The Disruption Series Part 3: Thank You, Stephen Amell

 

I’ve always admired Stephen Amell’s talent as an actor: his work in the Arrow-verse was always exceptional even when the material was not worthy of him and Heels has clearly become an early standout for Starz. And tonight speaking at a panel, he said something about the strike that will no doubt hurt him among his peers but deserves to be admired because of the acknowledgement of the situation.

Amell told fans at a panel in North Carolina that while he stands with SAG-AFTRA he thinks: “striking is a reductive negotiating tactic and myopic. I feel like I’m insulated in Hollywood, because that’s where I live and that I don’t support the strike.”

Amell will no doubt suffer immense brushback for his statement. In truth, I think he has gotten the core of the issue that the SAG-AFTRA and WGA fundamentally refuse to acknowledge about everything that is going on in Hollywood and television today.

The battle for residuals and rights is indeed one that needs to be fought. But the actors and writers continuously frame this as a battle against the CEOs and companies which might be rich, rather than focusing it on the business, which is struggling and putting at least some of the blame on where it belongs: the consumer.

This is a reality that has been clear for television for a very long time. Network television ratings have been a continuous recession for more than a decade. I don’t deny that the network may have brought it on themselves, but one has to leave all of this on the key element: the declining viewership across the board on every service. Indeed NBC was discussing as recently as this year the possibility of stopping programming across the board in its ten pm time slot because viewership is so low. The CW is in the middle of restructuring because it is on the verge of bankruptcy and is increasingly showing reruns of Canadian dramas. That’s not the sign of a healthy business.

Many people are arguing the cancellation of Magnum P.I. by NBC after rescuing it from CBS the previous year was a victim of vindictiveness by the network against the strikers. And while this is possible, we can’t count out the very real possibility there were financial motives involved. Prior to the strike, Fox announced the cancellation of 9-1-1, one of the network’s biggest hits after six seasons. The networks made it very clear that the ratings were still not high enough for it to be profitable for the network. What does that say about the precarious state of network television that its biggest hit isn’t making money?

Nor is this a problem that is simply toward networks. The ratings for pay cable have increasingly become lower of the last several years. Several cable networks have stopped making original programming all together to support the bottom line. Other networks have increasingly begun to merge: - Showtime, which has been a major force in cable for more than twenty years, had merged with Paramount and  by the end of the year intends to change its name and begin to venture away from so many of its original shows and move more towards spin-offs of previous hits. I’ve seen a lot of rage about this on websites, but only in the sense that the TV viewers are upset about their viewing habits. None of them care to think what it means for the industry.

And for all Netflix becoming a flashpoint for so much hatred by the strikers, it’s hard to know just how secure their finances truly are. Apparently I need to remind readers that it recently became clear that the numbers that Netflix had been using to show its impressive viewership were in fact almost entirely fictional. The immense drop in viewership over the last two years has been one of the biggest stories on streaming. But all that the average viewer seems to care about is that the network has been cracking down on password sharing. Implying that all they care about is that they now have to pay for Netflix.

It's easy to focus this battle against the greedy corporate overlords who are clearly part of the one percent. But to do so is in complete defiance of what has happened in so much of Peak TV, particularly in the last decade. Much of this comes from a consumer class that does not want to pay anything for the entertainment that all of these strikers are providing for them. This has been clear the more you hear about people, consistently talking about cancelling subscriptions to pay cable over the year, if not altogether, refusing to subscribe to streaming service (apparently because  $10 a month is too rich for their bloods) and perhaps most blatant of all, choosing to look at the hundreds of shows that are at their disposal and saying that there’s nothing they want to watch.

This precariousness, for the record, has been just as clear for the film industry for a while. Purists might mock the constant making of comic book movies and sci-fi films the industry has become, but the sad truth is even before the pandemic, they were increasingly become the only films that were making money for the industry. The movie theater industry was struggling for a while even before the pandemic happened. Over the past decade, the box office smash of an adult has become increasingly rare. Before the release of Oppenheimer, many critics genuinely believed this would be the last expensive biopic of its kind. It’s immense success is a promising sign, but it remains to be seen if this is a new trend or just an aberration. The fact that Martin Scorsese has had to make his last two films for streaming services is not a promising trend. Considering that the last several Marvel and DC movies barely made a profit, even that trend may be coming to an end.

My fellow critics have spent their lives refusing to delineate that Hollywood is a business first and everything else second. The actors and writers clearly know better, but their strike at the end of the day is doing as much damage to their business as them not getting a fair wage is. I don’t deny the cruelty of the studio when their cold-bloodedness towards negotiations but they have to deal with the bottom line. I’m not saying to have sympathy for the CEOs of Netflix or HBO but like the striking actors and writers they have to deal  with economic realities – and the bigger picture in a way that the talent may not be capable of seeing. They are in an impossible box themselves. They know this strike is bad for business, but they also know their business isn’t exactly healthy right now.

Of course the writers and actors will naturally point to the enormous salaries of the CEOs of the companies they are negotiating with, and it’s a valid point. But considering the world that they have spent their life in, considering that they have to be more up to date on how fragile their business is – certainly more than the average American – they have to know that the ponds they work in keep shrinking and that the options that they have are become fewer each day. Amell knows this better than most actors, having worked on the CW and is currently employed by Starz, another cable network that like so many others is suffering from its own economic difficulties. Right now, one of the shows airing the same night as his Minx was rescued from HBO Max after a restructuring led to its cancelling from the streaming service after the second season was filmed. There is no guarantee for its future beyond that season – or indeed, so many of the other series on Starz itself, which cancelled several series, including Dangerous Liaisons, that it had renewed for a second season in advance. Amell knows the sand on which he stands on is shifting. Are other actors and writers aware of this – and if yes, do they care about the risk in play for its members?

The union is right to worry about the salaries of its members. But Amell is also correct about how reductive this is. Amell might suffer backlash in the immediate future, but he should not be punished for having a clarity of vision that has been lost over the bullheaded attitudes of the picket line.