Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Wednesday, November 1st, 2023

A SAG-AFTRA & AMPTP deal is getting closer-(ish)

Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Wednesday, November 1st, 2023. 

TODAY'S BRIEF SAG-AFTRA & AMPTP NEGOTATION RECAP
SAG-AFTRA and AMPTP negotiated for a full day today and everyone that I have spoken with so far have said that progress was made. Although sometimes "was made" is doing a lot of work in these descriptions. 

I have evolved into writing about the negotiations every day now and while it wasn't planned, almost every update features some look at what the trade coverage has looked like. Some of the reporters on the strike beat are quite good, but I think sometimes their coverage has suffered from being a little too close to the story. It can be a company town and the trades pride themselves on being company town outlets. But that can sometimes mean that you end up being used to as a way to negotiate with the other side in public during a strike.

For example, Deadline's Dominic Patten and Anthony D'Alessandro posted a piece on today's talks and here's how they framed the issues:

SAG-AFTRA chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland and AMTP president Carol Lombardini were in the driver’s seats once again today, with smaller specialized teams drilling into the details. As such, the parties appear to taking at least some of the sting out of the thorny topics of AI and what has been termed "success-based compensation" for casts of hit streaming shows and movies.

I'm not sure what taking "some of the sting out of the thorny topics of AI" means exactly. Sources I have spoken with say that some progress was made today on aspects of the AI problem. But the union negotiators have a very strong, united point of view on what they need to make an AI deal. And so far, the studios aren't there yet. 

As for the "success-base compensation" framing, that's also not quite what I have been hearing tonight. Well, it's what I have been hearing from studio sources, who claim SAG-AFTRA negotiators have loosely agreed so some sort of compensation package that would be based on "success," similar to what the WGA ended up securing.

But union sources have told me that is not accurate, although I have had trouble nailing down specifics. From what I can tell, the most recent studio proposal was a boost of somewhere between 7-8%. It’s not clear what the counter was from the union. Several sources said that it was a per-sub payment, but one much less than the previously reported proposal of 57 cents per subscriber. But I have also heard another proposal from a couple of other sources which is entirely different. So at this point, I’m not sure what the union response might have been.

Variety's Cynthia Littleton has a much briefer negotiations update, but she does highlight one of the more persistent rumors of the day:

Rumors that a deal was coming together as soon as this evening spread widely on Wednesday but were quieted by a reality check from those in the room where it is happening at SAG-AFTRA’s Miracle Mile headquarters. Sources close to the situation were wary of guessing on a timetable but all indications are that the path to a tentative agreement will be measured in days, not weeks.

I can confirm that there were all kinds of rumors floating around today that a deal might be happening as early as tonight, which obviously didn't happen. 

As best I can tell, here is where things stand. The union offered up a new proposal on the compensation front, which the studios are expected to respond to tomorrow. The expectation is that the two sides will wrangle primarily over that issue to get it resolved, then move on to the AI issues. 

The best guess from most of the people I spoke with tonight is that it's not unreasonable to hope a deal might be in place by sometime this weekend. Assuming that nothing unexpectedly goes sideways.

But the giddy headlines in the trades that a deal is imminent are a tad optimistic. While progress has been made all week during negotiations, there are still apparently some big issues left to resolve. 

THERE IS SO MUCH TO UNPACK HERE
Variety's Tatiana Siegel has a long piece on the problems plaguing the Marvel Universe and this passage on She-Hulk just left me speechless:

But some internal sources suggest Alonso was a scapegoat and point to the “She-Hulk” VFX issues as a symptom of a deeper rot — namely a lack of oversight on script development. In the original arc of “She-Hulk,” a flashback of star Tatiana Maslany’s transformation into her Hulk character didn’t take place until Episode 8, the penultimate episode. But after Marvel’s brain trust watched footage, it realized the scene needed to happen in the pilot episode so that audiences could see more of the character’s backstory early. That meant that the VFX team was tasked with fixing the mess in postproduction.

“The so-called bad VFX we see was because of half-baked scripts,” says one person involved with “She-Hulk.” “That is not Victoria. That is Kevin. And even above Kevin. Those issues should be addressed in preproduction. The timeline is not allowing the Marvel executives to sit with the material.”

All the while, Marvel was bleeding money, with a single episode of “She-Hulk” costing some $25 million, dwarfing the budget of a final-season episode of HBO’s “Game of Thrones, ” but without a similar Zeitgeist bang. The August 2022 series premiere at the El Capitan Theatre foreshadowed what was to come six months later at the “Quantumania” bow: the “She-Hulk” special effects were out of focus in multiple scenes.

