A lot of the article is focusing the writers getting less access, but the flipside is that show runners are increasingly getting burnt out.
From the show runner’s perspective, they used to get a writing staff that could handle production issues on set so that the show runner could handle the larger scale issues. Now, the staff that would help them is no longer there and the show runner never got other staff to supplement the loss of the writers. This is causing a lot of additional work for show runners, and the savings of the labor isn’t going to the show runner.
Minimum staffing requirements during production isn’t just meant to help writers learn to be show runners, but to give show runners staff to help with production.
This has been evident from interviews with Tony Gilroy about Andor - he assumed he’d be directing episodes (it’s common for showrunners to direct the first and last episode, at least) but realised it wasn’t feasible given how much he had to do as showrunner.
So every season is now losing a bit of authorial vision too.
A lot of the article is focusing the writers getting less access, but the flipside is that show runners are increasingly getting burnt out.
From the show runner’s perspective, they used to get a writing staff that could handle production issues on set so that the show runner could handle the larger scale issues. Now, the staff that would help them is no longer there and the show runner never got other staff to supplement the loss of the writers. This is causing a lot of additional work for show runners, and the savings of the labor isn’t going to the show runner.
Minimum staffing requirements during production isn’t just meant to help writers learn to be show runners, but to give show runners staff to help with production.
That’s a lot to say greed by executives are, once again, destroying the people that actually make the money in the enterprise.
Slave driving ain’t easy but well compensated executives got to do it… Audience gets shiti shows, workers get paid less with less benefits.
All around win win win for investors and execs.
This has been evident from interviews with Tony Gilroy about Andor - he assumed he’d be directing episodes (it’s common for showrunners to direct the first and last episode, at least) but realised it wasn’t feasible given how much he had to do as showrunner.
So every season is now losing a bit of authorial vision too.