Speaker 1: My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda
Speaker 1: Bunjelung Calcottin woman from Gadighl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges
Speaker 1: that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the
Speaker 1: Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres
Speaker 1: Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the
Speaker 1: first peoples of these countries, both past and present.
Speaker 2: Good morning and welcome to the Daily os. It's somehow Monday,
Speaker 2: the second of October.
Speaker 3: I'm Zara, I'm sam. We begin with breaking news now
Speaker 3: at six with major developments from Hollywood overnight.
Speaker 4: The Writer's strike reaching its final act. The Writer's Guild
Speaker 4: of America says it has indeed reached a deal.
Speaker 3: After one hundred and forty eight days of strike action.
Speaker 3: The Writer's Guild of America has reached a deal with
Speaker 3: Hollywood Studios and that means their strike is officially over.
Speaker 3: So what have they agreed to and does this mean
Speaker 3: film and TV production is back on track or will
Speaker 3: the actor strike still slow things down? TDA factchecker and
Speaker 3: resident Film of Fishinado, Lucy Tassel, will join me to
Speaker 3: discuss it in today's deep dive, but first the headlines.
Speaker 3: US President Joe Biden has signed a short term funding bill,
Speaker 3: avoiding a full shutdown of the US government. The bill
Speaker 3: was passed by Congress only hours before the deadline. The
Speaker 3: government now has enough funding to last until the seventeenth
Speaker 3: of November and does not allow the government to implement
Speaker 3: the planned increased funding for Ukraine's war against Russia.
Speaker 2: The Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of
Speaker 2: People with Disability has handed down its final report that
Speaker 2: was made available to the public on Friday, so we
Speaker 2: now know its contents. Among thirteen volumes of four and
Speaker 2: a half years of findings, the Commission reported people with
Speaker 2: disability are subject to higher rate to violence, neglect and
Speaker 2: abuse than Australians without disability. The Commission also made two
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty two recommendations, including reform across areas like education,
Speaker 2: employment and housing.
Speaker 3: A massive weekend of sports last night, the Penrith Panthers
Speaker 3: won the NRL Men's Grand Final, beating the Brisbane Broncos
Speaker 3: in a thrilling game at Sydney's Acre Stadium. It was
Speaker 3: the greatest comeback in NRL Grand Final history after the
Speaker 3: Panthers overcame a sixteen point deficit to win twenty six
Speaker 3: twenty four. It was their third premiership in a row.
Speaker 3: Earlier in the day, the Newcastle Knights beat the Gold
Speaker 3: Coast Titans in the NRLW Grand Final.
Speaker 2: And I'm being told this is good news. A new
Speaker 2: electric blue spider has been discovered in Thailand. It's considered
Speaker 2: especially significant as the color blue is one of the
Speaker 2: rarest colors found in nature. The team who found the
Speaker 2: spider will now auction off the right to name the
Speaker 2: species to raise money for charity. Well there you.
Speaker 3: Go, Lucy, welcome back to the podcast.
Speaker 4: It's so good to be here.
Speaker 3: So you've kind of become tda's Hollywood correspondent, not so
Speaker 3: much of the actual going to Hollywood bit, but the
Speaker 3: inn house Hollywood correspondent over the last few months. And
Speaker 3: you've kept us up to date on developments with the
Speaker 3: Writers and Actors' strike. What news you bringing us today.
Speaker 4: Well, huge news. The Writers Guild has ended its strike,
Speaker 4: so the WGA, the Writers' Union, has reached an agreement
Speaker 4: with the big Hollywood studios. So all of those eleven
Speaker 4: thousand writers who are covered by the union went back
Speaker 4: to work, or at least could go back to work
Speaker 4: starting from last Wednesday.
Speaker 3: And I guess the way that materializes for us is
Speaker 3: more stuff on our televisions and our movie screens. We'll
Speaker 3: get there in a sec. But first, how did we
Speaker 3: get to this point?
Speaker 4: Well, let's recap. There's two bodies you need to understand.
