Being A Writer In the Streaming Era
I moved from Canada to Los Angeles in 2012 after a lifetime of cities where changing seasons gave narrative structure to the year. In Los Angeles, days slide by in a perpetually golden loop. Time becomes measured not in snow melting or leaves falling but in streaming service subscription renewals and psychiatric medication refills. Los Angeles offers a constant seduction of beauty paired with a vague sense of impending doom. Los Angeles embraces you while simultaneously setting the stage for your destruction, which is basically what streaming services did to writers.
The erosion of community happens so sneakily here you barely notice it happening. Rights that once seemed permanent now feel like limited-time offers. Healthcare access, bodily autonomy, the ability to afford housing without selling a kidney. Streaming platforms gutted writer compensation using the same playbook that corporations use to dismantle all worker protections. They rename terrible things to make them sound like opportunities you should be grateful for.
When I arrived, television still existed primarily on actual televisions. Netflix mailed DVDs in those red envelopes that got lost under your couch. I was writing half-hour scripts for broadcast networks in multi-camera format, creating books when authors still toured instead of trying to look interesting on TikTok.
My friend spent a decade building her writing career from school to getting coffee to making shows people watched. Her pilot quote had reached mid-six numbers after years of success and missing every important family event. When streaming arrived, she pitched a show to one of those platforms. They loved it