WGA Members Vote Overwhelmingly To Authorize A Strike If No Deal By May 1

[ap215]

WGA Members Vote Overwhelmingly To Authorize A Strike If No Deal By May 1

WGA members have voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike. The vote, which was approved by nearly 98% of the eligible voting members, authorizes the WGA West Board and the WGA East Council to call a strike if a fair deal for a new film and TV contract isn’t reached by May 1, when the current pact expires.

The two sides are set to resume negotiations at 2 p.m. PT today.

https://deadline.com/2023/04/hollywood- ... 235328438/

[ZoWie]

Writers' strikes are always a sight to behold. The IA always chickens out, but the WGA means business, and if it's time to walk, they will do just that.

Last time came when I was still trying to peddle scripts, and even if you weren't in the WGA west, you were forbidden from pitching or even writing for the duration. Dunno how they expected to police the thousands of people in This Town who sit at keyboards and bang out what they think is the next Citizen Kane, but that was the orders and I obeyed.

Last time it really messed up TV. They have a much shorter turnaround than features, and they ran out of scripts pretty fast.

[ZoWie]

Midnight eastern tonight. Tick... tick... tick...

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/ ... line-looms

Artificial intelligence is another issue at the bargaining table. The WGA wants safeguards to prevent studios from using AI to generate new scripts from writers’ previous work. Writers also want to ensure they are not asked to rewrite draft scripts created by AI.

It's time to restore human values in an industry that loses sight of same if it's not jarred into reality every generation. Out, out now, shut it down.

[Libertas]

Midnight eastern tonight. Tick... tick... tick...

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/ ... line-looms



It's time to restore human values in an industry that loses sight of same if it's not jarred into reality every generation. Out, out now, shut it down.

Hope they can get what they deserve.

I also wish someone could fix the issue of them having to leave LA to film everything. I am sure the blame is on unions and taxes. Fuck that, they make tons of money, right?

Or do they, these days given how spread out the content is and how few people watch anything? What do you think?

BTW my grandson actor is in

https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisu ... ime-video/

https://youtu.be/O0JG6V-12ac

small recurring role

Says half of writers work at minimum salary, how much is that?

[ZoWie]

Runaway production is a complex matter. There is the fact that many states offer all kinds of financial incentives to attract productions. Matching these in LA would constitute a huge concession that no one wants on top of the other problems common to all honest labor, such as inflation, consolidation, and offshoring.

There is the fact that certain locations in LA, along with the few surviving back lots, have been "shot to death" and it takes audiences out of the story to see them again. There is the fact that a lot of union rules cease to be as strictly enforced once you go outside the "studio zone" which at least used to be a 32-mile radius of the Producers' Guild office in WeHo. This, of course, makes it more attractive to shoot anywhere but LA.

The problem of writer's pay is a complex one. Screenplays can still command big bucks, though most of the time they get optioned by one producer who then doesn't do anything with them, at which point they go into turnaround and it's time to make another deal somewhere else that can also go nowhere. But that's features, and features are an ever more tiny segment of the business. It's all going to streaming, one way or another, with one huge distribution machine with several different platforms for viewing. Movie theaters still have big screens and candy counters where the real profit is made, but far as distribution goes it looks more like the way TV gets distributed every year.

Increasingly, writing is less the "we'll do lunch" type of free lancing one associates with the LA writing scene, and more like just plain old work on contracts or even wages. Indeed, most TV writers make a fraction of what they used to. Minimum salary is indeed common, though it's union scale and still more than you'd make in a restaurant. It's a real grind, the bottomless maw, eating up writing as fast as it's humanly possible to crank it out. Residuals are a good deal, but it's a deal that's becoming harder to get. There are also various ways to reduce these, to the point where you're still basically a wage slave making rock bottom.

That's the present. The future, at the moment, looks even more dire. It starts to look increasingly like AI and CGI doing a lot of what live production does now. Anyone who understands the technology is getting a bit nervous about whether or not there will even be live production in 20 years, or whether it'll be all AI scripts illustrated with CGI and actors renting out the rights to their likenesses and voices. Then you add in all the current problems such as ever longer hours for ever less money (in inflation corrected dollars) and it becomes a question of why anyone would want to stay in the business at all. It's becoming ever less about craft and ever more like an automated assembly line operated by underpaid overworked wage slaves.

In other words, it's everything that's wrong with American business, only with a few celebrities who can command big bucks, so they get all the attention.

[Libertas]

Thanks, was just reading the father of AI is protesting that dark days are ahead with all that.

