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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC studios in Soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. Whether you're listening on the radio, live streaming or On Demand, I'm grateful you're here on today's show. We'll speak with Aaron Sorkin, who wrote the book for the updated Camelot, now playing at Lincoln Center theater.

We'll also speak with Director Bartlett Sher and star Philippa Soo. We'll talk about the book, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder, with author, David Grann. Carmen has been reimagined for the screen, we'll speak with its director, Benjamin Millepied, and composer, Nicholas Britell. That's the plan, so, let's get this started with Adam Conover and last night's WGA strike authorization vote.

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Alison Stewart: The Writers Guild of America, the union that represents the folks who use their imagination and skill to pen TV shows, announced yesterday that its members voted overwhelmingly, 97.85% to authorize a strike next month if its contract negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers doesn't address the writers' concerns. The AMPTP is an association representing a collective of production companies that includes legacy studios like Paramount, Universal, and Disney, as well as streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon, and Apple TV.

The WGA says that as the industry has adjusted to new business models because of content delivery systems like streaming, those models leave writers under-compensated for their work. The writers union also has concerns about the use of artificial intelligence and wants to codify how AI tools like ChatGPT can be used to help writers without pushing them out of jobs.

Those are some of the issues at play as negotiations continue. Now, if they fail, we could see a writers' strike as early as May 1st, but the landscape has changed a lot since the last writers' strike in 2007 when one of the big issues was how writers would be compensated for the production and sale of DVDs. At the time, network TVs still dominated, and then we saw a turn toward non-scripted shows.

That explosion of reality TV happened during that time. What can happen this time, and where do things stand? Joining me now to explain the ins and outs of the industry and to lay out the WGA's arguments, we have Adam Conover, a self-described investigative comedian. You may know him from when he hosted the series, Adam Ruins Everything. Now he's carved out a lane as a professional explainer of sorts, but he is also a WGA West board member, WGA negotiating committee member. Adam, welcome.

Adam Conover: Hey. Thank you so much for having me, Alison. It's wonderful to be here.

Alison Stewart: Yes, folks, we did reach out to AMPTP, and we'll get to their statement in a moment. Listeners, we want to know, if you're a WGA member, what do you want to help report on this story? Give us a call and tell us how streaming and AI and the structure of the industry at large have impacted you, impacted your writer's room. Our phone number is 212-433-WNYC. That is 212-433-9692. We're going to give priority to writers, but we can also take anyone with questions about the impact of streaming on the film and TV industry. If you have questions for Adam Conover, give us a call.

212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You can also reach out on social media. Tweet us or DM us on Instagram, the same handle for both, @allofitwnyc. Just so folks understand who we're talking about, because the union represents, at any time, different kinds of people, what roles fall under the union's umbrella is what I'm getting to. What kinds of writers are represented?

Adam Conover: The Writers Guild of America represents around 11,000 film and television writers, at least those are the writers we're talking about under this contract. These are folks who write all your favorite television shows, all your favorite streaming shows, any film you're likely to see in the movie theater. Those are the writers who we cover broadly.

Alison Stewart: Are there some writers who the Union and its members think should be covered under this contract, this negotiation, and they aren't?

Adam Conover: Oh, yes. Look, every union's goal is to expand its membership and get more folks under union coverage, because we know that when workers are covered by a union, they have better wages. I've worked non-union in my life and I had worse wages and worst protections. Good examples of that, for instance, are reality shows, all have writers, they just call them producers, but they are in fact writers. A lot of animated shows are not covered by the Writers Guild and we feel that they should be, but that's a battle for a different day.

Today, we are fighting economic struggle over our compensation for the people who are currently under the contract. Then once that's wrapped up, we'll return to the work of getting more and more folks covered.

Alison Stewart: Can you explain to folks how residuals work? Just outside of this negotiation, what is a residual? What does it mean to a writer?

Adam Conover: Okay. A residual is a basic participation in the success of one of the works that we create. One of the differences between screenwriters and TV writers, and say, a novelist is we don't retain copyright over what we write. When Stephen King writes a new novel, he keeps the copyright. When we write a screenplay or an episode of television, we grant it to the company. They can reproduce it as much as they want. What we have in return for that is a residual. In television that means, every time the episode is aired, we receive some money.

In film, that means every time it's screened in a movie theater, we receive some money. In streaming, it's a little bit different, we don't receive a residual for every single play. Currently, we receive a fixed residual, simply for the show or movie being on the platform at all. Every year that it's up there, we receive a small amount of money. That amount is actually much smaller than the old residual that folks were used to, and that's a problem for writers because writers use residuals to make their year, to keep them tidied over from one job to another.

