NEW YORK (AP) — Late-night TV shows including “The Tonight Show” and “The Daily Show” will begin airing reruns as unionized writers soured by Hollywood’s low pay in the streaming era went on strike Tuesday for the first time in 15 years.
The labor dispute could have a cascading effect on TV and film productions depending on how long the strike lasts, and it comes as streaming services are under growing pressure from Wall Street to show profits.
The Writers Guild of America’s 11,500 unionized screenwriters prepared to picket after negotiations with studios, which began in March, failed by Monday’s deadline to yield a new contract. All script writing is to immediately cease, the guild informed its members.
Along with NBC’s “The Tonight Show,” and Comedy Central’s “Daily Show,” ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live” all made plans for reruns through the week.
The guild is seeking higher minimum pay, less thinly staffed writing rooms, shorter exclusive contracts and a reworking of residual pay — all conditions the WGA says have been diminished in the content boom driven by streaming.
“The companies’ behavior has created a gig economy inside a union workforce, and their immovable stance in this negotiation has betrayed a commitment to further devaluing the profession of writing,” the WGA said in a statement.
Picket lines were planned throughout Los Angeles and in New York later Tuesday. The WGA is to picket first outside the Manhattan building where NBCUniversal is holding an event for advertisers to its streaming service, Peacock.
Demonstrations in Los Angeles are planned outside the offices of Walt Disney Co., Netflix, Amazon, Universal, Warner Bros., Paramount, CBS and Sony.
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the trade association that bargains on behalf of studios and production companies, said it presented an offer with “generous increases in compensation for writers as well as improvements in streaming residuals.”
In a statement, the trade association said that it was prepared to improve its offer “but was unwilling to do so because of the magnitude of other proposals still on the table that the guild continues to insist upon.”
A shutdown has been widely forecast for months due to the scope of the discord. The writers last month voted overwhelming to authorize a strike, with 98% of membership in support.
At issue is how writers are compensated in an industry where streaming has changed the rules of Hollywood economics. Writers say they aren’t being paid enough, TV writer rooms have shrunk too much and the old calculus for how residuals are paid out needs to be redrawn.
“The survival of our profession is at stake,” the guild has said.
Streaming has exploded the number of series and films that are annually made, meaning more jobs for writers. But WGA members say they’re making much less money and working under more strained conditions. Showrunners on streaming series receive just 46% of the pay that showrunners on broadcast series receive, the WGA claims.
The guild is seeking more compensation on the front-end of deals. Many of the back-end payments writers have historically profited by – like syndication and international licensing – have been largely phased out by the onset of streaming. More writers — roughly half — are being paid minimum rates, an increase of 16% over the last decade. The use of so-called mini-writers rooms has soared.
Hollywood’s trade assocation said Monday that the primary sticking points to a deal revolved around those mini-rooms — the guild is seeking a minimum number of scribes per writer room — and duration of employment restrictions. The guild has said more flexibility for writers is needed when they’re contracted for series that have tended to be more limited and short-lived than the once-standard 20-plus episode broadcast season.
