Where I’m looking for some representation in the music business – anyone have a reco on who may have some room on the roster? Gotta love a late August news cycle.
The one silver lining for Networks & Streamers who have recently paid increased 💰 for Sports Media TV Rights (and the upcoming NBA one, and pending WWE TV deal)… is that Advertisers seem to be stepping up to pay increased rates for the Ad time. Now, if we could just fix the quicksand of the RSN business 🤔.
US – you’ll still have to live under the thumb of META (this is only being done to comply with yes, new EU regulations).
THEN:MTV is moving full steam ahead with the VMAs this Sept. 12 – guessing it’ll be heavy on music and light on scripted banter – but we have the first set of performers: Demi Lovato, Karol G, Måneskin and K-pop act Stray Kids.
NEW DAY, NEW BABY: Baby #2 news continues this week with Serena Williams, who welcomed daughter number 2 with husband, tech entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian. Adira River Ohanian joins her sister, Olympia (age 6).
ADD:MACY’S credit card bills to the list of things Americans are increasingly delinquent on, alongside Car payments and paying off credit card bills in 2023 👀.
AND AS I’M SURE YOU’VE SEEN: The strikes, combined with the usual late August news desert have caused the day in/day out news cycle to come to a halt.
So if there’s not much news to note tomorrow, I’ll probably just pop back into your inbox on Friday.
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🪧 STRIKE FORCE
Well. The tranquility was nice while it lasted.
The AMPTP chose to go public with its most recent offer to the WGA after their latest meeting last night at the LUXE Hotel in Brentwood, which according to the WSJwas attended by Iger 2.0, Ted, Zaz and Donna.No word if they carpooled.
Elaine has all of the offer particulars covered/broken down here at Strikegeist:
Presumably, this was done in hopes that it will spur WGA membership to be like “hey this sounds like it addresses a lot of our big concerns… hmm.”
The WGA responded after with: “This wasn’t a meeting to make a deal. This was a meeting to get us to cave, which is why, not 20 minutes after we left the meeting, the AMPTP released its summary of their proposals.” (full statement below)
You could either look at this as the WGA is going back out to a “picketing-only” stage (surprisingly, no new negotiation meetings are on the calendar), or as Richard recently noted – tensions often get most tense as a final deal gets closer.
Either way, I suppose the ball is in the WGA’s court to respond to these AMPTP offer specifics, either in public – i.e. counter a public offer with a public counter -offer, or in private, back in a Brentwood hotel conference room… at some point.
After 102 days of being on strike and of AMPTP silence, the companies began to bargain with us on August 11th, presenting us for the first time with a counteroffer.
We responded to their counter at the beginning of last week and engaged in further discussions throughout the week.
On Monday of this week, we received an invitation to meet with Bob Iger, Donna Langley, Ted Sarandos, David Zaslav, and Carol Lombardini. It was accompanied by a message that it was past time to end this strike and that the companies were finally ready to bargain a deal.
We accepted that invitation and, in good faith, met tonight, in hopes that the companies were serious about getting the industry back to work.
Instead, on the 113th day of the strike – and while SAG-AFTRA is walking the picket lines by our side – we were met with a lecture about how good their single and only counteroffer was.
We explained all the ways in which their counter’s limitations and loopholes and omissions failed to sufficiently protect writers from the existential threats that caused us to strike in the first place. We told them that a strike has a price, and that price is an answer to all – and not just some – of the problems they have created in the business.
But this wasn’t a meeting to make a deal. This was a meeting to get us to cave, which is why, not 20 minutes after we left the meeting, the AMPTP released its summary of their proposals.
This was the companies’ plan from the beginning – not to bargain, but to jam us. It is their only strategy – to bet that we will turn on each other.
Tomorrow we will send a more detailed description of the state of the negotiations. And we will see you all out on the picket lines so that the companies continue to see what labor power looks like.
IN SOLIDARITY, WGA NEGOTIATING COMMITTEE
📽 THE SILVER SCREEN
I get this quite a bit myself. via giphy
NETFLIX Films Weekly Global Viewership Chart
Week of Aug 14 thru Aug 20:
usual caveats: back of the napkin math, assumes everyone finished the movie (including the credits), no one watched twice, or that a bunch of folks didn’t rewind certain parts, etc. so consider these minimum numbers. and it’s based on NETFLIX’s self-reported numbers.
NETFLIX’s Original Animated Films problem continues
Once again a new NETFLIX Original Animated Film failed to launch…
