Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos addressed Hollywood’s dual SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes alongside the release of the company’s Q2 earnings results Wednesday.
“Let me start by making something absolutely clear: This strike us not an outcome that we wanted,” Sarandos said during Netflix’s pre-recorded Q2 earnings interview. “We make deals all the time. We are constantly at the table negotiating with writers with directors with actors and producers with everyone across the industry. And we very much hoped to reach an agreement by now. So I also want to say, if I may, on a personal level, I was raised in a union household. My dad was a member of IBEW Local 640. He was a union electrician. And I remember his local because that union was very much a part of our lives when I was growing up. And I also remember on more than one occasion my dad being out on strike. And I remember that because it takes an enormous toll on your family, financially and emotionally.”
Sarandos reflected the frustration of Hollywood management, who have been pilloried as robber barons on picket lines. In citing his childhood experience with organized labor, Sarandos sought to counter the anger expressed by striking union members that studios and streamers sought the work stoppage as a means of realizing short-term cash savings and hurting the creative community.
“You should know that nobody here, nobody within the AMPTP, and I’m sure nobody at SAG or nobody at the WGA took any of this lightly,” Sarandos said. “But we’ve got a lot of work to do there. There are a handful of complicated issues. We’re super-committed to getting to an agreement as soon as possible, one that is equitable, and one that enables the industry and everybody in it to move forward into the future.”
The Netflix chief’s comments on the double strike, the first time the writers and actors guilds have been on a simultaneous work stoppage since 1960, are the highest-profile remarks made by a media mogul on the topic since Disney CEO Bob Iger said the unions were not being “realistic” with their expectations on July 13, one day before SAG-AFTRA officially went on strike.
“It’s very disturbing to me. We’ve talked about disruptive forces on this business and all the challenges we’re facing, the recovery from COVID which is ongoing, it’s not completely back. This is the worst time in the world to add to that disruption,” Iger said in an interview with David Faber on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” while attending the Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley, Idaho. “I understand any labor organization’s desire to work on behalf of its members to get the most compensation and be compensated fairly based on the value that they deliver. We managed, as an industry, to negotiate a very good deal with the Directors Guild that reflects the value that the directors contribute to this great business. We wanted to do the same thing with the writers, and we’d like to do the same thing with the actors. There’s a level of expectation that they have, that is just not realistic. And they are adding to the set of the challenges that this business is already facing that is, quite frankly, very disruptive.”
When asked by media analyst Jessica Reif Ehrlich, who moderated Netflix’s earnings interview Wednesday, how much original content the streamer has stockpiled to last throughout the dual strikes, Sarandos answered: “We put some of our upcoming content in the letter. We said in the last call, we produce heavily across all kinds of content, TV, film, unscripted, scripted, local, domestic, English, non-English, all those things. And they’re all true. But it’s besides the point, the real point is we need to get to the strike to a conclusion, so that we can all move forward.”
During Netflix’s Q1 earnings presentation in April, before either strike had begun, Sarandos told analysts, “We do have a pretty robust slate of releases to take us into a long time” in the event of labor walkouts.
“We respect the writers, and we respect the WGA,” he said at the time. “We couldn’t be here without them. We don’t want a strike. The last time there was a strike, it was devastating to creators. It was really hard on the industry. It was painful for local economies that support productions. And it was very, very, very bad for fans.”
