WGA Calls for Strike to Begin Tuesday,
Slams Studios for Creating ‘Gig Economy’ That Aims to Turn Writing into ‘Entirely Freelance’ Profession
Story by Cynthia Littleton • Yesterday
Cheyne Gateley/Variety Intelligence Platform
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers ended contract talks with the Writers Guild of America on Monday night, hours before the contract expiration deadline. The WGA responded by calling for a strike to begin on Tuesday.
The AMPTP cast the WGA as refusing to compromise on key issues and for “the magnitude” of its asks at the bargaining table.
“Negotiations between the AMPTP and the WGA concluded without an agreement today,” the AMPTP said in a statement issued Monday night. “The AMPTP presented a comprehensive package proposal to the Guild last night which included generous increases in compensation for writers as well as improvements in streaming residuals. The AMPTP also indicated to the WGA that it is prepared to improve that offer, but was unwilling to do so because of the magnitude of other proposals still on the table that the Guild continues to insist upon. The primary sticking points are ‘mandatory staffing,’ and ‘duration of employment’ — Guild proposals that would require a company to staff a show with a certain number of writers for a specified period of time, whether needed or not.
The WGA slammed Hollywood’s major employers for not responding to fundamental shifts in the entertainment economy.
“The companies’ behavior has created a gig economy inside a union workforce, and their immovable stance in this negotiation has betrayed a commitment to further devaluing the profession of writing,” the WGA said. “From their refusal to guarantee any level of weekly employment in episodic television, to the creation of a “day rate” in comedy variety, to their stonewalling on free work for screenwriters and on AI for all writers, they have closed the door on their labor force and opened the door to writing as an entirely freelance profession. No such deal could ever be contemplated by this membership.”
The AMPTP in its statement left the door open for more negotiations, saying it was “willing to engage in discussions with the WGA in an effort to break this logjam.”
But in the WGA’s view, “the studios’ responses have been wholly insufficient given the existential crisis writers are facing.”
Labor action by the WGA will have widespread repercussions across the industry. Topical TV series such as late-night comedy and daytime talk shows will be the first to feel the pinch.
The sides had been meeting since March 20 at AMPTP headquarters in Sherman Oaks. AMPTP leaders left the building around 8 p.m. on Monday night. WGA negotiating committee members followed about 30 minutes later and declined to comment to Variety.
The AMPTP’s statement points to issues around staffing of TV series as the primary sticking point for the talks. It’s understood that the WGA has sought guarantees for the number of writers to be hired on TV series as well as guarantees for the number of weeks that writers will be on the payroll. Concerns about the number of writers hired and the duration of their employment have been stirred up by massive changes in the way TV series are produced under the streaming and binge watching model.
As the contract expiration deadline approached, the WGA flexed its members muscle by conducting a strike authorization vote from April 11-17. Just shy of 98% of voters gave their OK for the WGA board to call a strike against Hollywood’s largest employers. The WGA’s latest strike authorization vote also drew a record voter turnout at 79% of eligible members in the WGA West and WGA East.
The impact of a strike would be far-reaching. Not only would a strike gradually shut down film and TV production across the country, the economic shock would have a ripple effect throughout Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Atlanta and other production hubs. According to FilmLA, production in Los Angeles has slowed sharply over the past three months, dropping 24% compared with the first quarter of last year. Though it is difficult to disentangle the effects of broader corporate reorganizations and the cost-cutting that has accompanied these moves, FilmLA president Paul Audley says the labor situation “seems to have delayed the start of some programming.”
That’s the opposite of what happened just ahead of the 2007 writers strike, when studios accelerated production in the months before the deadline. That work stoppage lasted 100 days, from early November 2007 to mid-February 2008.
