LogFAQs > #975798205

AngelsNAirwav3s posted...

I thought the hang up now was the size of the writer room.

Writers want a minimum of 8 writers employed in the writers room for every show. Studios think the show runners should decide how many writers they need.

The raw number of people is less of a problem than the scheduling of the writers. Once upon a time writers were basically around through entire seasons of a show. This allowed a lot more exposure to the show process along with networking with studio people. This helped develop writers more and was a pretty key piece of the writers-to-showrunner pipeline, which is pretty important for getting quality new stuff. Seasons were also a lot longer so the work was consistent.

Now, with seasons being shorter and frequently dropping all at once the entire production cycle for writers has changed. They'll get a typically smaller writing team to blast out the entire season at once, frequently on almost a gig like contract and then have maybe a writer or two stick around for the rest of the production to make edits when they need them. The work is shorter, less consistent and basically removes the professional development aspect that can actually allow for writing to be a sustainable career.