David Zazlav, the CEO of Warner Bros Discovery, which is,
the parent company of the network I'm talking to you on right now,
was paid $250,000,000 last year, a quarter of a billion dollars.
That's about the same level as,
what, 10,000 writers are asking him to pay all of us collectively, all right?
So I would say if you're being paid $250,000,000,
Ted Sarandos made about 50 million last year.
These companies are making enormous amounts of money.
Their profits are going up.
It's ridiculous for them to plead poverty when the writers who are making their
shows, some of them are not able to pay their rent or their mortgages.
>> You just heard from writer Adam Conover,
just ripping the CEO of Warner Discovery apart on CNN,
which, of course, is owned by Warner Discovery.
So with that said, the members of WGA, of course,
went on strike beginning Monday of this week, and they've been on strike for
three days now, and there seems to be no end in sight.
And what they want is better pay, of course, and
also something to be done ahead of time to regulate the introduction of
AI technology into the entertainment industry.
Now, I do wanna watch a little more from that interview, but
before we do, Cenk, any thoughts?
>> Yeah, look, that takes courage to say that,
he did it in a way that was smart, strategic.
He waited till a little bit later in the interview, established an amiable
relationship, and then hit her with a truth bomb that is impossible to deny.
You say you don't have enough money, she says,
one guy at the head of one company made all the money we're asking for, right?
So it's an inarguable point.
There's a great line that the anchor had at the end that I wanna tell you about
later, but more of the story.
>> Well, why don't we watch more of this exchange?
>> So the studios and the streamers have tried to
turn television writing from a career into a gig job.
Writer pay has fallen by 23% over the past ten years,
even though the company profits have gone up by 50%.
They're spending more money than ever on making these shows.
They're making more profits from them than ever.
But writers are making less money.
They're employing us for less time.
The studios are trying to eliminate the writers room.
You're probably familiar with the term the writers room.
This is a room that's existed for decades, where writers get together and
break a story and write scripts.
The companies are trying to eliminate it.
They're trying to make the room smaller.
They're trying to employ us on a freelance basis.
They'd rather we just stay home and email scripts in, and
they pay us a fee every once in a while and we can't make a living that way.
And so our proposals are to ensure that there's a writers room on every
single show.
And they have refused to even discuss that proposal with us.
Another sticking point is that we wanna make sure that writers are paid the same
in streaming as they are on television.
My first show was for True TV.
My second show was for Netflix.
The show had the exact same format, but on Netflix, we had no minimums.
We had no protections.
We were paid less.
The residuals are literally 1% of what they were.
>> Yeah, I mean, everything that he said there is true.
In fact, we live in Los Angeles.
I have friends in the entertainment industry.
In fact, one of my friends who's an actor, a pretty successful one,
wanted to share his thoughts on this.
But of course, there's some concern about retaliation.
Not a writer, an actor.
But even actors are impacted by this, right?
So I wanna read what the experience has been so far.
I know SAG-AFTRA was super weak on negotiating streaming residuals many
years/contracts ago because they thought everything was going to
stay DVD/Blu-Ray back in the day.
But if I had my current career 15 years ago,
I wouldn't have to work a day job based on pre-streaming residuals alone.
Now, however, my streaming residuals are literally pennies on the dollar versus
previous terrestrial residual income.
He also made a really interesting point about the last writer strike and
what happened.
Basically during the last writer strike, we didn't have writers, all of a sudden
the studio started putting out reality shows where you don't need the writers.
And that's when reality shows started to really blow up, including The Apprentice.
And that gave a platform to Donald Trump,
who of course became more of a household name.
>> Yeah, and then fought against workers rights and created this vicious.
>> Exactly.
>> It's just a tiny little consequence.
It's not really a consequence of it.
I don't want people to get the wrong impression they were right
to go on strike.
>> Absolutely.
>> It's just ironic little thing there.
>> Maybe better to just avoid having the writers need to go on strike.
Maybe work out a deal that's workable with the actual writers here.
>> Yeah, so look, Netflix is not yet profitable, but
Amazon was not profitable for a long time and then became enormously profitable.
And that's because they get tons and tons of investor money.
You can't say, hey, look, I'm not profitable, but
then pay your CEO $50 million, right?
And they pay giant sums of money for these projects that they buy on Netflix and
all the other streaming services, especially the top comedians,
just to do anti trans jokes.
You get like, I don't know, a million dollars per antitrans joke, I think, for
the comedians on Netflix, etcetera.
But anyways, so it's not like they don't have money to throw around,
they just don't wanna give it to the writers.
So you have to be very clear about that.
And then Adam Conover just brilliant job in that interview.
And at the end, the anchor on CNN owned by Warner Discovery goes because,
if you remember, Adam's show was called Adam Ruins Everything, okay?
And so the anchor was like, Adam, thank you for coming on and
ruining my career as well.
[LAUGH] >> Hilarious.
>> Which is really funny, right?
So give the anchor credit there.
>> So, a few more updates.
So, as I mentioned, the strike began Monday of this week.
There could be even more pain ahead for the studios, but
for now, the way they're performing in the stock market is not so great.
So yesterday, May 3, for instance, the share values of several entertainment
companies dropped, amassing a loss of 10 billion for
brands such as Paramount Global, Comcast, AMC Networks.
However, companies such as Netflix, Disney, and Warner Brothers Discovery
remain stable or managed to increase the value of their shares slightly.
That being said, the entire stock market was, in fact, down that day, so
I'm sure that's part of the equation as well.
Now, furthermore, if the studios fail to reach an agreement with the WGA soon,
then they could have a lot more trouble on their
hands because there are others that are looking to strike.
So let's talk about that.
SAG-AFTRA and the Director's Guild of America have contracts that prohibit them
from joining the writers strike, but both of their contracts end on June 30th.
Their solidarity could fully shut down Hollywood, and make executives agree
to the writers' demands and negotiations are about to start.
DGA starts negotiations on May 10th, and SAG-AFTRA's start on June 7th.
So buckle up.
Going back to my friend, he commented on this as well, and he says,
regardless, these greedy corporations have to adjust and kick down.
DGA and SAG-AFTRA contracts are up in June.
If the studios and networks don't sort out the WGA deal,
the whole industry will be on strike and nobody wins.
>> Yeah, and then the stock market dips will be bigger and probably more lasting.
But there is a good irony there, which is that the traditional cable companies and
television networks will be hurt more than the streaming services cuz they get
hit with a double whammy cuz people are already worried about their ability to
survive in the new digital age, right?
So I don't think that's a thing that Netflix executives,
etcetera, will take into account.
But this is a giant, giant deal for all these media companies.
And if I was them, I would definitely try to resolve it before June 30th,
cuz if all the actors and all the hosts and everybody else goes on strike,
then they're really screwed.
But I don't know.
Short term greed drives everything in the markets.
>> It is pretty incredible how much that's the case,
even knowing that the short term greed could translate to long term pain.