This round of bargaining comes at the end of a decadelong ramp-up in TV production. From 2009 to 2019, the number of working TV writers increased by 70%, according to guild data, bringing a flood of fresh talent into the business. Newer writers typically make minimum salaries — $4,546 per week for a staff writer or $7,412 for anyone above entry level. The boom has greatly expanded the number of writing jobs available in a year, but it also led to structural changes that dramatically changed the way writers get paid, as well as the nature of how they work. More recently, less-experienced writers have struggled to break in as more seasoned writers are the first choices for jobs that run for a shorter number of weeks than the 27-30 week norm of traditional network television.
The pandemic hit in 2020, and then investors started souring on the economics of Netflix and other streaming services two years later, leaving many of those new writers without a clear path forward in their careers.
“A lot of production companies and streamers were doing lots of overproduction of shows,” says David Goodman, past WGA West president and co-chair of the WGA negotiating committee along with another past WGAW president, Christopher Keyser. “We had this peak number of shows that were being made, but that’s now starting to shrink,” Goodman said.
At the same time, the shows that are getting produced have fewer episodes, leaving many writers looking for other jobs or unemployed for most of the year. The guild is seeking to push back with a proposal to set minimum staffing levels for TV, to help ensure that younger and less experienced writers have the ability to break into the business. Writers also want a more robust streaming residual, to tide them over in periods of unemployment.
But the companies — faced with a streaming business model that doesn’t generate much profit — seem in no mood to accede to those demands.
In its message to members, the WGA urged writers to hang tough together despite the hardships that may come with a strike. They also put the blame for the massive change across the industry on the companies on the other side of the table.
“Here is what all writers know: the companies have broken this business. They have taken so much from the very people, the writers, who have made them wealthy,” the WGA told members. “But what they cannot take from us is each other, our solidarity, our mutual commitment to save ourselves and this profession that we love. We had hoped to do this through reasonable conversation. Now we will do it through struggle. For the sake of our present and our future, we have been given no other choice.”
Late-Night Shows To Shut Down Immediately After Writers Guild Strike Called
Story by Peter White • Yesterday
Provided by Deadline
Nightly talk shows including The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel Live! and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, are set to go dark starting on Tuesday after writers agreed to strike.
Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Daily Show, which had correspondent Dulcé Sloan host this week, also will be hit, while such weekly shows as Saturday Night Live, Real Time with Bill Maher and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver will be similarly impacted, though final decisions on those shows are expected to come later in the week.
The Late Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Tonight Show, Late Night and The Daily Show are all expected to pivot to re-runs.
Colbert was set to have Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Chita Rivera on Tuesday’s show, with Chris Hayes, Zach Cherry, Michael J. Fox and Shonda Rhimes lined up for later in the week. Fallon was set with Ken Jeong and Emma Chamberlain on Tuesday, with the likes of Jennifer Lopez, JJ Watt, Elle Fanning and Bowen Yang among guests for later in the week. Kimmel was welcoming Dr. Phil, Gina Rodriguez and The Pixies on Tuesday, with Melissa McCarthy, Will Poulter, Ricky Gervais, Anthony Carrigan and Smashing Pumpkins set for later in the week. The Daily Show was set to welcome authors Vashti Harrison and Jason Reynolds and former NFL All-Pro Brandon Marshall.
Seth Meyers, speaking on Late Night this afternoon, said: “I love writing. I love writing for TV. I love writing this show. I love that we get to come in with an idea for what we want to do every day and we get to work on it all afternoon and then I have the pleasure of coming out here. No one is entitled to a job in show business. But for those people who have a job, they are entitled to fair compensation. They are entitled to make a living. I think it’s a very reasonable demand that’s being set out by the guild. And I support those demands.”
Pete Davidson, whose Peacock comedy series Bupkis starts this week, was set for his SNL return on May 6. We hear that there are a number of possibilities for the Lorne Michaels-created show if there is a strike and that a decision is set to be made closer to showtime.
Speaking on The Tonight Show, Davidson joked that he was taking it personally. “It sucks because it just feeds my weird story I have in my head, like, of course that would happen to me.”
