![]() Tennis Aficionado: Build 10 tennis courts Sweet tooth: build 3 confectionary plantsĬaffeine junkie: building 10 coffeehouses Marble Businessman: make 30 marble (doesn't have to be in WH at same time)Ĭowboy is my middle name: build 7 ranches Number of the Beast: have exactly 666 citizens Leave men Alone: Get the population down to zero One fell swoop: launch 5 trips simultaneously Passenger Comfort: Acquire one vehicle of each type Please contribute what you can - what you've tried, etc. But when people reach decision fatigue, she added, "the lure of the minimal commitment is pretty strong.Since we can't post external links, I thought I'd start a thread to track this stuff. "It's probably better for me to invest my time in shows that have better working conditions, that are helping keep people employed," she said. ![]() But she also wants to support full-length shows, and the writers behind them. On one hand, she says, there are so many shows to watch, and only so much time. The strike and its disputes raise ethical questions for Fortmueller as a viewer. ![]() "I'm doing absolutely all of the work that I would do in a full writers room, and I'm paid a fraction of my normal quote," one writer recently told Indie Wire. But writers say the practice compresses their contributions and cuts their pay. Production companies say the model helps them vet a show more fully before committing to a full series. That's led to claims that writers are being treated as gig workers: Rather than joining a show for what could be a successful and lucrative run, writers in a mini room commonly earn union-guaranteed minimum rates for short assignments. It's a particularly common tactic, she said, for studios looking to create scripts for a six- or eight-episode season. Instead of paying writers more over a longer time, she added, streaming companies are "asking them to do a lot more heavy lifting in a much shorter amount of time." "Effectively they're creating shows, albeit shortened-season shows, for a fraction of the price," Fortmueller said. That means breaking a season down and structuring it - but in this arrangement, writers are paid the union minimum rather than their normal fees, and they're not kept on payroll for long period of time. "Mini rooms are essentially streamers hiring writers to come in and basically 'break' stories," Fortmueller said. Where some rooms traditionally employed around seven writers (or more than twice that, for some series), mini rooms get by with a handful of them, on a short-term basis. The growth of streaming shows is linked to a controversial topic: the shrinking of writers' rooms, into "mini rooms," where there are fewer writers than a traditional room would employ. "So I think they take a harder line in a lot of these regards." Why are mini rooms a big deal? "They're not heavily unionized industries," she added. Video game companies and streaming companies share key characteristics, she said, noting the tech industry's labor conditions and standards differ from those in Hollywood. "So I think that's not necessarily a wild card, but it does change some of the stakes."Īs a reference point, Fortmueller cites the lengthy strike between SAG-AFTRA and video game makers that ended in 2017. "We haven't really seen them as part of these negotiations in the past," she added. "What's new about this is who's at the table, frankly," Fortmueller said, listing companies such as Amazon, Apple and Netflix. And compared to the last big strike, which lasted from 2007 to 2008, new players are involved. It's a new version of their perennial disagreement over residual payments - the money that writers get when their material is reused. Writers and production companies are grappling with how to reconcile drastically different ideas of how the media business should handle streaming platforms. Here's a quick guide to what's different about this strike: What has changed with streaming? "I think it has the potential to be one of the big ones." "I think this has the potential to be one of the longer strikes," she said. The buildup of unresolved issues is just one reason, Fortmueller says, that the 2023 strike could last a while. It just didn't matter, because nobody was working anyway," Kate Fortmueller, an assistant professor of entertainment and media studies at the University of Georgia, told NPR. "Nobody cared if you went on strike in spring of 2020. Culture Writers Guild of America goes on strike
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