A strike could be a death knell for daytime soap operas, which rely on a new episode almost every weekday, unless producers bring in nonunion writers, which happened during the last strike. Movie executives really started to sweat the last writers’ strike, which took place in the winter, only when it threatened to derail the Academy Awards, a crucial marketing platform. Studios suddenly needed writers to provide witty dialogue, so they imported wordsmiths from New York. But they treated writers — or at least many writers have felt this way ever since — as expendable stenographers. Put another way, writers see their craft as artistic expression.

Source: New York Times April 17, 2017 21:00 UTC