Two of the nightly hosts, Kimmel and Colbert, went through this situation in 2007-08, the latter as the host of The Colbert Report. Meyers was at Saturday Night Live during the last strike, and Oliver was on The Daily Show. Maher’s Real Time was also hit, with its season finale replaced by a rerun.
One of the issues in this year’s negotiation between the writers guild and the studios is also, in fact, surrounding late-night shows on streaming. As it stands, writers who work on “comedy variety programs made for new media,” such as Peacock’s The Amber Ruffin Show, do not qualify for MBA minimums, something the WGA has been fighting for.
Late-night showrunners have told Deadline that they will stay in touch with each other as the strike progresses to give a unified approach to the situation, something that didn’t happen in ’07-’08.
“I have been and will continue to talk to the other shows to see what they’re up to,” one showrunner said. “We’ve got to support the writers — our writers are amazing. That said, the rest of the staff is amazing, and I don’t want to see anybody lose their jobs or lose a paycheck. What’s the happy medium there? Figuring that out, it’s not been easy.”
One SNL star told Deadline: “We have to think about our crew too. I absolutely support the writers, and I want the writers to get what they deserve and need, but I don’t want our crew to be out of work. We can’t make this art without each other.”
WGA Leaders Say AMPTP Refused To Bargain On Guild’s Core Issues
Story by David Robb • 1h ago
Deadline
Writers Guild of America leaders are saying Monday night that the guild was forced to go on strike at midnight PT because their proposals to the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on core contract issues “fell on deaf ears.”
Money is a big issue — the guild is seeking a new contract that would increase pay and benefits by $429 million over three years, but says that the studios only offered $86 million. But preserving writing as a profession is an even bigger issue and goes to the core of what the strike is about.
In a phone interview with Deadline shortly after the contract negotiations broke off, WGA West president Meredith Stiehm, and WGA negotiating committee co-chairs David A. Goodman and Chris Keyser – the latter two former WGA West presidents – described how the companies “stonewalled” the guild from the very beginning of the negotiations on a “constellation” of proposals that guild members are demanding.
RELATED: WGA Strike Picket Line Locations List And Times Set For Los Angeles & New York
“I’m just surprised by the conversations we did not have,” Stiehm said of the bargaining sessions. “We’ve been here for six weeks talking to them and those core proposals were literally ignored. And we made it very clear to them that 98% of our membership is demanding that we fight for something different; not just the usual negotiation that we’ve been having. We told them from the beginning that members are feeling an existential threat, and that they need to take this seriously. And it just fell on deaf ears. They just didn’t seem to hear us when we were telling them about the plight of writers and how much has gone wrong, and that they need to fix it. And they just didn’t seem to listen.”
“The biggest problem we had in this negotiation was that the companies would not engage on a slew of core issues that affect the ability of a writer to maintain a career,” Goodman said. “So we’re far apart in that the companies would not engage with us on those topics, so in that sense, we were far apart. There were other areas of negotiations in which we were able to negotiate things, but the companies stonewalled us on very important issues. They would not talk about them.”
Issues that the WGA says the AMPTP was unwilling to discuss, the guild says, include minimum staffing, the establishment of viewer-based streaming residuals, the use of artificial intelligence, and full pension and health contributions for writing teams.
The AMPTP said in a statement tonight that “the primary sticking points are ‘mandatory staffing,’ and ‘duration of employment’ – guild proposals that would require a company to staff a show with a certain number of writers for a specified period of time, whether needed or not.”
See the WGA’s proposals and the AMPTP’s offers here.
The AMPTP also said that it is “willing to engage in discussions with the WGA in an effort to break this logjam,” but guild leaders called that “disingenuous.”
Asked if the guild is willing to continue discussions, Goodman said: “We’re willing to talk about the issues we raised, but they’re not willing to engage with us on those issues. So, when they say they’re willing to talk, they’re being disingenuous. They’re willing to have us hang out at the AMPTP, but they’re not willing to have a negotiation around our core proposals.”
