active labor discussions and things that we've seen going on recently. And we just finished up that episode about the United Auto Workers Union and their fight against the big three. And it feels like these are two very different industries, car manufacturers and content creators for Hollywood, but there are some similarities and also key differences underlying both of these labor movements.

Joe Weisenthal (2:47)

Yes, host.

Let's just get started. We have two perfect guests to describe, to help us understand what's going on with Hollywood and the unions right now. Both of them in-house here are colleagues.

We're going to be speaking with Lucas Shaw. He's the managing editor for media and entertainment at Bloomberg and the author of the excellent Screen Time newsletter. And we also have Josh Eidelson, senior reporter for Bloomberg and Businessweek who covers organized labor. So Lucas and Josh, thank you both so much for coming on Odd Lots.

Josh Eidelson (3:19)

Thanks for having us.

Lucas Shaw (3:20)

Thank you for having us.

Joe Weisenthal (3:21)

Lucas, why don't you give us the state of play generally right now in Hollywood? Like how many strikes are going on? Who's on strike? Who isn't on strike? Where are talks? How long have they been going on? Give us like the quick summation of where things stand.

Lucas Shaw (3:36)

There are two strikes happening right now, which is the first time that that has happened since 1960

The first union to go on strike was the Writers Guild, which was at the beginning of May. So they've been on strike for about three months. The last writer's strike was in 2007, 2008 That lasted for a hundred days. This one looks almost certain to blow past that.