America East: Last News

The Writers Guild of America East said Tuesday that its members at MSNBC have ratified their first collective bargaining agreement.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer The Writers Guild of America (WGA) and other unions representing film and TV writers and journalists sent a letter to Congress Thursday urging protections for their industries in any legislation regarding Artificial Intelligence. Addressed to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the letter was co-signed by the NewsGuild-CWA, Writers Guild of America East (WGAE), Writers Guild of America West (WGAW), and National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians (NABET-CWA).

The Writers Guild of America East has tapped Sam Wheeler as executive director.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer The Writers Guild of America East has tapped Sam Wheeler as the union’s new executive director. Chosen by the WGA East council as successor to longtime WGA East leader Lowell Peterson, who exited his post last October after the conclusion of the writers strike, Wheeler enters the role after serving as the national executive director of the American Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA) since 2022.

Writers Guild of America East members are reacting to today’s news of the shuttering of G/O Media‘s Jezebel after an unsuccesful attempt to sell the site. The closure came amid word that parent company G/O Media was laying off 23 staffers, including Jezebel’s team.

Cynthia Littleton Business Editor Lowell Peterson‘s tenure as executive director of the Writers Guild of America East was destined to be bookended by strikes. After 15 years at the helm, Peterson will step down from his post as of Nov. 15 when his current three-year contract expires.

Writers have officially approved their deal with the studios.

Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, running unopposed, has been elected president of the WGA East. Cullen, who until now had been VP of the guild’s Film/TV/Streaming sector, succeeds Michael Winship, who chose not to seek re-election.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer The Writers Guild of America East (WGAE) members have elected Lisa Takeuchi Cullen as its new president. Cullen, who was an unopposed candidate for the posititon, takes over for outgoing president Michael Winship, who announced his decision to not seek reelection of his longtime post over the summer. “I am honored to become the next President of the Writers Guild of America East,” Takeuchi Cullen said in a statement.

This is Day 130 of the WGA strike and Day 57 of the SAG-AFTRA strike.

The scene outside Silvercup Studios on Thursday was the same as it has been for weeks.

The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously today to approve a resolution in support of the Writers Guild’s ongoing strike and urged the studios “to come to the bargaining table and reach a fair deal with the workers of the WGA.” The strike is now in its 60th day.

The head of the country’s largest labor union joined striking Writers Guild film and television writers at a rally on Monday outside the New York City offices of streaming giant Amazon and said the writers’ cause has the support of workers from across unionized labor. 

Striking film and television writers got a signal boost on Thursday from U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (d-NY), who spoke at a rally outside the East Coast offices of Paramount Global in the busy heart of Manhattan’s Times Square. 

It was a tale of two coasts today, as WGA picketers and their allies targeted Disney’s upfront presentation in New York and also the company’s Burbank lot in Los Angeles. And the two scenes were very different.

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer The Writers Guild of America West will begin picketing Tuesday afternoon outside of Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Warner Bros., and the other major studios in Los Angeles, after a strike was called on Monday night. The Writers Guild of America East, based in New York, put out a schedule for the “first two weeks of picketing,” which will begin on Tuesday at the Peacock NewFront on 5th Avenue. The WGAE also plans to picket outside Netflix headquarters in New York on Wednesday. The WGA called a strike Monday night, after the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers announced that negotiations had concluded for the day without a deal. The current three-year contract expires at midnight on Monday.

WGA East-represented writers, editors and producers at Spotify’s Gimlet and Parcast podcasts are blasting their parent company for having created “chaos instead of treating employees with the dignity and respect they deserve” when it announced on Thursday that it would cancel 11 podcasts and eliminate about 5% of its podcast employees.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Spotify terminated at least 38 employees across the Gimlet and Parcast studios as the company canceled 11 original shows, according to the unions representing employees of the divisions. In a joint statement Friday, the two unions said the layoffs represented about 30% of their members. “These aren’t small cuts, they are massive restructurings,” the Gimlet and Parcast unions said. Some Spotify employees were given as little as an hour to close out their work, according to the unions. The statement does not allege that the company violated the terms of its agreements with the unions. “Yesterday, Spotify chose to create chaos instead of treating employees with the dignity and respect they deserve,” said the Gimlet and Parcast unions, both of which are affiliated with the Writers Guild of America East. “The fact that Spotify chose to handle these cuts in this way shows their disregard for both their employees and their audiences.”

Wilson Chapman editorThe Writers Guild Initiative, a non-profit organization affiliated with the Writers Guild of America East, has unveiled a new Support Staff Training Program for aspiring TV writers that is set to launch next month.The WGI’s charter is to support people from marginalized communities who are looking to go into screenwriting. The Support Staff Program, funded by a grant from NBCUniversal, provides individuals with two career tracks on the support-staff level: writers assistant and script coordinator.

Cynthia Littleton Business EditorLeaders of the WGA East have reached a compromise after months of friction over the membership base of the union that represents film and TV writers on the East Coast.The WGA East council voted unanimously to pursue major changes to the union’s constitution to allow for different classifications of membership. The council is recommending changes that will be voted on in a member referendum later this spring.All of this is an effort to settle the divide over the WGA East’s big push during the last decade to organize writers for digital news and entertainment outlets.“The WGAE Council has spent the last several months working together and with an outside facilitator.

Cynthia Littleton Business EditorWriters for the ABC quiz show “The Chase” have gone on strike against producer ITV America in a contract dispute.The Writers Guild of America East, which represents the writers, asserts that ITV America has refused to abide by some of the terms of the collective bargaining agreement that covers the show. ITV America could not immediately be reached for comment.The WGA has publicly targeted ITV America for the past few weeks over “The Chase” dispute.