RELATED: WGA Strike Explained: The Issues, The Stakes, Movies & TV Shows Affected — And How Long The 2023 Work Stoppage Might Last
Keyser agreed. “They said, ‘Yeah. If you drop everything you want to talk about, we’ll talk to you about the things we want to talk about.’”
“They literally said that,” Goodman said. “‘If you drop all these proposals, then we can talk about the rest.’ And we’re not gonna do that. We’re here to negotiate a deal. We made a bunch of opening proposals that the companies would not, under any circumstances, consider. They literally told us we had to drop them all. That’s not a negotiation.”
With regard to minimum staffing, Keyser said: “Yeah, they say that that’s one of the things they’re not going to do, and I know they highlighted it because they think that’s to their advantage, but the truth is, minimum staffing is only one proposal that’s part of a constellation of proposals in all of the areas that go to the question: Can writers have a stable, steady income across a year and across a career? We are looking at a world in which they are slowly eliminating the number of weeks we work; the number of writers who work those weeks, and not paying writers for the value they create. We can’t let that happen. They won’t talk to us about AI; they won’t talk to us about guaranteed weeks of work for comedy/variety writers; they won’t talk to us about the fact that the effect of pre-greenlight mini-rooms mean that writers work for very few weeks and then they get rid of most writers for the rest of the television show. They won’t talk about any of those things.
RELATED: Late-Night Shows To Shut Down Immediately After Writers Guild Strike Called
“They won’t talk about writers who work into production, because writing happens all the way through the process. They are entirely closed off about that. And we believe they’re closed off about that because it is their intention to slowly eliminate our weekly employment and make a very limited kind of freelance workforce in all sectors of the business. And we told them from the very beginning that that’s not gonna happen in this negotiation.”
Best of Deadline
WGA Strike Picket Line Locations List And Times Set For Los Angeles & New York - Update
WGA Strike Explained: The Issues, The Stakes, Movies & TV Shows Affected — And How Long The 2023 Work Stoppage Might Last
Viewership Transparency, A.I. Among Issues Dividing Writers and Hollywood Companies in Contract Talks
Story by Borys Kit • 1h ago
The Hollywood Reporter
Viewership-based residuals, artificial intelligence and minimum staffing for writers room are some of the issues that the Writers Guild of America wanted to tackle that went nowhere with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, according to a document laid out by the writers on Monday night.
The proposals, and the alleged response by the studios, came after the AMPTP and the WGA ended negotiations Monday evening without a deal, with the WGA then calling for a strike to begin Tuesday.
According to the document, revealing for the first time the exact nature of what the WGA was asking for, there was some movement on issues such as staff writer script fees and an increase in span cap, but other issues proved to be non-starters. (The Hollywood Reporter has asked the AMPTP for comment on their alleged responses as told in the document.)
For streaning projects, the WGA asked for viewership-based residuals, in addition to their existing fixed residuals, “to reward programs with greater viewership,” according to the document. This would require viewership transparency, something that streamers have proved to be unwilling to do, even to the stars of shows and movies themselves. The WGA said the AMPTP rejected the proposal and refused to make a counter.
Concerns about AI taking over writing also are alleged to have been glossed over by the studios. The WGA wanted to regulate the use of AI and wanted assurance that AI could not be used to write or rewrite literary material, nor could it be used as source material. The AMPTP rejected the guild’s proposals, countering by offering annual meetings to discuss advancements in technology, the WGA said.
The features side showed some give and take, but the sides were still far apart as of Monday night. The WGA wants movies with a budget of $12 million-plus to receive their theatrical terms. The movie companies countered that movies should be $40 million or more and were willing to make a 9 percent increase to initial compensation, although there was “no improvement in residuals” offered, the WGA said.
The guild also wanted a guaranteed second writing “step,” or point of payment, for feature deals, while the producers rejected that idea and instead said they were willing to have meeting for executives and producers to educate them on writers’ “free work concerns.”
“The studios are more focused on greed than keeping people working,” observed one writer-producer when reading the proposals.