I assumed we would be watching cgi actors on top of cgi backgrounds in a few years anyway. Oh well, not really important right now in the big picture given the GOP with the help of board cons is going to destroy the world economy, to get their way. It will be an act of violence against myself and everyone else, I hope people understand how bad this is going to be.

The disgusting PIG FUCK SO CALLED freedom caucus and maga who are doing this would NEVER do it if they didnt have the support of cons including BOARD CONS, which they do.

[ZoWie]

It's official. Deadline came and went. WGAw just walked, first time in 15 years. With the current huge demand for product, it shouldn't take long for this to really disrupt TV and streaming.

SAG-AFTRA and DGA are in solidarity.

The strike 15 years ago lasted 100 days and made a huge mess out of the industry. I remember it well. Those were not good times.

[Libertas]

It's official. Deadline came and went. WGAw just walked, first time in 15 years. With the current huge demand for product, it shouldn't take long for this to really disrupt TV and streaming.

SAG-AFTRA and DGA are in solidarity.

The strike 15 years ago lasted 100 days and made a huge mess out of the industry. I remember it well. Those were not good times.

I am curious how much is greed a part of why the studios or producers wont pay more. I have always been confused who pays who. Chuck Loree pay Jim Parsons or CBS, etc.

[ZoWie]

Join the club, it gets complicated, and it is mostly contract work though on TV series you will find salaried positions. TV series used to be the Holy Grail because the steady work and then possible residuals were a guarantee of security you just don't get as a free lancer. Plus the medical plan is a good one, but you have to be doing some minimal amount of work in the business to qualify.

I've kind of lost touch since cell phones and streaming ruined the business, but my understanding is that it's more like working in a factory now, and the pay has definitely gone down for just about everyone. Landing a TV series gig used to be an instant ticket into the upper middle class, but not any more. Everyone bitches about the 24/7/52 work and inflation wiping out the pay, while the scales don't keep up with it.

Add this constant trumpeting of AI changing human life on Earth forever, and not for the better either, and you have a very nervous situation.

I think I'm getting an insight into what the Reformation must have felt like, not to mention why suddenly we're all shooting each other. There's just nothing for people to hold onto.

[Libertas]

Who paid Jim Parsons in "Big Bang Theory" for example for acting? Who paid the writers?

Lorre and his production company or CBS or who?

[gounion]

https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop ... -rcna82236

Here's what it's all about. As always, the corporations are trying to get people to do more work for less money. They wouldn't be making a dime if it weren't for the unions. Solidarity!

WGA members are seeking pay increases and structural changes to a business model that they say has made it increasingly difficult to make a living. In recent years, amid the explosion of streaming platforms such as Netflix and Disney+, median writer-producer pay has declined 4%, or 23% when adjusted for inflation, according to WGA statistics.

“The companies have used the transition to streaming to cut writer pay and separate writing from production, worsening working conditions for series writers at all levels,” the WGA said in a bulletin March 14 titled “Writers Are Not Keeping Up.”

The guild added that more writers are “working at minimum regardless of experience.” In contrast, salaries for top entertainment executives have ballooned in recent years.

In a video message published April 11, comedy writer and producer Danielle Sanchez-Witzel (“The Carmichael Show”), a member of the WGA’s negotiating committee, said “this is not an ordinary negotiating cycle,” adding, “We’re fighting for writers’ economic survival and the stability of our profession.”

The writers in the union are particularly frustrated that streaming-era shows run for fewer episodes than their broadcast counterparts, making it tough to maintain a consistent income. In addition, residual fees — money paid when a show is put into syndication or aired overseas — have all but disappeared as more content is hosted exclusively on streaming platforms.

The WGA went on strike in 2007, and they did a hell of a job. They had a great YouTube page, and did a fantastic video explaining "why we strike". It was one of the most inventive and creative strikes I've ever seen, and I stole a BUNCH of ideas from them! I'm sure we'll see more of the same.

I have a great friend I worked with who is a member of SAG/AFTRA, and was originally a news anchor. She retired early from my union a year ago, and is doing movie and commercial work doing small roles, walk-ons and even extra work, as well as some documentary work. She's very talented and creative.

[ZoWie]

The last writers' strike came at a transition time for the whole entertainment industry. The big corporations had bought up the studios and started calling them the "filmed entertainment divisions." You have to remember that at the time they were still shooting sitcoms, let alone 60-minute action/adventure shows and movies/movies of the week (remember those?) with multiple film cameras, usually Panaflexes. There was an influx of "experts" who wanted to run a creative undertaking the same way they ran steel mills (and those were closing all over the country, so it wasn't even working in heavy industry).

