While the SAG-AFTRA national board and the union's members still need to approve the new contract, it appears that barring a last-minute implosion, the SAG-AFTRA strike against the studios is over.
It was a record-breaking strike in a number of ways and given the changes in technology and the business itself since the last prolonged actors' strike, it's not surprising that a number of the old ways of navigating an entertainment industry work stoppage needed to be relearned.
So here are four takeaways that I absorbed from the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, in no particular order:
1) The SAG-AFTRA Negotiating Committee And Their Supporters Used The Media Very Astutely
I'll have more to write about this in the coming days, but I don't think most observers at the time understood how precarious the consensus was at times inside the SAG-AFTRA negotiating committee. More than once some members pushed hard internally to agree to the deal that was available at the time. And more than once, committee members who believed there was still a better deal to be had not only pushed back in private conversations. But some of them used careful leaks to the press as a way to motivate the full union membership and pressure wavering committee members into staying the course.
Part of this effort I suspect was just a consequence of the incredibly engaged world we live in. Social media, messaging apps, and other technology make it very easy to push messaging across the industry if needed.
But members of SAG-AFTRA (helped by members of the WGA who had gone through this before) had some previous experience to draw on and to use as a cautionary tale. There was a point when several CAA agents and some of their top acting clients organized a group call to union negotiators in which they pushed for a resolution of the strike and offered up some impressively bad "ideas" on how to proceed.
And as that call from top actors was taking place, several other lower-level actors were passing around an email requesting union negotiators finalize the current proposal from AMPTP.
Union negotiators were reminded that this type of effort had taken place in previous strikes and that knowledge helped craft their response.
WGA leaders were able to point to their similar experience during the 2008 strike when a group of about 30 top showrunners and writers confronted union negotiators and told them to craft a settlement or they would break the strike (the fact that many of these people never suffered any public blowback still astounds me).
But the response from some SAG-AFTRA members illustrated the differences between 2023 and previous negotiations. An effort was launched to post a public open letter of support for union negotiators signed by union members. And when that open letter gathered more than 4,000 signatures within 24 hours, that effort - along with some fairly impressive public mocking of the "A-level" actor's counter-proposal - convinced the wavering members of the SAG-AFTRA negotiating committee to stand firm.
A similar dynamic played out over the last week, as some members of the negotiating committee reportedly were in favor of accepting the then-current offer from the studios. And as if by magic, a story surfaced that highlighted what writer David Slack later described on Twitter as the "zombie clause" - a proposal by studios that would allow them to use the digital likenesses of deceased actors without having to obtain consent from the actor's estate.
As you might imagine, once that proposal surfaced publicly, SAG-AFTRA members went ballistic, and opposition inside the negotiating committee to settling without gaining more ground on the AI issues hardened.
It was an example of using the press in a way that moved forward an agenda without providing an overall look at what was going on behind the scenes.
2) AMPTP Misread The Moment
Now I will say upfront that anyone trying to negotiate with striking workers while a group of egotistical CEOs look over your shoulder is a thankless job at best. And members of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA are always going to criticize the effectiveness and negotiating abilities of AMPTP's Carol Lombardini.
But what has struck me in recent weeks is the number of studio sources I've spoken with who told me they believe Lombardini and other negotiators seriously miscalculated the most effective way to come to an agreement with striking workers.
"There seemed to be this belief that two unions would fold under economic pressures," one top streaming executive told me last week. "There didn't seem to be a recognition of the pent-up anger that had built up inside the unions. Refusing to talk, believing that would pressure them to fold was an unforced error. It wasted time and it cost all of us money."
To be fair, these delays have worked during past industry negotiations. So trying them one more time wasn't the world's dumbest idea. But once it was clear that refusing to negotiate for an extended period wasn't going to provide the expected leverage, Lombardini and crew should have pivoted.
3) Just Because Someone Will Talk To You Doesn't Mean You Should Print What You're Told
I spent a LOT of time working industry sources during this strike. Multiple hours every day trying to talk to new people, circling back around with people I've spoken with before, and trying to make sense of conflicting narratives that begin to feel like a real-life version of Rashomon. It's easy to get spun or to get a detail wrong that ends up making you look like a buffoon.