On the television side, the WGA and AMPTP are far apart on the guild’s efforts to “preserve” writers’ rooms with a proposal for a minimum of six writers per room and that number growing as the episode order does with one additional staffer added for every two episodes with a maximum of 12 per room. The proposal would effectively eliminate auteurs looking to write each and every episode of a series without the benefit of a room. The studios rejected the WGA’s proposals and have refused to counter, the guild said.
One of the other central issues at stake in the negotiations is the proliferation of so-called “mini rooms” that feature a handful of writers breaking stories before a formal series order, which is not always a guarantee. The guild is looking for guarantees of 10 straight weeks of work that include sending writers to set. The latter used to be a no-brainer for broadcast, but has fallen out of favor with studios and streamers given the added costs of getting writers to set. Some showrunners, like former WGA negotiating committee member Shawn Ryan (Netflix’s The Night Agent) have successfully requested streamers send writers to set as they look to help train the next generation.
Heading into negotiations, many writers and lit agents were concerned with “span,” which is the time it takes to make scripted series. Span protections would ensure that writers are fairly compensated for programming that may take years to complete, a trend that has been increasingly common in the Peak TV era of lavish premium content. The guild is proposing a minimum staff guaranteed 10 consecutive weeks of work and that writers are allowed at least three weeks per episode and half of the minimum staff be employed through production and one writer employed through postproduction. The studios rejected the proposals and declined to counter.
“They’re very, very far apart,” one showrunner with multiple series spread across broadcast and streaming platforms told THR after reviewing the proposals.
The WGA said its proposals would gain writers an estimated $429 million per year with the AMPTP’s offer coming in at about $86 million annually, 48 percent of which is from the minimums (wage floor) increase. The WGA proposed minimum increases of 6 percent/5 percent/5 percent across the board over the course of the three-year contract, including residuals. The studios countered with 4 percent/3 percent/2 percent, including a one-time increase to residual bases of 2 percent or 2.5 percent.
There was some progress made over the course of the weeks of bargaining however, the WGA says: Tentative agreements include staff writers earning script fees in addition to their weekly salaries, an increase in span cap from $400,000 to $450,000 and extending those protections to writers on limited series. The guild also offered one free “promotional” airing for broadcast series.
In its own statement Monday night, the AMPTP said that sticking points in the negotiations included the WGA’s push for a minimum size of writers’ room and minimum duration of a writers’ room. These proposals “would require a company to staff a show with a certain number of writers for a specified period of time, whether needed or not,” the AMPTP said.
The Alliance added that it presented a “comprehensive package proposal” of compensation and streaming residuals increases on Sunday night, just one day before the expiration of the writers’ contract. “The AMPTP also indicated to the WGA that it is prepared to improve that offer, but was unwilling to do so because of the magnitude of other proposals still on the table that the Guild continues to insist upon,” the group said.
More from The Hollywood Reporter
WGA Spells Out Vast Differences That Led to StrikeYesterday
The Writers Guild of America has detailed the vast differences between writers and the studios that led to the first strike in 15 years, which will begin Tuesday.
In a lengthy document, the guild spelled out its proposal for a TV staffing minimum, which would range from six to 12 writers per show, based on the number of episodes. That proposal is a non-starter for the studios, which declined to make a counter-offer.
The guild also wants a guaranteed minimum number of weeks of employment per season, ranging from 10 weeks to 52 weeks. The studios likewise rejected that proposal and did not make a counter-offer.
In a statement on Tuesday night, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers called those the two “primary sticking points.” But the AMPTP said that it was willing to increase compensation and streaming residuals, and might have gone even farther than its last proposals, were it not for “the magnitude of other proposals still on the table that the Guild continues to insist upon.”
The guild also wants a streaming residual that would factor in the success of shows, but the studios rejected that offer. By the guild’s calculations, its proposals would cost $429 million per year. The guild said the studios’ counter-offers amounted to only $86 million per year.
