Negotiations between SAG-AFTRA and AMPTP wrapped early on Tuesday, but both sides are set to return on Wednesday for a full day of talks. It's also expected negotiations will continue through the week, as both sides try to come to an agreement in time to save the broadcast TV season.
Studio representatives have said a deal needs to be struck this week in order to have enough time to produce even an abbreviated broadcast season. While there is a bit of flexibility in that timing, even SAG-AFTRA sources agree that the production window is rapidly closing for broadcast television.
Strike negotiations are always challenging to cover as a journalist, because few people have the complete story. And after listening to everyone's partial takes, you can end up with nothing but a massive headache.
Today is one of those days, because after speaking with a number of people after negotiations wrapped today, I'm a bit flummoxed.
After last weekend's talks, I was hearing from a number of sources that the negotiations today and potentially the rest of the week were going to focus on the money issues. Including the fate of that proposed share in a cut of streaming project revenue. The plan was supposedly to deal with the AI questions later in the week. In part because those discussions were seen by both sides as contentious, but easier to eventually find common ground.
"AI is a very binary thing to negotiate over," one studio source explained to me last night. "Either the studios will or won't be able to do something or the actors will or won't agree to a specific change. But in some ways, that's easier to navigate than arguing over percentages and new residual streams."
So imagine my surprise to see both Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter posting accounts of today's negotiations that argued today's negotiations focused primarily on AI and that many people believed a deal was "in sight:"
The two sides broke off in the afternoon after a day that was spent dealing with AI issues and are set to return to the bargaining table on Wednesday. While expressing that talks are headed in the right direction, one studio-side source says it could take a few days to work through remaining issues. Two additional studio-side sources said talks are progressing overall in a substantive way, and that a deal could be imminent. Multiple prominent actors said they have received word that a deal could be at hand soon, as well.
After speaking with a number of people this evening, today's discussion did reportedly center on AI and several sources on the studio side said that there had been hopes the framework could be resolved today. But a last-minute disagreement over one of the points raised on the studio side apparently left the AI negotiations closer, but not finalized.
I have a suspicion that the optimism in the trades comes in part from studio sources. I heard the same refrain tonight from studio side people I spoke with. But when pressed, they would eventually acknowledge both sides were still not close enough on the financials. The public optimism also comes from the natural telephone game nature of any difficult negotiating process. One person hears some vaguely positive piece of good news and by the time the story has made its way through the strike line or across the studio lot, it's been blown up into a massive change in the trajectory of the negotiations. And then there are the wild card events where someone's agent or manager calls you to say they've heard things "are close."
I have no idea if my sources on the studio side actually believe a deal is imminent. Or if they are playing the old negotiating game of setting expectations high in hopes of backing the union negotiators into a corner and they feel the pressure to settle. And there's no downside to that approach, since if it doesn't work, then the natural letdown on the union side when a deal isn't quickly made also provides some handy leverage.
From what I can tell, the truth seems to be that some progress is being made. There is some reason to be optimistic. Getting a deal done this week is possible, but much less likely than a scenario in which negotiations continue on and off through the weekend.
