The WGA sent out a note Monday: “The WGA and AMPTP now have a confirmed schedule to bargain this week, starting on Wednesday. You might not hear from us in the coming days while we are negotiating, but know that our focus is getting a fair deal for writers as soon as possible. We’ll reach out again when there is something of significance to report. In the meantime, please continue to demonstrate your commitment and unity by coming out to the picket lines – for yourselves and fellow writers, SAG-AFTRA, other unions’ members, and all those in our community who are impacted by the strikes,” the guild noted.
As Drew Barrymore digs herself into a deeper hole regarding the return of her daytime talk show, lost in the debate is a conversation about the peculiar nature of syndicated TV.
Picket signs have lined the gates of Hollywood’s studios for nearly five months, as the industry’s writers and actors rally for AI protections, better wages and a cut of streaming profits. The problem is streaming isn’t yet profitable for many studios. While many of Hollywood’s biggest studios are publicly traded and must share quarterly financial reports, there are no rules about providing streaming-viewership data. This lack of transparency has made recent contract negotiations between studios and the industry’s writers and actors especially contentious.
In a normal year — if there is any such thing in Hollywood anymore — the 75th Emmy Awards ceremony would be Monday night, and the many nominees from shows like Succession and Ted Lasso would be claiming their trophies or happily clapping for the winners. Instead, the actors and writers strikes brought a postponement until January. Here’s a look at what’s happening, and what may happen, with the awards that have been thrown off course.
The Jennifer Hudson Show is following The Drew Barrymore Show and The Talk in delaying its upcoming season while the writers remain on strike. A source close to the production confirms to Deadline that after much discussion, and at Hudson’s urging, The Jennifer Hudson Show is pausing production and its season two premiere, which was slated for Monday, Sept. 18.
Drew Barrymore, who drew criticism for taping new episodes of her daytime talk show despite the ongoing writers and actors strikes, now says she’ll wait until the labor issues are resolved. Hours later CBS’s The Talk did the same.
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“I won’t polish this with bells and whistles and publicists and corporate rhetoric. I’ll just stand out there and accept and be responsible,” the “Drew Barrymore Show” host says.
During the double strike, a studio bargaining coalition run by lawyers and located in a suburban shopping mall has been portrayed by the unions as a James Bond villain set on breaking their solidarity. Here’s a peek behind the curtain.
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the industry’s studios, streaming services and production companies in union negotiations, said in a statement Thursday that it had reached out to the Writers Guild of America on Wednesday and the two sides agreed to resume negotiations next week.
Top showrunners including Kenya Barris and Sam Esmail have sought to connect with the negotiators while downplaying any notions of disunity.
“The National Book Awards is an evening dedicated to celebrating the power of literature, and the incomparable contributions of writers to our culture,” the National Book Foundation, which presents the award, said in a statement Tuesday. “In light of the announcement that The Drew Barrymore Show will resume production, the National Book Foundation has rescinded Ms. Barrymore’s invitation to host the 74th National Book Awards Ceremony.”
At An Industry Tipping Point, The Art Of Negotiating Will Be Key
The Hollywood strike negotiations and the carriage dispute issues currently roiling the media industry are clearly intertwined. How the studios and networks negotiate through both will determine the future of news and entertainment.
CBS Studios and NBCUniversal’s Universal Studio Group have suspended a new round of overall deals due to the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike.
The two daytime shows are Writers Guild signatories and would follow The Drew Barrymore Show in returning to production.
On Monday, two audience members were removed from a taping of the CBS show as the WGA strike continues.
Ken Jennings will be hosting Jeopardy as it returns for its 40th season. The show returns today, Sept. 11, as part of a “changed” season 40, per exec producer Michael Davies. There had been confusion as to whether Jennings would host solo or whether Mayim Bialik, who has co-hosted the show, would return given the fact that SAG-AFTRA is on strike.
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers said Friday night that the studios remain aligned, and pushed the Writers Guild of America to respond to its latest offer. The AMPTP was responding to the WGA’s call earlier in the day for one or more of the member companies to break away from the alliance and negotiate a separate deal. The WGA suggested that some of the legacy studios may be willing to accommodate the writers’ demands.
The actress says the fourth season of the show will abide by the rules of the writers and actors strikes in not promoting struck work. However, the WGA argues that The Drew Barrymore Show is a struck show and it plans to picket outside its studios this week.
Top TV producer Ryan Murphy is launching the Ryan Murphy Productions Assistance Fund “to support the exceptional casts and committed crews” of the company’s shows who have been impacted by the ongoing writers and actors strikes. The fund is starting with $500,000.