The guild also wants regulation of artificial intelligence. According to the guild’s document, it is proposing that AI “can’t write or rewrite literary material,” and can’t be “used as source material.” Variety previously reported that the guild’s proposal was that AI material would not be “considered” as either literary or source material. The AMPTP agreed only to study the issue, according to the guild.
The guild is also proposing increases in minimums of 6%, 5% and 5%. The AMPTP is offering only 4%, 3% and 2%, according to the WGA.
The WGA is also seeking to create a new minimum tier for writer-producers. Under the current system, the minimum for everyone above staff writer is $7,412 per week. The guild wants everyone at the level of co-producer and above (producer, supervising producer, co-executive producer, etc.) to be have a minimum pay tier that is 25% higher than the tier for story editors and executive story editors. The AMPTP was willing to create a new tier, but with a minimum only 2-7% above the story editor level.
The WGA is also looking for a 25% premium for writers who work in a “pre-greenlight” writers room. The AMPTP was willing to give a 5% premium. The writers’ proposal also called for half of the minimum TV writing staff to be employed all the way through production, which would give writers producing experience. The AMPTP rejected that proposal and did not counter, according to the guild.
The document did spell out a few limited areas of agreement, including increasing the “span cap” from $400,000 per year to $450,000. Writers who earn less than that amount would be guaranteed that their episodic rate would cover no more than 2.4 weeks of work. The AMPTP also tentatively agreed to allow staff writers — the entry level in TV writing — to get script fees, which they do not currently get.
“Here is what all writers know: the companies have broken this business,” the guild leadership told members Monday night. “They have taken so much from the very people, the writers, who have made them wealthy. But what they cannot take from us is each other, our solidarity, our mutual commitment to save ourselves and this profession that we love. We had hoped to do this through reasonable conversation. Now we will do it through struggle. For the sake of our present and our future, we have been given no other choice.”
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Hollywood writers to go on strike, bringing production on many television shows to a halt
Story by Chris Isidore • Yesterday
More than 11,000 members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) are set to go on strike Tuesday morning for the first time since 2007, a move that could bring an immediate halt to the production of many television shows and possibly delay the start of new seasons of others later this year.
“Though we negotiated intent on making a fair deal … the studios’ responses to our proposals have been wholly insufficient, given the existential crisis writers are facing,” said a statement from the union leadership.
“They have closed the door on their labor force and opened the door to writing as an entirely freelance profession. No such deal could ever be contemplated by this membership.”
While union members would be on strike as of 3 am EDT Tuesday, the WGA tweeted that it would not set up picket lines until Tuesday afternoon.
The studios, which disclosed that the talks ended late Monday just hours before the strike deadline without an agreement, responded by saying it was willing to improve on its offer but was not willing to meet some of the union’s demands.
“The primary sticking points are ‘mandatory staffing,’ and ‘duration of employment’ — Guild proposals that would require a company to staff a show with a certain number of writers for a specified period of time, whether needed or not,” said the statement from management’s negotiating committee.
“Member companies remain united in their desire to reach a deal that is mutually beneficial to writers and the health and longevity of the industry, and to avoid hardship to the thousands of employees who depend upon the industry for their livelihoods.”
The distance between the two sides suggested this could be the start of a long strike. The last strike that started in November 2007 stretched 100 days into February of 2008.
Many shows on cable and broadcast networks have already filmed their final episodes for the current season, but viewers could see an impact with late night shows, daytime soap operas and shows such as “Saturday Night Live,” which could have early ends to their seasons.
Show host Seth Meyers, who was on the picket line as a writer at SNL during the last strike, prepared his viewers that Late Night with Seth Meyers won’t be on the air if there is a strike. Other shows likely to be immediately impacted did not immediately respond to requests for comments about their plans.
Financial pressure
The strike comes at a time when both sides say they are feeling financial pain.
Many of the media and tech companies producing shows that use the writers have seen drops in their stock price, prompting deep cost cutting, including layoffs.
Management’s side of negotiations is represented by the Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers (AMPTP), which represents Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), CBS (VIAC), Disney (DIS), NBC Universal, Netflix (NFLX), Paramount Global, Sony (SNE) and CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery.
