Hollywood writers begin strike, late-night shows go dark

NEW YORK — Late-night TV shows including “The Tonight Show” and “The Daily Show” will begin airing reruns as unionized writers soured by Hollywood’s low pay in the streaming era went on strike Tuesday for the first time in 15 years.

The guild is seeking higher minimum pay, less thinly staffed writing rooms, shorter exclusive contracts and a reworking of residual pay — all conditions the WGA says have been diminished in the content boom driven by streaming. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the trade association that bargains on behalf of studios and production companies, said it presented an offer with “generous increases in compensation for writers as well as improvements in streaming residuals.”

The guild is seeking more compensation on the front-end of deals. Many of the back-end payments writers have historically profited by – like syndication and international licensing – have been largely phased out by the onset of streaming. More writers — roughly half — are being paid minimum rates, an increase of 16% over the last decade. The use of so-called mini-writers rooms has soared.

During the 2007 strike, late-night hosts eventually returned to the air and improvised material. Jay Leno wrote his own monologues, a move that angered union leadership. “Then there was a writers’ strike and there was nothing we could do,” Craig later recounted. “We couldn’t employ a writer to finish it. I say to myself, ‘Never again’, but who knows? There was me trying to rewrite scenes — and a writer I am not.”

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