NEW YORK — Television and movie writers declared late Monday that they will launch a strike for the first time in 15 years, as Hollywood girded for a walkout with potentially widespread ramifications in a fight over fair pay in the streaming era.
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the trade association that bargains on behalf of studios and production companies, signaled late Monday that negotiations fell short of an agreement before the current contract expired. The AMPTP said it presented an offer with “generous increases in compensation for writers as well as improvements in streaming residuals.”
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.
The most immediate effect of the strike viewers are likely to notice will be on late-night shows and “Saturday Night Live.” All are expected to immediately go dark. During the 2007 strike, late-night hosts eventually returned to the air and improvised material. Jay Leno wrote his own monologues, a move that angered union leadership.
“Then there was a writers’ strike and there was nothing we could do,” Craig later recounted. “We couldn’t employ a writer to finish it. I say to myself, ‘Never again’, but who knows? There was me trying to rewrite scenes — and a writer I am not.”