“The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses.”

“Receiving positive feedback from Wall Street since the WGA went on strike May 2, Warner Bros Discovery, Apple, Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Paramount and others have become determined to “break the WGA,” as one studio exec blatantly put it.”

Hollywood Studios’ WGA Strike Endgame Is To Let Writers Go Broke Before Resuming Talks In Fall

This is the narrative the AMPTP started with, and they were fine with it. Add to that Bob Iger’s you did not just say that … yes, you did, comment. Yet, they are surprised the Snidely Whiplash type of messaging cast the AMPTP in a bad light? So now they hire a new crisis PR Firm.

AMPTP, stop spending time and money trying to look better to the public. Get to negotiating.

This is interesting.

We’re not quite yet at the ‘blood in the water’ point for the production side, but hiring a premium strategic communications firm is a solid indicator that the major production conglomerates and streamers have realized that they’re well beyond the point of saving some cash while cooling of their destructive arms-race in overproduction.

They’ve realized that they’ve both lost control of the narrative and may be at risk of having their audiences turn to other things. They may have finally realized that they’re not just competing with one another but with other media that they don’t produce.

Long past are the days when people would watch just about anything on linear when there was no new scripted content. The youth audience is increasingly turning to gaming and social media. There’s no guarantee the audience will come back if it’s not well served.