Negotiating Committee Member Adam Conover On Battle Over AI & Preservation Of The Writers Room, AMPTP Using DGA To “Undercut” WGA

Writer-comedian Adam Conover, creator and host of Adam Ruins Everything and member of the WGA Negotiating Committee, had been outspoken on social media in the run-up to the guild’s talks with AMPTP, the collective bargaining representative of the major Hollywood studios.

On the first day of the writers strike, Conover called out Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav while appearing on the company’s network CNN this morning, saying that Zaslav “was paid $250m 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.”

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Conover didn’t mince words in an interview with Deadline either. While on the WGA picket line in front of the Netflix offices, he gave his blunt assessment of the failed negotiations with the studios and their stance on AI and had a warning for the DGA, which is starting negotiations with AMPTP next week.

DEADLINE: A lot went down in the past 24 hours. How did it get to this, the writers striking today?

CONOVER: We thought in the negotiating room that they would try to make it hard for us, that they would bring us enough stuff that we would be in the position of saying, Oh, man are we going to be able to hold the union together? Are there really enough issues for us to go on strike?

But that turned out to not happen. After last Wednesday, they essentially stopped making reasonable counters of any kind. They made teeny tiny little moves, they offered stuff — like you saw on document we put out where — on AI they offered an annual meeting. That’s ludicrous. What’s going happen at that meeting? Oh hey, technology’s advancing, AI is getting good. See you next year. That’s not anything.

DEADLINE: Do you think that was maybe the studios tipping their hand that they view AI as something they want to use going forward?

CONOVER: I think that what they did was, they took an issue that we thought would be easy, because this technology is not currently usable in any way, shape, or form; its output isn’t even copyrightable. So we thought they would say, this is easy. Let’s ban it or maybe at least do a moratorium or something like that, but instead they totally stonewalled on it.

It was one of the issues that they refused. They didn’t even discuss it in the room. Like we would go in and say, You guys need to say words, make an argument about your AI proposal. They literally said nothing about it. And what that did was, it elevated the issue for us and in the minds of everybody here, because people have gotten, since we’ve started this process, more and more worried About AI. We’ve seen impacts on more and more work areas, SAG-AFTRA actors are dealing with it right now.

The only reason they would do that would be if they have a plan. I don’t know what their plan might be. But it sure sounds like in 2007 when we were saying, we need coverage for the Internet, and they were like, We don’t even know if we’re gonna do anything on the internet. We knew obviously they were. In this case, it’s a little bit more vague because I personally think the technology is completely overhyped and oversold. I don’t think you’ll ever truly be able to replace the work of a writer but I don’t put it past these companies to try and cook up some cockamamie scheme where they have an output text and hire writers to rewrite it or something like that. I think the public will hate it. I think it’d be a financial failure, but I think they might try and they could hurt a lot of writers by doing so.

We thought they were going to make it hard for us. And the shocking thing was, over the last three days in negotiations, they didn’t do that. They made it very easy by giving us nothing. They didn’t even do the thing where we expected them to try to give something a little bit maybe to screenwriters, or maybe to TV writers and leave out comedy-variety writers. They didn’t even do that. Everybody in the room said there’s nothing for me that they’ve offered. So yeah, let’s go on strike. They united the guild, and I don’t know why they did it. I think it’s terrible strategy. But that’s better than them trying to divide us, not that that would have worked.

DEADLINE: Do you think the studios are seriously prepared to talk about what’s happening with streaming residuals?

CONOVER: We are going to make them be prepared to have that conversation. The truth of the matter is that the AMPTP is an organization that is designed to not have those conversations. All of those CEOs outsource their labor decisions to [AMPTP President] Carol Lombardini and her team. And Carol Lombardini says to them, Hey, if you do agree to this, if you outsource and invest all your power in me, I’ll get you out of your annual negotiations with only a 2% bump every year, whatever it is. They’ve got some little backroom deal of how much room she has to maneuver here. And when you try to go outside of that, they just don’t have the ability to offer you that because they’re not the decision makers.