Because the fact is, as a writer, it can take a year in between you getting jobs, and that's not time where you're just sitting around, you're writing spec scripts, you're taking interviews, you're pitching pilots, et cetera, et cetera. This is the kind of freelance industry where getting the job takes as long as the job itself, and writers rely on residuals to keep their families fed in the meantime. That's one of the reasons that's a big issue for us in this negotiation.

Alison Stewart: Who and when did that flat residual to streaming, how was that decided? How was that number decided?

Adam Conover: Look, you mentioned the strike in 2007. The actual goal of that strike was to win us coverage over the internet. That is what we fought for. We got union coverage over streaming generally. The problem is, that was a big victory, that we won it for every worker in Hollywood. The problem is that under the streaming contracts, the terms are still much worse, and so, one of the things that all the streamers have imposed on everybody is they've removed that participation from the success of the shows. They say, you get a flat fee upfront, and no matter how many people watch it, you never make any more money.

That has really changed the way Hollywood works, not just writers, but actors, directors, and producers are used to participating. That was something they imposed on us that we're looking to change.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, if you're a WGA member, we want to help you to help us report this story. Give us a call. Tell us how streaming and AI or maybe the structure, the industry at large have affected your writer's room, have affected you personally. Our number is 212-433-WNYC. That is 212-433-9692. We're going to give priority to writers, but we can also take questions from anyone who has a question about the impact of streaming on the film and TV industry. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. Our social media is @allofitwnyc.

My guest is Adam Conover. He is an investigative comedian, as well as a WGA West board member, and he's on the negotiating committee. Let's talk about short orders. In a report that WA published in March, the union writes, "Short orders that separation of writing and production, and the lack of a season calendar have depressed writers' pay." For folks who don't understand the lingo of the industry, what is a short order, and why would it depress writer's pay?

Adam Conover: In the old days, let's talk about 15 years ago, around the time of the last strike, most television shows were 22 episodes long. Think about a show like 24, The West Wing, there'd be 22 episodes a year. The way they'd write those shows, they get like 15 writers in a room, and those writers would be working from eight months to a year. They would be writing shows at the same time they're producing them. By the time they're working on script 4, they're shooting script 1, and those writers would go to set.

They would not just be paid for writing, they would also be paid for producing the episode, for being on set, watching the monitor, helping figure out if the actors are performing as they should, and being in post-production, in the edit. What the companies have done, what the studios have done, is they've moved towards the short orders where instead of 22 episodes-- you've watched Netflix, every show is 8 episodes long, sometimes 6 episodes long. Instead of multiple seasons, they just do one or two. For one thing, there's less work to go around.

The other piece is more nefarious, because not only have they done that, they've also started banning writers from coming to set or from going into post-production. Instead of 15 writers working for a year on 22 episodes, they have three writers, maybe four writers, and they put them in what they call a mini room, and they say, "Hey, we haven't picked the show up yet. It's not greenlit yet, so no one's producing. Would you guys mind just, coming up with a story for the entire season and writing two-thirds of the scripts, just the three of you together." Then before the show is shot, they lay all those writers off. They also pay those writers their minimum. They don't pay them-- this gets a little complicated, but they don't pay them any producing fees. They pay them the literal minimum amount that's in our contract.

Writers who have been working for 20 years, or brand new writers who instead of, when they get a job that making their year, that being some income that they can rely on. Now it's just a two-month gig, and they're paid less than they used to be. This is all a business innovation on the part of the companies. They've figured out this regime as a way to save money on their writer budget and squeeze more work from less writers for less pay. That's what we're fighting against this year.

Alison Stewart: When did this become really apparent?

Adam Conover: It's become apparent over the last three years, frankly, since our last contract. This is the thing where Netflix figures out a little trick that they can slip into someone's contract, and then Hulu picks up on it, and then HBO says, "Oh, you know what we could do." They're like an improv team. They're all saying, "Yes and," to each other and adding on new ways to screw writers. We've been hearing from our members over the years how difficult this has gotten.

They have spoken up with a really strong voice until we realized that we had to do something about it. We have a lot of terms in our contract proposals that are fighting against those trends. You saw the numbers. Writers voted almost 98% in favor of going on strike with the largest turnout we've ever had as a guild.

