After nearly 150 days, the WGA strike is finally over! I can practically hear the church bells ringing (and all the keyboards clacking) as every writer in LA races back to work. Everyone is eager to get back into the swing of the industry but make no mistake, writers are not back to the same old “business as usual.” There is change in the air. 

A few decades ago, it was common practice to expect young, staff writers to constantly burn the midnight oil and give their TV show everything they had to give. After all, this is Hollywood. Writers are a dime a dozen and a young nobody just starting their career should prove themselves. Right? Well, the realities of burnout would say otherwise.

Burnout Proves Your Worth… Right?

Among writers and showrunners, the attitude is shifting. Pre-strike, it was becoming more and more common for networks and streaming services to hire fewer and fewer writers to do the same amount of work. “You can’t dump all of the work on a single showrunner,” said Chris Keyser, co-chair of the WGA negotiating committee, in an interview from May 2023. This sort of hiring practice isn’t sustainable. The job load of three or four writers assigned to a single writer is bad for two reasons. Firstly, there are fewer jobs available for other writers. And second, the writer who is employed will be overworked and burned out. Possibly producing lower-quality material as a result. 

Fortunately for writers, one of their big wins in the new deal is minimum staffing requirements for TV shows. The number of writers hired depends on the amount of episodes in a season. This change will allow writers to have their dream job and a personal life too. But this new focus on work-life balance isn’t exclusive to legally binding documents. Real writers can relate too.

In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, showrunner Dan Harmon (Community and Rick and Morty) admits that he wasn’t always the best boss but highlights how much he has tried to change himself and how his writer’s rooms operate.

“I used to think it was part of the job to have your toothbrush at the office and that a good employee did the same and you tried to reward that person with an Emmy or a credit that would allow them to launch their own franchises. […] I thought the best I could do was win wars and my soldiers would thank me later, or at the very worst, they would have sacrificed themselves for a noble cause, and that’s a world where making a bad TV show is worse than hurting a human being, which doesn’t make much sense to me anymore.”

– Dan Harmon, The Hollywood Reporter

With the strike’s conclusion and lessons from industry veterans like Harmon, it’s clear the era of overworking to prove one’s worth is fading away. Writers are recognizing their worth, both in terms of craft and mental well-being. As screens light up with fresh and returning shows, remember it’s the result of rejuvenated minds. The change, long overdue, is hopefully a sign of a brighter and more empathetic entertainment industry on the horizon.