Friends co-creator Marta Kauffman, actors Paul McCrane (ER) and Paul Scheer (The League), among others, will partner with The Union Solidarity Coalition for a live fundraising event next month to benefit TV and film crew members financially affected by the current work stoppage.
The WGA surprised Universal Studios by turning up Thursday evening to the opening of its annual Halloween Horror Nights event in the Valley. A group of writers, thought to be around 50 of them, turned up to the entrance of the NBCUniversal-owned theme park to leaflet as thousands of customers were streaming in to get their fill of frights. The plan is to hand out around 5,000 flyers to give horror fans an idea of why they’re striking.
Two challengers in the SAG-AFTRA election are urging the union to bring in an outside mediator to help resolve the actors strike, which has gone on for nearly two months. Maya Gilbert-Dunbar, who is running against Fran Drescher for president of the union, argued that guild leadership has been too passive, and needs to show more urgency in restarting talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. “Chain your asses up to the damn door of the Sherman Oaks building to show how serious you are,” Gilbert-Dunbar said. “People’s can’t afford this. Strikes were never meant to last months and months. An effective strike should be short and sweet.”
WBD’s David Zaslav Says Industry Must Focus And Fight To Resolve Strikes As They Spill Into The Fall
David Zaslav said today that Warner Bros. Discovery had anticipated putting Hollywood strikes in the rear-view mirror this month, but with no end in sight, he added that “we” would “fight” to find a resolution. “I was in L.A. the last two days, and we really have to focus as industry — and we are trying — to get this resolved in a way that is really fair and everyone feels fairly treated,” he told investors at a Goldman Sachs media conference. “In our guidance, we said that this would be resolved in September. And here we are in September. And this is really a very unusual event to have. The last time it happened was 1960. And so what we did is, we just said we are really going to fight to get this resolved.”
The Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA will rally on Thursday at Amazon Studio in Culver City to highlight their push a bill that would provide unemployment insurance to striking workers in California. Striking writers and actors in New York and New Jersey are already eligible to receive unemployment benefits after 14 days on the picket line, but not in California.
Amid an ongoing strike, the Writers Guild of America East begins voting today on its new council members, including the successor for longtime president Michael Winship. With the strike environment generating solidarity across the WGAE and its WGA West counterpart, it would seem that the election would be a straightforward affair with WGAE members on the same page about what they want from their guild. However, this election comes not much more than a year after the guild reached a compromise to address the WGA East’s rapid growth in recent years by creating three “work sectors” for membership: Film/TV/Streaming, Broadcast/Cable/Streaming News and Online Media.
Skydance Media CEO David Ellison called the creative process a “community” where “both sides of this disagreement actually need one another to move forward. So, my hope is that we can find a path to compromise so that everybody can get back to work and we can position ourselves for success going forward.”
Whoopi Goldberg was absent from the Season 27 premiere episode of The View today due to yet another case of Covid, though many usual viewers throughout the country will miss the show too: The View did not air today in markets impacted by the ongoing clash between Disney and Spectrum. In New York City, for example, where the daytime series originates, viewers attempting to tune into the show were greeted with the same Spectrum message that’s been on the ABC affiliate channel all weekend: “The Walt Disney Company, owner of this channel, has removed their programming from Spectrum,” the message begins. “We offered Disney a fair deal, and yet they continue to demand an excessive increase.”
The tired familiarity of the reality-heavy network schedules is a reminder of the issues that led to the work stoppages.
The financial impact of ongoing actors and writers strikes has a number on it now, or one at least, as Warner Bros. Discovery said today it’s looking at a hit of $300 million to $500 million in adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) for 2023 due to the work stoppages.
Negotiating committee co-chair Chris Keyser says the union does not “begrudge the companies their success or deny their struggles” and that “we all must succeed together.”
The writers strike reached the four-month mark on Saturday, and as Hot Labor Summer moves to autumn, there is still no sign that it will be over any time soon. The Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers have not talked in two weeks. Both maintain that the ball is in the other’s court.
The disclosure was revealed in the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest employment report.
New York City filming permits declined 53% year over year in August, which marked the first full month of the year during which both the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild/American Federation of Television and Radio Artists were on strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
In a leaked email that has been shared widely in the creative community, Linda Montanti, chair of the guild’s Western AD/UPM Council, urged a bloc of DGA voters to not support the board candidacies of a number of multihyphenates who are members of both the DGA and WGA — some of whom have been outspoken about strike issues. The list includes writer-producer Boots Riley, Oscar-winning CODA writer-director Sian Heder, actor-filmmaker Justine Bateman, actor-writer Paul Scheer and Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin. The unorthodox move prompted DGA president Lesli Linka Glatter to contact the members affected to assure them that Montanti’s move was not condoned by top DGA leaders.