That's record turnout and record percentage voting yes, in favor of authorizing a strike because the way these companies have taken money out of writer's pockets and made our work more precarious via nicks and cuts and nickels and dimes has really made it almost impossible for writers to put a career together and afford to live and work in Los Angeles or New York, where most of us have to live in order to do our work.

Alison Stewart: I wanted to make a point that in during some of the research and hearing some people's personal stories, we're not talking about whether someone wants to buy a Tesla or not, we're talking about whether people can actually make their rent and feed their families.

Adam Conover: I've talked to writers who, I had lunch with a writer because she tweeted, she got her first job. This was a trans woman who was hired on a show because of her personal experience. This is her first writing job. She moved to Los Angeles, she had the job, the job was only eight weeks long. She wanted to be a TV writer. After the job was over, she tweeted, "I'm facing homelessness. I'm soon to be evicted." We look out for each other. I met with her and so did some other writers, and she landed on her feet.

I've also spoken to other writers who even though they sold a pilot and staffed on a show, they still filed for EBT that year in order to be able to feed their kids. The fact that we have this stereotype of film writing and television writing as being a lucrative industry where an average creative worker can make a good living, is because we've had strong unions for 100 years who have protected our wages and working conditions. Over the last three to five years, the studios have taken those protections away and taken that money away, and it's the job of the union to fight back for it so that we're able to make a living. That's something that all workers should be able to do.

Alison Stewart: I want to read a statement that the AMPTP, the Association of Production Companies put out yesterday before the results of the vote were released. This was the statement, "A strike authorization vote has always been part of the WGA's plan announced before the parties even exchange proposals. Its inevitable ratification should come as no surprise to anyone. Our goal is and continues to be, to reach a fair and reasonable agreement. An agreement is only possible if the guild is committed to turning its focus to serious bargaining by engaging in full discussions of the issues with the companies and searching for reasonable compromises."

Adam, what is the discrepancy between what the WGA thinks is reasonable and what the AMPTP thinks is reasonable?

Adam Conover: [chuckles] Well, what they think is reasonable is no. We brought them our proposals, the proposals writers said they needed, and they gave us a flat no. We gave them the reasons that writers need this. We let them know that this was meaningful to writers, and they said that they were unwilling to consider them. They offer some crumbs here and some crumbs there. Those are always packaged with proposals that mean you lose more than you gain.

Look, the Writer's Guild's only leverage in that scenario is that our members reserve the right to walk away from a bad deal. We say, "Hey, if the deal is bad enough, we're not willing to work for less, and we're going to prove that to you by going on strike." That is how we mobilize member power and how we force them to bargain with us fairly. If we don't do that, then we'll never get the gains that we need.

Frankly, it's up to them at this point to come to the table and take our proposal seriously because the reason we had to take a strike authorization vote was they simply did not. We said these are serious issues you need to bargain on, and they refused to. The next step for us is to take this vote and then go back to the table. If they continue to be intransigent then they will force a strike.

Alison Stewart: The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers further commented to us this morning, we reached out again before airtime and sent us this, "The AMPTP companies approached these negotiations and the ones to follow with the long-term health and stability of the industry as our priority. We are all partners in charting the future of our business together and fully committed to reaching a mutually beneficial deal with each of our bargaining partners. The goal is to keep production active so that all of us can continue working and continue to deliver to consumers the best entertainment product available in the world."

Okay, so there's a couple things in there that are interesting. "All of us can continue working and continue to deliver consumers the best entertainment product available in the world." I'm thinking, and I'm thinking out loud, so I may put my foot in my mouth here.

Adam Conover: Please.

Alison Stewart: That strikes me as a veiled reference to like, "Hey, be careful what you wish for." Because Netflix and streamers, our interest is global, not just the United States.

Adam Conover: Oh, sure. That they might bring in foreign shows if writers are on strike. This is a constant bugaboo that people bring up. I'd like to see them try, quite honestly. Companies like Netflix have had some small success with shows like Squid Game that was obviously a big hit. That was a fluke for them. They've been trying to make Korean shows and shows from other countries that popular in America the entire time, and they haven't been because Americans prefer shows that are made in America.

Look, the Writers Guild of America, this is the NBA. We are the best writers writing at the highest level and the companies have made us that way by hiring the best writers from around the world and bringing them to Los Angeles and New York to write for them. If they think that they can replace that with shows from Denmark they can give it a shot. They might have some small success at it.

