NEW YORK As of Tuesday, film and TV writers across the country are on strike for the first time in 15 years , picketing in front of the offices of major entertainment companies in Los Angeles and New York.

Some of the strikes effects became apparent as soon as Tuesday night: The network TV late-night shows went into reruns. But unlike during the 2007-08 strike, when most shows went off the air for months, this strike likely wont have a palpable effect on what we watch (at least in the immediate future). Thats because there are hundreds of more TV shows now compared with the pre-streaming era.

That volume of content is also at the heart of why the 11,500 film and TV members of the Writers Guild of America, West and East, are on strike. The structural inequities exacerbated by the shift to streaming are a large part of why the strike matters way beyond the short-term effects of, say, if your favorite shows will be available.

Its fundamentally about fairness, about getting our fair share, said Empire and Dopesick creator Danny Strong, among the many film and TV writers on the picket line in New York on Tuesday afternoon. You know, writers who create the content that everyone else has profited off of need to get the appropriate share that theyve always been getting over the years. Our salaries should be increasing, not decreasing.