Streaming offered Hollywood a chance to diversify and democratize. But actors, writers, consumers and investors are losing patience with how things are working out.
Streaming made Nick Martineau’s career possible, but it’s also making it harder for actors like him to earn a living.
The 25-year-old got his start in Hollywood in 2016, as a background actor on the fifth season of “House of Cards,” Netflix’s first original series. At the time, being an extra was “the perfect college job” — the work wasn’t strenuous, the crew was nice, and it allowed him to get a foot in the door. Now it’s the kind of job that could eventually be replaced by artificial intelligence, one of the key sticking points in the first dual writers-and-actors strike since 1960.
Martineau’s career blew up after he voiced a minor character in the English dub of “Squid Game,” which became a runaway hit in 2021. The show’s popularity didn’t net him much money, because residual structures don’t pay actors more for high-performing content. But being credited in the most-watched Netflix series helped raise his profile. Last year, he made enough money to purchase health insurance and quit his day job in information technology.
“Streaming has been a blessing for my career,” said Martineau, who has been on the picket lines in Los Angeles. “But I also have to acknowledge that the residual system is backwards. Our entire system is backwards.”
These days, it seems like everyone is frustrated with streaming.
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Actors are fed up with revenue-sharing models that make it harder to earn a living. Writers are facing stagnating pay, feel that their work is being devalued in the endless quest for content and are concerned about AI’s growing role in entertainment. Investors are losing their patience with the cash-burning approach steamers have taken in the battle for subscribers.
It’s not just people in Hollywood. Consumers are exhausted by the glut of streaming services to pay for and the lack of high-quality original movies and shows.
Historically, the arrival of technological innovations such as television and VCRs have triggered massive changes in Hollywood. It wasn’t so long ago that streaming was the darling of the movie and TV industry, offering an avenue for more diverse talent and a new way to reach audiences. But now, as a growing number of streaming services fight to capture a finite number of subscribers, the industry has become dominated by uncertainty, shrinking opportunity and content overload.
Streaming’s ascent has caused a “total upheaval of business practices and norms in the industry,” according to Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, national executive director and chief negotiator for the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA).
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“There are more jobs available,” Crabtree-Ireland said, noting that streaming has the potential to open more work opportunities, “but it is harder for any one of those jobs to sustain a career.”
Streaming is far from generating the kind of reliable profits that TV provided for decades, and losses are mounting as the war for subscribers drags on. Among the streaming services, only Netflix is profitable. While Netflix added 5.9 million subscribers in the second quarter of 2023 as it cracked down on password sharing, big U.S.-based streaming platforms collectively added fewer than 100 million subscribers last year, down from about 133 million in 2021, according toreporting from Variety. Netflix, Amazon Studios, Hulu, HBO Max and Disney Plus declined to answer questions from The Post about streaming’s impact on the entertainment industry.
Last July was the first time streaming overthrew cable to claim the biggest share of TV viewing, according to data from Nielsen. As streaming growth slowed after the pandemic, media companies consolidated through mergers such as HBO Max with Discovery Plus, and Paramount Plus with Showtime. Now, investors are putting more pressure on streamers to turn a profit, creating a wave of cost-cutting. Companies like Netflix, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery have slashed jobs this year, while services such as Max and Peacock have raised their prices. Many have also turned to ad-supported subscription tiers to increase revenue.
Amid the belt-tightening, those who “make the machine run” in Hollywood are paying the price, Fran Drescher, president of SAG-AFTRA, said in a speech last week.
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The combination of streaming’s influence and the push for profit has “exacerbated” existing inequalities in Hollywood, according to Arthur Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. And it is simply the latest instance of a new technology creating unsustainable conditions for workers trying to make a living.
“It’s very difficult for these actors or writers to get their fair share of residuals based on the digital model the way it’s currently constructed,” Wheaton said.
People who pay for streaming services are also reaching a breaking point. Susan Kovinsky, a 55-year-old nonprofit worker in Los Angeles, was an early cord-cutter, completing her switch from cable TV to streaming subscriptions in 2016. Kovinsky canceled her Netflix account when the writers strike started in May and the company started cracking down on subscribers sharing passwords. She told her two adult children, both in their 20s and living away from home, that they would have to find a new way to access Netflix.
But she is still paying for eight streaming services, including Disney Plus, Apple TV, Amazon Prime, YouTube TV, Peacock and Max. By her calculations, her family is paying over $100 a month for various streaming services, rivaling what they used to pay for cable. And juggling all the subscriptions is a headache.
“The TV they’ve made in the last four years is really good TV,” Kovinsky said. “But it’s way more confusing, and trying to find anything is a nightmare.”
As a consumer, Karl Chocensky is unimpressed with much of streamers’ fresh content. Instead of watching new shows or movies, the 33-year-old account executive at Athenahealth uses his Hulu, Disney Plus, Max and Amazon Prime subscriptions to binge thrillers and sitcoms from the 1990s.
He finds entertainment from that era to be more innovative than today’s offerings. For example, Chocensky said, he “can’t imagine” a strange, surreal film like “Being John Malkovich” getting made today.
“The feeling I get from modern entertainment is that studios rely on focus groups and comfortable tropes to placate the widest audience, versus creating works of art that might be off-putting,” Chocensky said.
Consumers and creators have conflicting viewpoints about whether canceling subscriptions is an effective way to support writers and actors. Martineau canceled all his subscriptions because he “can’t consciously give money to a business model that is stripping actors and writers of their value and dignity.” But it’s not an action that unions like SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America are calling for yet.
“Realistically speaking, there would need to be a global coordinated effort for a streaming boycott to have a measurable impact,” actress and comedian Franchesca Ramsey tweeted last week. She understands the impulse to cancel subscriptions, she added, but “this is a HUGE issue that does not have a simple solution.”
Nicholas Cabana spent over a decade doing animation for major studios, working on visual effects for TV franchises such as “Game of Thrones” and “Stranger Things” and films like “Jurassic World,” “X-Men: Days of Future Past” and “Paddington 2.” Early in the 35-year-old’s career, the standard for animators was to work on a few big projects per year. But amid the rise of streaming and the rush for more content, he said, workloads have become unmanageable, and creatives like him have “no power” in how projects get made.
Cabana left the industry during the pandemic and founded Claynosaurz, a 3D production studio that operates in web3, a concept for the next phase of the internet. The studio is having success so far, Cabana said, in part because it gets full royalties on the products it creates. The goal is for the studio to own its intellectual property, Cabana said, and be “completely independent of the classic gatekeepers.”
David Koll also recently left Hollywood after years in the industry. He got his start in the mid-2000s, and he worked as a production assistant on early Marvel movies such as “Captain America: The First Avenger” and “Thor.” But trying to make his way as a screenwriter was frustrating. When he met with studios about original ideas, he was constantly pushed toward working on projects based on existing intellectual property. It’s a trend that has become more pronounced in the streaming age, he said.
“You don’t see a willingness to experiment and try new things,” Koll said. “That’s why you see all these reboots and sequels. There’s always the desire to go for the sure thing.”
Now Koll is trying to break into tech. He signed up for a coding boot camp where his first task was to design an AI pitchbot to come up with movie ideas.
Although he’s excited about opportunities in the tech industry, Koll said it’s been “dispiriting” to see the enthusiasm with which people are approaching tech tools that aim to replace human creativity. “Certainly there’s an appreciation for the work and creativity that goes into coding,” Koll said. “That the same appreciation and respect isn’t afforded to creative artists is baffling.”
Heather Kelly contributed to this report.
