THE WRITERS BEHIND Sesame Street have voted for a potential strike if a new labour contract isn’t reached by Friday.
The long-running popular children’s show and its breakouts are run by a non-profit. Now 35 of its workers are thinking about striking, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
They’re part of the Writers’ Guild of America, which sustained a lengthy strike, alongside actors, last year over pay, working conditions and the use of artificial technology in the industry.
Sesame Workshop – the producer of Sesame Street, Helpsters and The Not Too Late Show With Elmo – want a contract that reflects the “diversity, equity and inclusion” its shows stand for.
They said picketing will begin outside Sesame Workshop’s offices in Manhattan, New York City, on 24 April should an agreement not be reached by 19 April, but they are “hopeful” it will be sorted before then.
Sesame Street aired on PBS in the United States for nearly 50 years, until HBO struck a deal with Sesame Workshop.
Sesame Workshop is currently in a deal with HBO to produce new episodes of Sesame Street for HBO Max, a streaming service. If industrial action is taken, production woll be halted.
Late-night talk shows were off air in the States for five months last year, as the writers who create the comedic monologues and skits put their pens down.
They reached a three-year agreement with studios, producers and streaming services, which includes significant wins in the main areas writers had fought for – compensation, length of employment, size of staffs and control of artificial intelligence – matching or nearly equalling what they sought at the strike’s outset.
The union had sought minimum increases in pay and future residual earnings from shows and will get a raise of between 3.5% and 5% in those areas — more than the studios had offered.
The guild also negotiated new residual payments based on the popularity of streaming shows, where writers will get bonuses for being a part of the most popular shows on Netflix, Max and other services – a proposal studios initially rejected.
Many writers on picket lines said they were not properly paid for helping create heavily watched properties.
On AI, the writers got the regulation and control of the emerging technology they had sought.
Under the contract, raw, AI-generated storylines will not be regarded as “literary material” — a term in their contracts for scripts and other story forms a screenwriter produces.
This means they will not be competing with computers for screen credits.
Nor will AI-generated stories be considered “source” material, their contractual language for the novels, video games or other works that writers may adapt into scripts.
Writers have the right under the deal to use AI in their process if the company they are working for agrees and other conditions are met.
But companies cannot require a writer to use AI.
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