But the writers, many of whom can’t support themselves with writing alone, are suffering from reduced job opportunities and the loss of some sources of income due to an industry shift from traditional broadcast and cable programming to streaming services.
While not all members of the WGA are currently working, the strike could soon idle thousands of other workers on the sets of shows and movies. The strike could have widespread implications for the industry, and for the economies of Southern California and some other locations, such as New York City.
There could be as many as 20,000 people working on as many as 600 productions who could be out of work if the writers shutdown production, according to an estimate from AMPTP.
Rise of streaming
The 2007 strike caused an estimated $2 billion in economic damage, mostly in Southern California. Adjusted for inflation, that comes to nearly $3 billion today. The industry has changed radically in the 15 years since the last strike ended.
Those changes have accelerated since the last round of negotiations in 2020 in the early weeks of the pandemic. The rise of streaming services changed the way audiences consume both television shows and movies, and studios adjusted their business models in an attempt to respond.
Writers have traditionally gotten residuals when a show they wrote is sold to run again in syndication or on basic cable. It’s been an important source of income for many writers over the years. But they’re unlikely to get meaningful residuals, if any at all, when they create original content for streaming services as contracts stand today.
With streaming services poised to become the future of television entertainment, the Guild was fighting in these negotiations for some kind of ongoing compensation from streaming services.
The hunger for content by those streaming service also means that it might not take as long for the strike to start to impact production schedules. Typically broadcast shows due to air with the start of the fall season would be on hiatus for the next couple of months. But productions take place on a more year-round basis today than in the past.
Although many streaming services are not yet profitable, they provide the studios with a source of income from subscribers’ monthly fees, making them less dependent on advertising revenue that might be lost from the need to air reruns on broadcast or cable channels.
Streaming services also have a massive stockpile of older content that could keep their customers satisfied, at least temporarily, while they await new shows.
CNN.com
Hollywood writers, slamming 'gig economy,' to go on strike
NEW YORK (AP) — Television and movie writers declared late Monday that they will launch a strike for the first time in 15 years, as Hollywood girded for a walkout with potentially widespread ramifications in a fight over fair pay in the streaming era.
The Writers Guild of America said that its 11,500 unionized screenwriters will head to the picket lines on Tuesday. Negotiations between studios and the writers, which began in March, failed to reach a new contract before the writers’ current deal expired just after midnight, at 12:01 a.m. PDT Tuesday. All script writing is to immediately cease, the guild informed its members.
The board of directors for the WGA, which includes both a West and an East branch, voted unanimously to call for a strike, effective at the stroke of midnight. Writers, they said, are facing an “existential crisis.”
“The companies’ behavior has created a gig economy inside a union workforce, and their immovable stance in this negotiation has betrayed a commitment to further devaluing the profession of writing,” the WGA said in a statement. “From their refusal to guarantee any level of weekly employment in episodic television, to the creation of a ‘day rate’ in comedy variety, to their stonewalling on free work for screenwriters and on AI for all writers, they have closed the door on their labor force and opened the door to writing as an entirely freelance profession. No such deal could ever be contemplated by this membership.”
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the trade association that bargains on behalf of studios and production companies, signaled late Monday that negotiations fell short of an agreement before the current contract expired. The AMPTP said it presented an offer with “generous increases in compensation for writers as well as improvements in streaming residuals.”
In a statement, the AMPTP said that it was prepared to improve its offer “but was unwilling to do so because of the magnitude of other proposals still on the table that the guild continues to insist upon."
The labor dispute could have a cascading effect on TV and film productions depending on how long the strike persists. But a shutdown has been widely forecast for months due to the scope of the discord. The writers last month voted overwhelming to authorize a strike, with 98% of membership in support.
At issue is how writers are compensated in an industry where streaming has changed the rules of Hollywood economics. Writers say they aren’t being paid enough, TV writer rooms have shrunk too much and the old calculus for how residuals are paid out needs to be redrawn.