It's similar to saying, "Oh, writers are going to be replaced by reality television." If they could've done that, they would've done it already because reality television is cheaper for them to make and a lot of people like reality television, but the only thing that makes people subscribe to their services are the big streaming shows and movies. It's the Wednesdays, the Stranger Things, The Last of Us. People aren't subscribing for Love is Blind Part 100, especially not after what happened on Netflix a couple days ago when their live stream failed.

Alison Stewart: The unintended cut could be not yet. To your point, it hasn't happened in the past, doesn't mean it won't happen in the future. We saw the explosion of reality TV. I remember the last writer strike. I've got gray hair. I remember. [laughs]

Adam Conover: First of all, the explosion of reality television happened far before the writer's strike. The first big show was, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and that premiered in 2001, and the writer strike wasn't until 2007. The Real World was the late 90s. This was all an ongoing trend. The other thing is, reality television did not take over scripted TV. Scripted TV is still more popular than reality television even after the last strike. The fact that people are going to say it's going to happen again when it didn't happen the first time doesn't really make a lot of sense to me.

Let me just return those to something that the company said there. They said they want to keep the industry working in order to keep putting out this great entertainment product. Well, they're not doing that now because right now, the people who make their product, the people who look at the blank page and come up with the first idea and type out the names of the characters and the premise, those people cannot afford to live in Los Angeles or New York. Those people cannot afford to build a career.

People are leaving the industry. People are literally able to-- they're not being paid enough to do the work. The work is only going to suffer as a result. If the companies want to keep the industry working then it's in their best interest to come to the table and actually bargain fairly with us.

Alison Stewart: We have a tweet who asked the question of what's going to happen if all those companies substitute the writers for AI?

Adam Conover: [laughs] First of all, good luck. There's a lot of predictions about what ChatGPT will be able to do in the future. Go use it to try to write a script now, it can't do it. It can't write a joke. Ask it to write you a joke, it won't be able to do it. Ask it to write an episode of Friends and ask yourself, is this filmable? It cannot be done with the current technology. Secondly, there is actually no assurance that anything the ChatGPT outputs is copyrightable.

The US Copyright Office has already said that it is not. This is going to be pending some court cases, but we're talking about going on strike on May 1st. That is not going to be decided by May 1st. If the companies want to have copyright over their scripts, which they do, they're not going to use AI. Maybe that's a problem in the future. In fact, we have a proposal in our current contract that aims to ban AI in the use of writing TV and movies. We aim to fight for that proposal. In terms of being replaced right now, it's not going to happen.

Alison Stewart: When you talk to writers across the guild, people don't want to use AI at all?

Adam Conover: The distinction that we're drawing is that it cannot be used as source material or literary material, which our proposal is that writers cannot be asked to adapt something that an AI makes into a film or movie. AI-produced text cannot be considered literary material, which in our contract is the term for a script. The companies cannot output something from AI and say, "This is a script. We're going to assign ChatGPT residuals," or whatever.

Now there's some gray area in there if somebody wants to use ChatGPT like magnetic poetry, which is frankly all that it really is. It's humans using an algorithm to rearrange words around. They want to use that in their own work to generate some ideas and whatever. That's an issue for another day. The main thing is to make sure that AI is not a part of the chain of literary custody in our writing process.

Alison Stewart: Should the strike happens, what happens to writers who supports them?

Adam Conover: First of all, we have a very healthy strike fund that we keep up rain or shine. It's about $20 million. We keep that healthy all the time so that if the studios force the writers to go on strike, we will be there to support them. We'll be providing-- They're really no interest loans technically, but they are essentially grants to any writers who need them. If there is a strike, look, strikes are brutal. They hurt everybody. That's the point of them.

They don't just hurt writers. They also hurt actors, directors, and crew members. We're going to be taking steps to make sure that we take care of our brothers and sisters in the entertainment industry as well by raising money for them. In 2007, writers did fundraisers, showrunners would give large amounts of money to their crew to make sure they could survive. Writers are going to do the same thing if we're forced to go on strike this year.

Alison Stewart: What were some of the lessons learned from 2007 that you and other leaders have in mind?

Adam Conover: The biggest lesson is when you fight, you win. Again, I want to make this really clear. In 2007, what we were fighting for was union coverage over the internet. If we hadn't gone on strike that year, no streaming show would be a union show. Everything from House of Cards to Wednesday would've been produced non-union. No writer would've received pension and health contributions on it.

People would be working without healthcare. No one would've received residuals and no one would've had minimums. Because we won that fight and we got the companies to agree to cover the internet, the DGA, the Director's Guild, the Screen Actors Guild, and the Crew Union were able to get coverage of it as well. These fights are necessary. When workers stand up for ourselves and stand up for what we need, everybody benefits. That's what we're doing again this year.