$25 million an episode? That is just an insane amount of money when you are talking about a series which also has immense creative problems and unfinished VFX in multiple scenes.

Disney has spent many hundreds of millions on Star Wars and Marvel Universe streaming originals and there are maybe 3-4 that could be considered "essential." Now I get it. Disney has been unable to successfully launch a truly original streaming series, so executives saw the two franchises as a sure-fire way to drive subscriptions and buzz. And from talking with executives there in the past, one initial fear was that if the streamer had too much of a gap between new franchise originals, there would be a problem with subscriber churn. But they have made the problem so much worse.

And speaking just for myself, I resent feeling as if I have to do homework before I can watch a new Star Wars or Marvel project. For instance, look at this explanation of the new Marvels movie:

Directed by Nia DaCosta, “The Marvels” unites Larson’s heroine with two superpowered allies, Teyonah Parris’ Monica Rambeau (introduced in the 2021 Disney+ series “WandaVision”) and Iman Vellani’s Kamala Khan (first seen in the 2022 series “Ms. Marvel”). But instead of seamlessly building on the success of “Captain Marvel,” this move resulted in four weeks of reshoots to bring coherence to a tangled storyline.   

A tangled storyline? I can't imagine how that happened, given two of the movie's core characters come from two different streaming shows.

I can feel myself preparing to rant, so I'll just say this. I continue to argue that many of the problems of the streaming industry have more to do with bad management than a bad business model. 

I FEEL SEEN
Even though I only agree with about 20 percent of whatever Matt Labash is writing about, I appreciate his point of view. In his most recent newsletter, he talks about the difference between writing for himself vs. working for someone else and I pretty much agree with all of this:

When you run a solo Substack like I do, there’s no masthead to hide behind, or colleagues to share blame. If subscribers like you enough to pay for it, it’s all on you -- you’re the only one there. And if they hate you enough to cancel, the same. It’s hard for me to blame the editorial the magazine ran that week, since there was neither an editorial nor a magazine. So everything becomes a weirdly personal referendum. And I’m way more conscious of the business end of things than I used to be. But that said, after two years of doing it, it’d be hard for me to go back to the old ways. You know firsthand from working together at The Weekly Standard, which is about as good a magazine gig as existed, that we had as much editorial freedom as could be had while still working for someone. I had friends across the industry that envied what we were allowed to do. But even since then, I’ve gotten mighty used to doing what I want to do, and have yet to lose a single editorial argument with myself. I can take pieces to weird places I wouldn’t always go if I had to explain it to someone else beforehand.

If I had a TV show, that's probably what I would name it: Weird Places With Rick Ellis.

ODDS AND SODS
* Pluto has some interesting classic TV shows streaming on demand under the "CBS Classics" moniker, including The Streets Of San Francisco, Mannix, Barnaby Jones and The Fugitive. But only the first two seasons of each series.

* Stand-up comedian Taylor Tomlinson has been named the host of the upcoming CBS late night show After Midnight.

WHAT'S NEW TODAY AND TOMORROW:

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 1ST, 2023:
A Christmas Frequency (Hulu)
Behind The Attraction (Disney+)
Black Cake Series Premiere (Hulu)
Hurricane Season (Netflix)
Ink Master Season Premiere (Paramount)
Locked In (Netflix)
Love Island Games Series Premiere (Peacock)
Mysteries Of The Faith Series Premiere (Netflix)
Now And Then: The Last Beatles Song (Apple TV+)
Nuovo Olimpo (Netflix)
Reporting For Christmas (Hulu)
The Real Housewives Of Miami Season Premiere (Bravo)
This England (Britbox)
Till Murder Do Us Part: Soering Vs. Haysom (Netflix)
Voleuses (Netflix)
Wingwomen (Netflix)

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 2ND, 2023:
All The Light We Cannot See (Netflix)
Christmas Cookie Challenge Season Premiere (Food)
Christmas Holidate (ALLBLK)
Cigarette Girl Series Premiere (Netflix)
Higuita: The Path Of The Scorpion (Netflix)
Kingdom (BET+)
My Christmas Method (Hallmark Movies & Mysteries)
Onimusha Series Premiere (Netflix)
SEAL Team Season Premiere (CBS)
Unicorn Academy Series Premiere (Netflix)

Click Here to see the list of all of the upcoming premiere dates for the next few months.

SEE YOU THURSDAY!

If you have any feedback, send it along to Rick@AllYourScreens.com and follow me on Twitter @aysrick.