Speaker 4: So we've got the WGA, which is the union that
Speaker 4: represents writers for TV and movies. So that's everything from
Speaker 4: Barbie to the Drew Barrymore Show, so that include talk shows,
Speaker 4: that include scripted television like dramas like Outer Banks. So
Speaker 4: the WGA represents all of those people. Then there's the AMPTP,
Speaker 4: which is the group representing the studios that actually fund
Speaker 4: and produce these shows and movies, so the Alliance of
Speaker 4: Motion Picture and Television Producers. So they represent groups like Amazon,
Speaker 4: like Apple, NBC, Disney, Netflix, Paramount, all the big players
Speaker 4: exactly the names on TV channels. That's who the AMPTP represents,
Speaker 4: and that's who the WGA negotiates their multi year contracts with. Basically,
Speaker 4: if there's a contract, then writers from that union can
Speaker 4: write shows that the AMPTP puts on air. Got it
Speaker 4: so earlier this year May the second, the WGA actually
Speaker 4: voted to strike because their contract that was up earlier
Speaker 4: this year had lapsed and they weren't able to come
Speaker 4: to a new agreement. And there were a couple of
Speaker 4: different reasons for that. I mean, it's not an overstatement
Speaker 4: to say that the landscape of film and TV has
Speaker 4: changed so incredibly dramatically, has been completely upended by streaming.
Speaker 4: It looks completely different to how it did twenty years ago,
Speaker 4: with the rise of things like streaming services, with AI,
Speaker 4: with the pandemic, a lot of things have changed very dramatically.
Speaker 3: And you and I did a podcast episode where we
Speaker 3: kind of went a bit deeper into those issues. I'll
Speaker 3: put a link to the episode we did on the actors'
Speaker 3: strike in the show notes. But today we're talking about
Speaker 3: the end of the writer's strike. So you say they've
Speaker 3: now reached an agreement. What have they agreed to.
Speaker 4: Well, one of the main things that the writers were
Speaker 4: asking for was better pay. So one of the ways
Speaker 4: that writers make money is through residual payments, which are
Speaker 4: ongoing payments given to the cast and crew of particularly
Speaker 4: TV shows, whenever they're rerun or released on d That
Speaker 4: was all changed by streaming. So one of the things
Speaker 4: that has changed is that pay overall is better. So
Speaker 4: writers are going to get annual minimum pay increases of
Speaker 4: five percent, four percent, and three and a half percent
Speaker 4: over the course of their new contract with the studios.
Speaker 4: So the expiration of the previous contract obviously started the strike.
Speaker 4: The next one expires in twenty twenty six. Until then
Speaker 4: they're getting yearly pay rises. Another huge change which based
Speaker 4: on what I saw online, this was one of the
Speaker 4: biggest developments for writers. This was the sort of thing
Speaker 4: that people were saying. They said it couldn't be done.
Speaker 4: And that is a minimum number of writers employed in writers'
Speaker 4: rooms who are guaranteed a set term of employment. So
Speaker 4: for people like you and me, we go to work
Speaker 4: every week knowing that our job continues, even though we
Speaker 4: work at a startup. There's still an element of job
Speaker 4: security that a Hollywood writer does not have. If your
Speaker 4: show gets canceled, that might mean that ten weeks of
Speaker 4: work that you were banking on for the next year
Speaker 4: are no longer there.
Speaker 3: Well, the number of shows that have a pilot episode
Speaker 3: and then are stopped after that.
Speaker 4: Mascically, yeah, so you have you know, three weeks writing
Speaker 4: for the pilot and then after that, good luck. Maybe
Speaker 4: you won't here for six months. So to have ten
Speaker 4: weeks guaranteed employment is huge. That's going to be a massive,
Speaker 4: a massive lifestyle change for a lot of people, I think,
Speaker 4: probably for the better.
Speaker 3: Do you think that will mean that studios are taking
Speaker 3: less risks if they have to lock in ten weeks employment,
Speaker 3: That's entirely possible.
Speaker 4: That is always the flip side of the coin is
Speaker 4: that with these gains for writers, you might get different
Speaker 4: business decisions being made.
Speaker 3: Interesting.
Speaker 4: I think the argument that writers would have for taking
Speaker 4: these potential risks, certainly in negotiating with studios, is that
Speaker 4: studios have already made financial risks by going all in
Speaker 4: on streaming. So things have already changed.
Speaker 3: And part of what has really changed is the AI space.
Speaker 3: And you and I spoke about that a lot a
Speaker 3: couple of weeks ago. What sort of agreements around AI
Speaker 3: have been reached?
Speaker 4: This is another huge agreement. So back in May, writers
Speaker 4: were asking for One of their original demands for their
Speaker 4: new contract was regulating the use of AI on projects
Speaker 4: covered by their contract. So they specifically said AI can't
Speaker 4: write or rewrite material, can't be used as source material,
Speaker 4: and our material can't be used to train AI. So
Speaker 4: that was the writer's pitch, and the amptp's response was
Speaker 4: that they wanted to have annual meetings to discuss advancements
Speaker 4: in technology. So that's where negotiation kind of broke down.
