Ashley Miller: Why I am running for the WGA board
In my time in the WGA, I have been a working television writer and a working feature writer. My experience in both worlds gives me insight across the spectrum of membership concerns. With your support, I will bring the benefit of a broad point of view to the Board of Directors.
Recent events have foregrounded several important issues: our preparation for negotiations with the AMPTP in less than one year’s time; the fate of the mid-level writer in television; the future of residuals and profit participation in an ever more vertically integrated, streaming- driven world. The state of our negotiations with the ATA casts a long shadow over everything.
That said, none of our concerns exists in a vacuum. They must be addressed in a larger context. We need a holistic, reality-driven strategy if we are to achieve real, bottom line gains.
The WGA must do business differently. For the last ten years, we have adopted a piecemeal, confrontational and data-light approach that hasn’t served our interests. The 2007–2008 strike destroyed incalculable writer wealth, damaged the industry and yielded minimal gains that didn’t outweigh our losses. 100 days of effort was finally resolved by following the pattern set by the DGA, who did not strike. The threats of 2001 gave us PODs; the action of 2008 gave us a surge in reality TV. There are fewer originals and fewer OWAs than ever before. Studios and networks have learned how to mitigate our leverage and we are not strategically countering them the way we need to. Every year, they get better at it. In the last negotiation, we were forced into a rear-guard action that gave us span “protection” which now gives our employers the legal cover they need to reduce many writer-producers to guild minimums — some writers (those in teams) find themselves making less than these minimums.
Since 2007, our employers have proposed rollbacks in some form at the start of every MBA negotiation. There is no reason to believe 2020 will be any different. This doesn’t happen to the DGA, and it’s time we ask ourselves why. It’s not because we’re victims, or disrespected as some would have us believe. It’s not because the directors have an “in” with the powers that be, and we are at their mercy. The answer is very simple: the DGA collects and analyzes real data about their membership’s earnings. They invest in consultants who pore through actual numbers (as opposed to WGA salary surveys) and project the future. The DGA doesn’t hide this information until the start of a labor negotiation kabuki. The DGA shares data with the studios and networks well in advance of negotiations. They engage directly. They win before the fight begins. The data-driven approach works. The WGA should emulate what works.
Success in 2020 demands preparation. We need real, ground-truth overscale salary data in television. The AMPTP has this. The agencies have this. We do not. We must get it. The guild reports a nearly $10M budget surplus. Some of this money would be well spent on data collection, analysis and visualization. We should do what writers do best — craft a compelling story. Our story. A true story about the state of the business and the future of our membership.
There are a few things our story must include. For example, we must tell the sad tale of the mid-level writer… crushed by mini-rooms that don’t need journeyman producers on shows that haven’t been picked up yet… cast aside by studios and networks eager to service deals… left behind by showrunners attempting to economize via staff writers and consulting producers. Too many of us begin careers in television with high hopes brought low by the structural realities of the business we’re in. These realities disproportionately affect women and people of color trying to climb the ladder. Co-Producer is where promising careers suffocate.
We must tell the story of residuals and profit participation. Once, these were the bedrock upon which members’ financial stability rested. Now, they have gone all but extinct. We need to bring real proposals to the AMPTP to replace or rescue these systems. We must study compensation as a function of time, and how changes to the business model harm writers in the long term (even if overscale pay increases suggest stasis or improvement in the short term). The only way to make rational, lasting improvements is to speak with authority about numbers.
The Guild must not only provide numbers in our story, but demand them in new media. It’s only recently that streaming services have begun to publicize viewer data. This should not be a guessing game, or an ask. Subscriptions and “eyeballs” should be provided as a contractual requirement so we can adequately track content performance and make valid assessments of market value. New residual formulas and profit participation approaches should emerge from an assumption that we all share a data-driven reality, one that is open and verifiable. It doesn’t matter that residual earnings from streaming are rising (or falling) if we can’t say with certainty why earnings are rising and if they are rising enough.
Finally, we need to look at our negotiations with the agencies as a function of our relationship with the AMPTP and bottom-line earnings for all writers — not just writers in multi-million dollar overall deals with decades of profit participation. The agencies have opened the door to new revenue streams for working writers that we should examine fairly and engage intelligently. Problematic affiliate production entities could be turned into laboratories for business models that work to the advantage of all artists, not just writers.
The absence of writers has not ended packaging. Packaging continues around us. Our task is to demand transparency and strengthen enforcement mechanisms from the previous AMBA — mechanisms we chose to ignore and have never discussed. If the ATA returns to the table with real proposals that profit everyone, we have a duty to consider them.
The alternative is a world where writer influence in television wanes in favor of directors, actors and IP, forcing us into a position where we are hired last, packaged anyway and no longer the driving creative force. We must preserve our hard-won power and market value. Nothing will crater writer earnings like changing the fundamental assumptions of television development and production. Constructively engaging the ATA on packaging ensures our dominance, protects our bottom line and better positions us for negotiations with the AMPTP.
Solidarity is important. Organizing is important. These qualities only become powerful when we use our leverage strategically, with a clear-eyed commitment to fact and reason.
Phyllis Nagy (President), Craig Mazin (VP), Nick Jones, Jr. (Secretary-Treasurer) and I will work alongside Courtney Kemp, Marc Guggenheim, Sarah Treem, Ayelet Waldman, Rasheed Newson, Nicholas Kazan and Jason Fuchs to improve the bottom line of working writers. We have important fights ahead of us. This team will win them.
BACKGROUND: MEMBER SINCE 2001
COMMITTEES: VETERANS WRITING PROGRAM 2012, 2014, 2015, 2017–2019
— Ashley Miller
