Late-Night Comedy Writers Face “Oblivion” If WGA Loses Strike, Guild Negotiating Committee Member Greg Iwinski Says

deadline.com:

Late-night comedy writers are facing “oblivion” if the Writers Guild loses its eight-week-old strike, according to late-night comedy writer and WGA negotiating committee member Greg Iwinski, a former writer for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. “Friends (and sometimes reporters) ask me why the writers are still so fired up, so visible and so united two months into the strike, and my answer is easy: When the alternative is oblivion, what else can you do but fight like hell?” he said in a message sent to guild members today, the 57th day of the walkout.

And sure, comedians are prone to hyperbole, but oblivion is what late-night writers are facing without a victory in this contract.” Iwinski, who hosts a weekly, all-volunteer, YouTube Channel comedy show about the strike – which is perfectly legal under the WGA’s strike rules – wrote: “A key fight in this strike is over the future of Appendix A in an industry dominated by streamers.” In television, he noted, Appendix A in the guild’s contract covers almost everything that isn’t a movie or an episodic TV show, including late-night, soap operas, quiz and variety shows and all other non-dramatic shows. “Currently, when we work for subscription streaming services our minimum pay is completely negotiable and our residuals are insufficient.

The company response to our proposals to extend television terms to cover these kinds of shows on what are now the dominant platforms for content these days was unacceptable.

They would extend some terms to cover only comedy-variety shows, and only offer a weekly minimum rate (while allowing writers to be hired at a day rate) all at budget levels that exclude too many shows. “The AMPTP’s version of