Alison Stewart: The vote yesterday was nearly 98% with just under 200 people voting against it, more than 9,000 for it. For the people who are against it, what are their concerns and how are you and the union addressing those concerns?

Adam Conover: There's so few of them. It's often a little bit difficult [chuckles] to find out because you have to really hunt one down because the guild is enormously united. Look, there are folks who, for whatever economic reason, feel I cannot afford a strike this year. That's not someone who I'm going to argue with if they feel that way. We want an honest vote and a no-vote is an honest one.

However, the vast majority of writers feel that this potential sacrifice is worth it. To be clear, we did not vote to go on strike. We voted to authorize a strike. Now we're headed back into negotiations. I'm headed there later today. Literally after this call, I'm going to go to Sherman Oaks and head back into negotiations with the companies. We are going in with leverage on the table saying, "If you do not take us seriously, then we're going to walk and we've proven it to you with this vote."

That's what it's about. Writers know that the writers of the past because they were willing to take these risks, that's the only reason we have a health plan and a pension plan and residuals and coverage of the internet. We know that it's our turn now. I wasn't in the guild in 2007. I was an aspiring comedy writer. I was doing free comedy at UCB in New York. I wasn't getting paid. I was working in basements.

I watched the writers, some of whom were friends of mine, hit the picket line in order to win coverage of the internet. Last year, my first Netflix show premiered, and the only reason I have a union contract and I got healthcare for working on that show was a writer 15 years ago went on strike for me and my future. I and 97.85% of our guild are all-- We all voted yes because we are willing to wage that fight for ourselves and for the writers of the future. Writers get that. That's what it's about.

Alison Stewart: We do have one call. We're going to slip in before we have to let you go because you do have business today, as you mentioned. Marianne from Florida. Hi Marianne, what's your call?

Marianne: Hi. I was calling about the disparity between what the networks and/or streamers might be making as opposed to what the writers might be making because I understand that Netflix is about to announce their quarterly earnings this afternoon after the market closes. I just wanted to see if you could tell us a little bit about that big difference between how much they're earning and what they're not paying the writers.

Adam Conover: What a wonderful setup. I'm so happy you asked that question. Yes. It's a massive disparity. The overall studio profits over the last 10 years have gone up by 50%. That's their profits, not just their revenues. They've increased by 50%. Writer pay in that time, median writer-producer pay has declined by 23%. We have actually lost money while they are earning so much more.

Netflix themselves specifically is wildly profitable. They're constantly proclaiming that they're wildly profitable. David Zaslav, the CEO of Warner Brothers Discovery, I believe last year made around $275 million, a quarter of a billion for one year of work. We, on the other hand, are asking simply to be paid enough to pay our mortgages or our rents and not be on EBT. Our total asks are less than 2% of their annual profits.

That's what we are asking as the people who create the product, the only product they make. Without writers, they have nothing because we are the ones who go from zero to something. We look at the blank play page and write interior wherever. Here's the name of the character. We think that less than 2% of their profits is a fair amount to ask for the people who are doing the fundamental work of what they are selling.

There's been a lot of talk about, "Oh, it's a bad year for Hollywood." Some of the companies have done layoffs. The truth is, they did those layoffs to boost their stock prices. They were rewarded by Wall Street for doing so. The other ones, they went through mergers and things like that. We didn't ask them to merge and buy each other. We didn't ask Discovery to take on billions of dollars of debt to buy Warner Brothers.

We thought that was a bad idea. [chuckles] If they want to plead poverty, it's not my fault that you got yourself in such a pickle. The fact of the matter is, the only reason one of these companies ever makes a movie or ever greenlights a TV show is because they expect to make a profit off of it. They don't greenlight a movie thinking, "We're going to lose money." We believe that when they do that, they're under the obligation to pay the writer fairly. If they decide to make a movie, they need to pay us. That's the principle. Thank you so much for that great question.

Alison Stewart: My guest has been Adam Conover. He's an investigative comedian and WGA negotiating committee member, if you're listening to this interview and you heard some of the numbers that Adam has thrown out, we're in real-time. We can't fact-check you, but we can go back later for folks who are listening and really want to do a deep dive, we encourage you to do that as well. Do your own research in the good way, not in the bad internet way. Adam, thank you so much for being with us.

Adam Conover: Thank you so much for having me, Alison.

 

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