The IA chickened out, just like it did last year, but everyone else walked. Not at the same time, so there were years of strikes. Studio secretaries walked out, and everyone became aware of how important they were. Etc. Finally the writers struck, for good reason, and it was a popular strike even when it lasted 100 days and essentially stopped the TV industry dead in the water. Just when it looked as if there would be no TV season at all, they settled. TV opened 6 months late and eventually everyone was working again.

That agreement held up until this year. IA threatened to strike over the inhuman hours that modern production demands from everyone, but as usual their bark was exponentially worse than their bite. The writers had walked before, and nothing looks more weird than writers on a picket line, but so it goes. We're in another dark age, and someone's gotta say ENOUGH.

A lot of people had considerable financial hardship, but it was worth it to get the industry even a little bit more like how you'd run performing arts production and less like how you'd run an auto assembly plant.

Now that period, as traumatic as it was, looks like the golden age, which it wasn't. Internet came out of nowhere, and it was exciting for several years, but when the kids with cell phones became the most dependable market, it changed. Now it really is like an assembly plant.

One big change is that TV shows used to be run on owned/operated TV channels on very structured schedules. There was first run, then summer rerun, then syndication. Every time something aired, the people involved got residuals. It kept the town solvent.

Now it's on-demand and streaming that are the centers of excitement, and that changes the financial arrangement. People in the biz had fantasies about a "third screen" that would fix everything by creating a market beyond theaters and scheduled TV channels. Well, careful what you wish for. We got it. It sucks.

It really is becoming more like how Kellog's makes cereal, and about as fulfilling a place to work. Grind, grind, grind, with 1000 reasons not to get paid the going rate. Good on the writers for striking. I haven't written a screenplay in years, they stopped doing my kind of stuff except for Star Wars sequels, DCU and MCU, and all that. In other words, they actually converted the whole industry to my kind of stuff, and found a cheaper way to crank it out, and my services were no longer relevant.

So it goes in American industry. I switched to publicity and art making, and never was sorry though of course I do miss the fuss everyone made over my old business. But it's completely changed, it's slave labor now, and good on the writers for having the balls to walk. With AI coming, it's probably yelling at a tsunami to stop, but good on them anyway. Shut it ALL down.

[ap215]

All great points Z including the AI part i'll also include Citizen's United as another element for the corporations power grab for the big dollar they want more & they want the other side to get only crumbs all greed control & dysfunction is what they care about.

[ZoWie]

Thanks for getting it, though I'd expect no less from a native New Yorker.

CNBC is doing segments from one of those gatherings of suits flown in by private jets, this one in Milken's building in Beverly Hills. (Remember Milken? He fell up.)

I turned the damn thing off. I've had it. Zero tolerance for rich men in suits.

[ap215]

The Directors Guild of America Has Ratified a Deal With AMPTP

After reaching a tentative deal earlier this month, the Directors Guild of America has officially ratified a contract with Hollywood studios and streamers. According to The Hollywood Reporter, 87 percent of the union’s voting members supported the new deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers in a referendum that ended on June 23.

“Our new contract secures gains on wages, global streaming residuals, safety, diversity and creative rights that build for the future and impact every category of member in our Guild,” DGA president Lesli Linka Glatter said in a statement. Reportedly, 41 percent of the union’s eligible voters cast ballots, which the DGA has described as a record turnout. The agreement will go into effect on July 1 and last for three years. This prevents the possibility of three key entertainment unions striking this summer, given that the Writers Guild of America is on strike and that SAG-AFTRA’s contract expires next week.

https://www.vulture.com/2023/06/directo ... trike.html

[ZoWie]

DGA is much bigger than you'd think. It's not just a few people who've directed movies and gotten enough brownie points to be eligible. It is open to (from its own propaganda) "Directors, Unit Production Managers, Assistant Directors, Associate Directors and Stage Managers." There are a lot of PMs and ADs working on shows, they are DGA, and without them everything comes to a grinding, sickening halt.

Part of the agreement covers residuals, and since they are under attack, I find the DGA's recent vote to be extremely out of touch with the issues facing the entire industry. I haven't seen the language of the AMPTP offer, but if it's the usual, it does not address some fundamental changes impending right now that hugely effect how people get jobs and receive their fair share of resulting profits made by huge conglomerates from marketing their work.

If it's not the usual, then other trade guilds in that business just got a benchmark for bargaining offers.