The NewsGuild-CWA is asking President Biden to urge the FCC to block the purchase of Tegna TV stations by investment fund Standard General and Apollo Global Management. The guild, the nation’s largest union representing journalists, told the President in an open letter circulated widely Thursday (June 2) that the deal “would kill journalism jobs, undermine local news and raise prices for American families.”
The Vox Media Union’s contract expires at midnight on June 13. The union is seeking cost-of-living raises and affordable benefits.
Some 260 WGA members employed at CBS News have voted overwhelmingly to ratify a new three-year contract. The new agreement, which was approved by 89% of those who voted, the guild said Monday, covers WGA East and WGA West members who work as news writers, producers, graphic artists, desk associates and others at the network’s news operations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington.
It appears that two can play at the game of six-figure ad campaigns targeted at FCC nominees — in this case, the nomination of Gigi Sohn to fill the vacant Democratic (majority) seat. A week after a group called The One Country Project (OCP) said it had launched a six-figure ad campaign meant to keep Sohn off the commission, the Communications Workers of America Monday (April 25) said it had launched a six-figure campaign to make sure she did get the seat.
Exclusives
SAG-AFTRA said Tuesday night that it has reached a tentative agreement for a new set of commercials contracts with the Joint Policy Committee of the advertising industry. The deal, whose terms were not disclosed, now goes to the union’s national board for review and approval.
With their commercials contracts set to expire Thursday night, SAG-AFTRA and the advertising industry’s Joint Policy Committee agreed to extend them on a day-to-day basis to allow negotiations to continue. “During this time,” the union said, “all terms and conditions of the 2019 Commercials Contracts — including all waivers and provisions that might otherwise sunset — are extended. The parties will continue to negotiate, remaining under a media blackout.” The negotiations, which got underway Feb. 16 in New York, cover numerous contracts that generate about $1 billion a year in earnings for the union’s members.
Members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees who work for Fox-owned WNYW New York and WTTG Washington say they are feeling the pinch of the drawn out negotiations for a new bargaining agreement.
Actors’ Equity and SAG-AFTRA’s agreement clears the way for more entertainment during the pandemic winter.
The deal includes mandatory and comprehensive use of personal protective gear and testing of cast and crew members, and a dedicated coronavirus supervisor to oversee it all. It requires the use of a “zone system” that strictly limits interactions between people on sets based on their job’s requirements.
Amid a notable rift between competing factions within the union, SAG-AFTRA members ratified its new three-year TV/theatrical deal with producers as voting ended on July 22.
Performers’ union SAG-AFTRA and major motion picture and television studios have reached agreement on a new three year TV/theatrical deal, the parties announced Thursday, capping six weeks of bargaining via videoconference.
SAG-AFTRA announced Thursday that Jonathan E. Fielding, MD, MPH, MPA has joined SAG-AFTRA’s team of specialists advising the union in developing and implementing new safety protocols for preventing the spread […]
Performers union SAG-AFTRA and major motion picture and television studios will commence bargaining on Monday ahead of a June 30 contract extension, the union and studio alliance said Friday in unexpected news.
The union representing sports broadcast technicians is launching ads on cable TV as it ratchets up a fight with regional sports network owner Sinclair.
The Directors Guild and management’s AMPTP will begin negotiations for a new TV and film contract on Feb. 10, making the DGA the first guild — as it has been in the last two bargaining cycles — to sit down with the companies, and thus setting the pattern of bargaining in which the AMPTP will expect the WGA and SAG-AFTRA to follow.
The Writers Guild of America’s demand for more streaming residuals from the studios could set the stage for the first industrywide strike in more than a decade. And it’s not just that writers are in a fighting mood after feuding with the agencies for more than nine months: there’s big money at stake – and not just from the ever-growing streaming market, but also from what the guild says are “hundreds of millions of dollars” that will be going into the pockets of the studios if it prevails in its lawsuit and packaging fees are eliminated.
A wave of union-organizing has swept over the digital media industry over the past three years. One by one, journalists employed by the once-scrappy start-ups and venture-capital darlings of the Internet have banded together to negotiate collectively.
Writers and editors at Slate have voted nearly unanimously to green-light a strike, escalating tensions between the digital publication and its newly unionized employees. Slate’s editorial employees authorized the potential strike by a vote of 52 to 1, according to a spokesman for the Writers Guild of America – East, and are now weighing when they may walk off the job.
After years of painful, protracted decline, the Los Angeles Times has recently descended into chaos: There have been three editors-in-chief in less than six months; the publisher has been put on leave for prior sexual harassment allegations; and the newly unionized staff already fears that the owner is trying to bust up their union. Mistrust is high, morale low. The ultimate fate of the paper is an open question in the newsroom.
Jim Kirk, the former publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times, will take over as editor in chief. He will replace Lewis D’Vorkin, whose tenure roiled the newsroom.
The newsroom employees of the Los Angeles Times have voted to form a union for the first time amid growing turmoil at the storied paper. The National Labor Relations Board counted the ballots in downtown Los Angeles; the final vote count, according to the union and supporters and observers who were in the room and tweeting during the vote, was 248-44.