So the point of the strike is for us to go out here and withhold our labor from them. Remind them that they have nothing without us, and nothing without the Teamsters and IATSE and all the other unions standing in solidarity with us so that those CEOs are forced to come to the table and have the conversation that you’re talking about. Because you’re right, we need to have that conversation. But the conversation is a lot more than residuals. The conversation is about how, over the last 10 years, the studios and the streamers have tried to turn writing from a career into a gig job.

DEADLINE: How is this going all play out in your opinion? A studio source said to me, I don’t think this is going to be as long as 1988 but I think it’s going to be longer than 2008.

CONOVER: It’s entirely up to the companies how long we’re out. We’re completely united. We waited out the agents for a year and a half. And because we did not lose any support, as a result, we forced them to sell their f*cking production arms. We forced these huge companies to make material changes to their businesses. We have the power to do that to these companies.

We’ll be out here as long as it takes for them to realize that. Now likely what’s going to happen, if you look at how the AMPTP has scheduled the calendar, Carol is going to think, well I’m going to go in with a DGA, I’m going to say I don’t have time for you, and they’re going to make us wait out here. We can play that game. We can wait as long as she needs because writers know that this is existential.

DEADLINE: in 2007-08, eventually one of the things that saw that strike come to an end, among other factors, was that the DGA did make a deal with the AMPTP. Do you see the AMPTP trying to play a similar strategy with the DGA?

CONOVER: Well, first of all, I very much hope that DGA is on our side, and we’re in solidarity with their members. I have some concern with a statement that they put out a couple of weeks ago in effect encouraging their members to cross our picket line and saying that you could get in big trouble if you don’t cross the picket line, etc. They did issue a follow-up statement of support, so you are really going to hope that they stick to that. But Carol Lombardini is very smart and she structures these things for a reason. So the reason that she positions them — like she did in 2007 — is to undercut, even if all the leaders of the DGA don’t feel that they’re undercutting, that’s the purpose.

But the difference between 2007 and now is in 2007, we were fighting for basically one thing. There were other things on the table but the main thing was coverage of streaming and what the formulas would be as a result of that. So the DGA went in, got that deal, using our leverage of being on strike, and then negotiated a deal on residuals that we then had to accept some form of — that’s pattern bargaining, that’s how Carol does it. In this case, the stuff that we’re fighting for doesn’t even exist in the DGA contract. One of the biggest things — just take one of them — is the preservation of the writers room. The companies are trying to end the writers room.

If they have their way, five years from now, it’ll be one showrunner sending emails to freelancers to take scripts, even if they’re allowed to even do that. The companies are looking at a couple of big, high-profile examples of one showrunner writing six or eight episodes and say, Well, what if we could force everybody to work that way, that would save us a lot of money.

So we’re fighting to preserve the writers room and get it codified into our contract. That doesn’t pattern the DGA. The DGA is not going to make some deal that then Carol is going to say hey, you guys have to take this, it’s not possible to, and so that’s a really big difference. Now there’s a couple things that pattern like residuals for example, and that’s where you might start to see the interaction a little bit more. But stuff like terms for comedy-variety and Appendix A and streaming for screenwriters, fighting back against free work and being paid weekly. Those don’t exist for the DGA. So, if any undercutting is going to happen, it can’t happen on these issues.

DEADLINE: You have gotten strong support from the teamsters, IATSE, SAG-AFTRA. What would you say to the DGA leadership right now as they’re looking eight days from now to start their negotiations?

CONOVER: What I’d say is Carol Lombardini the AMPTP and the CEOs of these companies are incredibly powerful, smart, strategic, enemies of yours that are that have crafted a strategy that is designed to disempower your members and break your union. And it’s in your best interest to fight back against them with us as hard as you possibly can. I’m really glad to see the steps up that they’ve taken, and I hope they continue that and I’d love to love to see them out here.

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