STRIKE!

[PGage]

As expected, WGA went on strike at 1 minute after Midnight this morning. Could be weeks, but probably months, as most studios will not mind saving on productions costs for three months or so.

As someone who was on Strike with pay (or any kind of help from a strike fund) for two months last summer, my sympathies are with the Writers, and all those ancillary workers in the blast radius. As important as the issues are, as inspirational as the solidarity with coworkers is, strikes such.

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“A festering dispute over how writers are compensated in the streaming era came to a head Monday night, as leaders of the Writers Guild of America called on their members to stage Hollywood’s first strike in 15 years.

The boards of directors for the East and West Coast divisions of the WGA voted unanimously to call a strike effective 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, the union said in a statement.

Thousands of WGA members were set to walk picket lines across Los Angeles, New York and other cities Tuesday after the union was unable to reach a last-minute accord with the major studios on a new three-year contract to replace one that expired Monday night….”

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2023-05-01/hollywood-writers-strike-after-talks-over-pay-conditions-in-streaming-age-fail

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[Mark Jeffries]

Which means late night is pretty much down.  Both Meyers and Colbert made statements of support of their writers (in the case of Colbert, doing a photo of his writers like those presidential candidate montages he does, with him popping in the one spot on the screen where he could).  Meyers and Colbert are WGA members and I assume that the Jimmys made similar statements and are also WGA members.  Dulce Sloan did not mention the strike at all on "TDS", which would lead me to think that they are with Stewart long gone a non-union shop and will be on tonight--and that the Paramount channels (including CBS) will all be running "THE ONLY NEW SHOW IN LATE NIGHT!" promos for "TDS."  It's safe to say that Maher and Oliver will either be in reruns this weekend or off the air and no "SNL."

Also, even though "The View" and "The Talk" have WGA writers, they don't do comedy routines, so they'll carry on with producers writing the segment intros.  Same with Drew, Kelly and Jennifer Hudson, who I believe tape one week behind the air date.

Mark Jeffries
spotl...@gmail.com

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[Bob Jersey]

The expected letters to showrunners, even those that are also WGA, expecting them to report to work for their other duties, went out from D!sney, HBO/Max, and CBS...
https://deadline.com/2023/05/writers-strike-disney-hbo-showrunners-letter-other-studios-wga-1235357794/ (link)
B

PGage, May 2nd, in part:

[PGage]

This is a good example of why regular people hate corporations and their minions. One might think capitalism would incentivize them to act in their own self-interest, but it doesn’t. What is best for HBO and Disney is to tell their Show Runners to stand as much as possible with their writing staffs during the strike, keep cohesion and morale good, and come back as a solid team when the Strike is over. There are ways to get them to do legit non-Union work, and the corporation ps would benefit from giving the benefit of the doubt in gray areas to the Union. But capitalism incentivizes shitty behavior, not self-interested behavior. Corporations typically assume that the more shitty and punitive they are to workers, the more workers will be afraid to stand up to them in the future. They would rather weaken current creative teams to increase their leverage down the road, and will act that way even when past experience shows it does not really increase leverage as much as it increases cynicism and lack of commitment by workers.

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[Tom Wolper]

The problem is that TV and movies are part of larger corporations and corporate CEOs aren’t interested in more than the bottom line. They’re held accountable to shareholders and institutional investors and all they care about is increased revenue while costs are being kept down.

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