Speaker 4: What has changed is that the AMPTP has agreed artificial
Speaker 4: intelligence can't be used to produce or edit written material.
Speaker 4: Writers can choose to use AI, but studios can't force
Speaker 4: them to do so, got it. Okay, a huge step.
Speaker 4: That's one of the things that's come out of these
Speaker 4: many months of strikes and negotiations.
Speaker 3: So another big factor in these negotiations was residuals. I
Speaker 3: feel like we've explained this a couple of times, but
Speaker 3: in case we've forgotten, that's the money writers would make
Speaker 3: from series like Friends or Seinfeld when they get rerun
Speaker 3: on networks, and they kind of can make that in
Speaker 3: perpetuity forever, exactly right, what's the update here?
Speaker 4: So streaming residuals were a very different beast. That's one
Speaker 4: of the reasons that writers wanted to negotiate for a
Speaker 4: new contract, so to compensate for the fact that residuals
Speaker 4: don't act in the same way on streaming. This new
Speaker 4: agreement introduces viewership based residuals to award bonuses to the
Speaker 4: writers behind content that performs well with US subscribers. So
Speaker 4: writers involved in projects that reach a certain viewership threshold
Speaker 4: in their first three months of release, we'll get extra money.
Speaker 4: If you remember, when we first talked about residuals on
Speaker 4: the pod, we heard about cast and crew of Oranges
Speaker 4: the New Black getting tiny checks in the mail despite
Speaker 4: that show having been huge on Netflix. So any writers
Speaker 4: associated with whatever the next massive Netflix phenomenon is that
Speaker 4: will not happen to them. Actors, however, are still negotiating
Speaker 4: that kind of thing. Residual payments for content viewed by
Speaker 4: overseas subscribers, so people like you and me will increase massively,
Speaker 4: So huge, huge gains for residuals. As for transparency, so
Speaker 4: obviously you and I don't know how many people have
Speaker 4: viewed a Netflix show. We only hear what Netflix has
Speaker 4: told us. So the AMPTP agreed to share international and
Speaker 4: domestics so Hollywood streaming numbers with the Writers Guild. That's
Speaker 4: subject to confidentiality, but it means that writers will actually
Speaker 4: know how many people have watched their shows, which they
Speaker 4: weren't allowed to find out before.
Speaker 3: Okay, So both parties have signed this agreement. What happens
Speaker 3: from here and how quickly can we expect to see
Speaker 3: our favorite shows back on television or on.
Speaker 4: Streaming, Well, that depends. So the agreement has been accepted
Speaker 4: by the union's leadership, which means that writers were able
Speaker 4: to go back to work. It does need to be
Speaker 4: voted on by those writers. That's going to be happening
Speaker 4: over the course of this week and next, but it's
Speaker 4: expected that they will agree to the agreement.
Speaker 3: So it's not an one hundred percent done deal, but
Speaker 3: it's pretty likely that this is going to be the
Speaker 3: state of play.
Speaker 4: It would be very, very surprising if the membership of
Speaker 4: the WGA said, we don't accept this agreement and we
Speaker 4: want a better one.
Speaker 3: Okay. So from there, that's when everyone goes back to
Speaker 3: set and writers' rooms and starts producing stuff.
Speaker 4: Right, Well, they go back to the writers' rooms. They
Speaker 4: don't go back to set because SAG after the Actors'
Speaker 4: Union is still on strike. Okay, they went on strike
Speaker 4: in July. That's when we first talked about this on
Speaker 4: the podcast. So actors performers, all those one hundred and
Speaker 4: sixty thousand people covered by SAG after they're all still
Speaker 4: on strike. However, as you're listening to this pot cast
Speaker 4: right now, the leadership of SAG AFTRA has actually gone
Speaker 4: back to the negotiating table with AMPTP and that's inspired
Speaker 4: by the success of the WGA agreement. So we could
Speaker 4: be seeing people back to set soon. We're not sure.
Speaker 4: It's going to depend on how things turn out over
Speaker 4: the next couple of days.
Speaker 3: So big step forward for writers, but we'll have to
Speaker 3: watch and see what happens with actors exactly. Lucy, thank
Speaker 3: you so much for joining us on the Daily OZ today.
Speaker 2: Thanks Sam, thanks for listening to today's pod. If you
Speaker 2: learned something from today's episode, don't forget to share it
Speaker 2: with a friend. We'll be back again tomorrow morning, but
Speaker 2: until then, Happy Monday.