(New York) With the end of the Hollywood writers’ strike, actors will now have the opportunity to strike their own deals with studios and streaming services.
The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Radio and Television Artists announced Wednesday evening that strike negotiations with studios would resume Monday. The guild said several studio executives will be in attendance, just as they did during last week’s marathon sessions that helped end the nearly five-month-long writers’ strike.
Monday is the same day the network’s late-night hosts will return to the air.
Bill Maher led the charge at work by announcing early Wednesday that his HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher would return to the air Friday. By mid-morning, the hosts of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Late Night with Seth Meyers on NBC, Jimmy Kimmel Live on ABC and The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on CBS had announced that they would also return by Monday. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver was scheduled to return to the air on Sunday.
Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, which was tapping guest hosts when the strike hit, announced Wednesday that it will return Oct. 16 “with a slate of A-list guest hosts for the remainder of 2023.” . Plans for Saturday Night Live were not yet known.
The strikes have had a “catastrophic” impact on late-night television viewing, according to research firm Samba TV. Without Colbert, Fallon and Kimmel proving their relevance and timeliness, broadcast networks saw late-night viewership declines of between 40 and 50 percent, according to Ashwin Navin, co-founder of Samba TV. “It remains to be seen how late nights will regain their former importance,” he said.
Scripted shows will take longer to return due to the actors’ strike.
On Tuesday evening, board members of the writers union approved a contract agreement with the studios, at least partially bringing the industry back from a historic production shutdown that lasted nearly five months.
Bill Maher had delayed returning to his talk show during the ongoing writers and cast strike, a decision that followed similar hiatuses from The Drew Barrymore Show, The Talk and The Jennifer Hudson Show.
The three-year deal with studios, producers and streaming services provides significant victories in key areas writers have fought for — pay, tenure, team size and control over content. artificial intelligence — or almost what they were looking for.
The union had asked for minimum increases in salary and future residual revenue from shows and will get an increase of between 3.5% and 5% in those areas — more than the studios had initially proposed.
The guild also negotiated new residual payments based on the popularity of shows on digital platforms, where writers will receive bonuses for being part of the most popular shows on Netflix, Max and other services, a proposal initially rejected by the guild. studios. Many writers on the picket lines complained of not being paid properly for helping to create popular titles.
When it came to artificial intelligence, the authors gained the regulation and control of the emerging technology they sought. Under the contract, raw AI-generated plots will not be considered “literary material” — a term in their contracts for scripts and other forms of story produced by a screenwriter. This means they won’t compete with computers for screen credits. AI-generated stories will also not be considered “source” material, their contractual language for novels, video games, or other works that writers can adapt into scripts.
Screenwriters have the right under the agreement to use artificial intelligence in their process if the company they work for agrees to it and other conditions are met. But companies will not be able to require a screenwriter to use artificial intelligence.