But just as bad is when you report something that you should know is being said in order to try and spin the other side. Repeating some flamboyant quote with no context just because someone "leaked" it to you isn't journalistic malpractice. But you should have to be sent to a corner by yourself for a while for a reporting timeout.
For instance, if you are reporting that the latest deal from the studios is the "last and final offer" without any context - especially if you are labeling it as "exclusive" - you have failed a basic test in how to be a useful journalist.
It's fine to use unnamed sources - obviously, I had to do it a lot during the strikes. But when someone declines to speak on the record, it's incumbent on the reporter to ask themselves why that is the case. And perhaps if printing comments with any additional framing leaves you at least indirectly being used.
Early on in the SAG-AFTRA strike, quotes were appearing in some of the trade outlets that didn't even identify if the source came from the union or the studio side. And that basic level of identification should be the bare minimum requirement during any reporting of a story that includes two polarized sides.
4) AMPTP Is More That Just The 'Gang Of Four' CEOs
I spent some years as a financial reporter and I know first-hand how easy it is for reporters to develop a bit of Stockholm Syndrome when it comes to the way they think about high-profile industry executives. And that trend was also often in play with entertainment industry reporters during both Hollywood strikes when even a number of veteran journalists spent an inordinate amount of time focused on the participation (or lack thereof) of Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, Disney CEO Bob Iger, and NBCUniversal Studio Group chairman and chief content officer Donna Langley in the negotiations.
The Penske-owned trades began referring to the executives as the "Gang of Four" and the underlying message was that these were the executives whose participation guided negotiations and whose presence mattered most when it came to crafting the terms of a final deal.
And while the quartet did have a continued impact on the negotiations - especially when the egos of some of them came into play - multiple sources have told me that other players kept a lower public profile while still setting the framework for some of the discussions. Amazon's executives were deeply invested in the AI discussion and I understand that late objections over AI by Amazon and fellow tech company Apple almost scuttled the WGA deal. Both companies (along with Netflix) were also reportedly primary movers behind the hard line taken by the studios in negotiations over AI points in the later stages of the SAG-AFTRA negotiations.
Studio sources have told me that while it might not have been apparent at the time on the union side, reticence from those companies had led to a stalemate over the "zombie clause" issue and at least one smaller compensation issue. And it wasn't until several union negotiating committee members reached out quietly to studio reps earlier this week that additional changes were able to be made.
According to several sources, that process involved convincing at least one of the companies to agree to terms they had previously been resisting. "I think some of us had a feeling this could all fall apart and in a late-night Zoom call, X (I agreed not to identify the exec) was told they either had to agree or the union was likely to vote no."
5) As It Turns Out, You Can Cover A Hollywood Strike Pretty Well From The Midwest
During previous strikes, reporters had to be located deep in the heart of Hollywood in order to understand and unravel the complexities of the strike.
I live in the Twin Cities and while I used to live on the West Coast and have longtime friends in the industry, effectively reporting on the strikes from halfway across the country seemed like a daunting task.
What I discovered was that I had a couple of advantages that overcame the lack of physical proximity to the picket lines.
Modestly speaking, I have some really great studio sources. I spent part of my journalism career doing hard news and covering financial topics and Wall Street. I have known a number of top industry execs since they were working as someone's assistant a decade or two ago. So we have ongoing relationships that allowed me to have frank discussions with people who don't normally talk to the press.
And the consolidation in the trade press also turned out to be an advantage. A lot has happened between the 2008 strike and 2023. Penske Media now owns the bulk of Hollywood's trades and that common ownership left them with some editorial blind spots. It also left many striking union members with a sense the Penske outlets were unwilling to alienate the studios which provided them with content and advertising money.
As a small independent one-man band, striking WGA and SAG-AFTRA members were initially resistant to speak with me about any issues of substance. But as people read my reporting and felt that it was fair and accurate, they opened up to me. Which allowed me to break some stories I might not have had access to if I worked for one of the trades. For instance, I think this story I posted last Saturday about the behind the scenes wranglings over AI held up pretty well this week.
I've learned a lot during the SAG-AFTRA strike (and during the WGA one as well) and I met some great people. I'd like to say that hopefully, this opportunity won't come along again anytime soon. But with those animation and Teamster contracts up next year....sigh.