“The survival of our profession is at stake,” the guild has said.
Streaming has exploded the number of series and films that are annually made, meaning more jobs for writers. But WGA members say they’re making much less money and working under more strained conditions. Showrunners on streaming series receive just 46% of the pay that showrunners on broadcast series receive, the WGA claims. Content is booming, but pay is down.
The guild is seeking more compensation on the front-end of deals. Many of the back-end payments writers have historically profited by – like syndication and international licensing – have been largely phased out by the onset of streaming. More writers — roughly half — are being paid minimum rates, an increase of 16% over the last decade. The use of so-called mini-writers rooms has soared.
Related video: Hollywood TV, film writers get closer to strike
(KTLA-TV Los Angeles) Duration 2:23 View on Watch
The AMPTP said Monday that the primary sticking points to a deal revolved around those mini-rooms — the guild is seeking a minimum number of scribes per writer room — and duration of employment restrictions. The guild has said more flexibility for writers is needed when they’re contracted for series that have tended to be more limited and short-lived than the once-standard 20-plus episode broadcast season.
At the same time, studios are under increased pressure from Wall Street to turn a profit with their streaming services. Many studios and production companies are slashing spending. The Walt Disney Co. is eliminating 7,000 jobs. Warner Bros. Discovery is cutting costs to lessen its debt. Netflix has pumped the breaks on spending growth.
When Hollywood writers have gone on strike, it’s often been lengthy. In 1988, a WGA strike lasted 153 days. The last WGA strike went for 100 days, beginning in 2007 and ending in 2008.
The most immediate effect of the strike viewers are likely to notice will be on late-night shows and “Saturday Night Live.” All are expected to immediately go dark. During the 2007 strike, late-night hosts eventually returned to the air and improvised material. Jay Leno wrote his own monologues, a move that angered union leadership.
On Friday’s episode of “Late Night,” Seth Meyers, a WGA member who said he supported the union’s demands, prepared viewers for re-runs while lamenting the hardship a strike entails.
“It doesn’t just affect the writers, it affects all the incredible non-writing staff on these shows,” Meyers said. “And it would really be a miserable thing for people to have to go through, especially considering we’re on the heels of that awful pandemic that affected, not just show business, but all of us.”
Scripted series and films will take longer to be affected. But if a strike persisted through the summer, fall schedules could be upended. And in the meantime, not having writers available for rewrites can have a dramatic effect on quality. The James Bond film “Quantum of Solace” was one of many films rushed into production during the 2007-2008 strike with what Daniel Craig called “the bare bones of a script.”
“Then there was a writers’ strike and there was nothing we could do,” Craig later recounted. “We couldn’t employ a writer to finish it. I say to myself, ‘Never again’, but who knows? There was me trying to rewrite scenes — and a writer I am not.”
With a walkout long expected, writers have rushed to get scripts in and studios have sought to prepare their pipelines to keep churning out content for at least the short term.
“We’re assuming the worst from a business perspective,” David Zaslav, chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery, said last month. “We’ve got ourselves ready. We’ve had a lot of content that’s been produced.”
Overseas series could also fill some of the void. “If there is one, we have a large base of upcoming shows and films from around the world,” said Ted Sarandos, Netflix co-chief executive, on the company’s earnings call in April.
Yet the WGA strike may only be the beginning. Contracts for both the Directors Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA, the actors union, expire in June. Some of the same issues around the business model of streaming will factor into those bargaining sessions. The DGA is set to begin negotiations with AMPTP on May 10.
The cost of the WGA’s last strike cost Southern California $2.1 billion, according to the Milken Institute. How painful this strike is remains to be seen. But as of late Monday evening, laptops were being closed shut all over Hollywood.
“Pencils down,” said “Halt and Catch Fire” showrunner and co-creator Christopher Cantwell on Twitter shortly after the strike announcement. “Don’t even type in the document.” ___
Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP
Jake Coyle, The Associated Press
