Ted Sarandos wants striking writers and actors to know he is a union man through and through, and he feels their pain – even as Netflix and other studios and streamers have no plans to restart talks with either the WGA or SAG-AFTRA anytime soon.
“I was raised in a union household,” the Netflix co-CEO declared at the top of the streamer’s latest earnings call this afternoon.
“My dad was a member of IBEW Local 640, he was a union electrician,” the Phoenix, Arizona-born Sarandos said. “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.”
Brandishing his working class credentials may be prove a hard sell for even the ABC Sarandos, with the exec taking in over $50 million last year.
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“So you should know that nobody here nobody within AMPTP and I’m sure nobody at SAG or nobody at the WGA took any of this lightly,” he went on to add today. “We’re super committed to getting to an agreement as soon as possible, one that’s equitable, and one that enables the industry, and everybody in it to move forward into the future,” Sarandos went on to say on the shorter than usual video call.
On a day of earnings from Tesla, United Airlines and others, Wednesday saw the Dow Jones surging. The streamer announced it had added 5.9 million subscribers in Q2. Still, with expectation correction and missed revenue targets in today’s earnings letter, Netflix stock took an almost 4% hit in early after-hours trading.
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Despite his usual upbeat tone today, pitchman supreme Sarandos has to know that he and the company has been at the center of a lot of the ire that guild members have about the tightening economics of the industry. The seemingly dismissive remarks of Disney CEO Bob Iger last week chiding how “not realistic” and “disruptive” union members are being aside, Netflix has been in the guild’s spotlight since Day 1 of the respective strikes. For instance, the free fall in residuals that guild members have seen from streaming platforms over the last decade is, rightly or wrongly, often laid at Netflix’s feet.
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In that context, just as the Netflix earnings call started today, it was revealed that Grace and Frankie‘s Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin will be outside the streamer’s Sunset Blvd HQ tomorrow. Stars of Netflix’s longest running original series so far, the icons previously showed up outside Netflix in late June as supporters of the WGA, now the SAG-AFTRA members, along with co-star June Diane Raphael, are on strike themselves.
With the WGA out on the picket lines for over 75 days and the 160,000 members of the Fran Drescher-led SAG-AFTRA deep into their first full week of the first joint strike since 1960, Sarandos sidestepped any concerns the Tinseltown labor action could dry up Netflix’s pipeline – even with domestic production at a standstill. “We put some of our upcoming content in the letter,” he noted of the global buys and content the home of Squid Game and Money Heist have on the shelf. “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.”
“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.”
That last point from Sarandos may be the one thing the studios and streamers and those on the picket lines agree on — from very different perspectives.
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