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      Emma Thompson Is Right: The Word ‘Content’ Is Rude

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      The term may be popular in an age of blurring lines between platforms, but the Hollywood strikes have shown how the phrase can devalue creative work.Over the past couple of years, I’ve spent a disproportionate amount of time thinking about a scene from the 1986 Rodney Dangerfield vehicle “Back to School.” He stars as Thornton Melon, a self-made millionaire entrepreneur who, per the title, returns to finish his university education alongside his freshman son. On the first day of his intro to business course, Professor Philip Barbay (Paxton Whitehead) explains that they’ll spend the semester creating and running a fictional manufacturing company. “What’s the product?” asks the pragmatic Melon, who won’t let the point drop.“Let’s just say they’re widgets,” snaps the professor.“What’s a widget?” asks Melon.“It’s a fictional product,” Barbay replies. “It doesn’t matter.”At some point a few years back, an unholy union of like-minded tech bros, studio suits, media water-carriers and social media personalities settled on their own “widget,” a catchall phrase that would both encompass and minimize the various forms of entertainment they touch: “content.” And when news broke on Sunday night that the monthslong Writers Guild of America strike was coming to an end, Variety, the industry bible, gave this term its most skin-crawling deployment to date, noting that the W.G.A. strike had taken “a heavy toll across the content industry.”“No, absolutely not,” tweeted the TV writer and comedian Mike Drucker. “We’re not calling it ‘the content industry’ now, you psychopaths.”In fact, Variety itself had run, just a few days earlier, a pointed rebuke to the term from no less an authority than the Oscar-winning actor and screenwriter Emma Thompson. “To hear people talk about ‘content’ makes me feel like the stuffing inside a sofa cushion,” she said at the Royal Television Society conference in Britain last week.“It’s just a rude word for creative people,” she added. “I know there are students in the audience: You don’t want to hear your stories described as ‘content’ or your acting or your producing described as ‘content.’ That’s just like coffee grounds in the sink or something.”Thompson’s not only right about the implications of the phrasing. She’s right about the real-world impact of what is, make no mistake, a devaluing of the creative process. Those who defend its use will insist that we need some kind of catchall phrase for the things we watch, as previously crisp lines have blurred between movies and television, between home and theatrical exhibition and between legacy and social media.But these paradigm shifts require more clarity in our language, not less. A phrase like “streaming movie” or “theatrical release” or “documentary podcast” communicates what, where and why with far more precision than gibberish like “content,” and if you want to put everything under one tent, “entertainment” is right there. But studio and streaming executives, who are perhaps the primary users and abusers of the term, love to talk about “content” because it’s so wildly diminutive. It’s a quick and easy way to minimize what writers, directors and actors do, to act as though entertainment (or, dare I say it, art) is simply churned out — and could be churned out by anyone, sentient or not. It’s just content, it’s just widgets, it’s all grist for the mill. Talking about “entertainment” is dangerous because it takes talent to entertain; no such demands are made of “content,” and the industry’s increasing interest in the possibilities of writing via artificial intelligence (one of the sticking points of the writers’ strike) makes that crystal clear.Perhaps the finest example of this school of thought can be seen at Warner Bros. Discovery, where David Zaslav ascended to the throne of chief executive by overseeing the Discovery Channel’s transition from nature documentaries to reality swill. The “content”-ization of that conglomerate’s holdings is the only reasonable explanation for the decision to rename HBO Max as simply Max — removing the prestigious legacy media brand that most clearheaded, marginally intelligent people would presume to be an asset. It lost 1.8 million subscribers in the process, but that’s merely the battle; it won the war, because when you visit Max now, the front-page carousel is a combination of scripted series, HBO documentaries, true crime and reality competition shows. It’s all on equal footing; it’s all content. But “Casablanca,” “Succession” and “Dr. Pimple Popper” are not the same thing — and the programmers of a service that pretends otherwise are abdicating their responsibility as curators.The service also showed its hand with the baffling decision (later corrected, following threats from the writers’ and directors’ unions) to lump together all of a production’s writers, producers and directors under the single classification of “creators” — terminology that similarly attempts to simplify and minimize the hard work of writing and directing, while simultaneously elevating the wildly divergent efforts of social media personalities and Instagram influencers who will breathlessly brand themselves “content creators.” You’ll hear tech “geniuses” and “innovative” chief executives referring to showrunners and filmmakers with the same terminology, and it’s nonsensical. Martin Scorsese and Logan Paul are not in the same line of work. In practical terms, “content creator” neatly accomplishes two things at once: It lets people who make garbage think they’re making art, and tells people who make art that they’re making garbage.Perhaps this is all just semantics, an old man yelling at clouds about a shift in thinking and classification. But the ubiquity of “content” is no organic evolution; this is more complicated, and frankly more depressing, than that. Language matters. The way we talk about things affects how we think and feel about them. So when journalists regurgitate purposefully reductive language, and when their viewers and readers consume and parrot it, they’re not adopting some zippy buzzword. They’re doing the bidding of people in power, and diminishing the work that they claim to love. More

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      Hollywood Turns to Actors’ Strike After Writers Agree to Deal

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      The studios and the actors’ union haven’t spoken for more than two months, but a deal is needed before the entertainment industry can fully return.Hollywood’s actors are back in the spotlight.With screenwriters reaching a tentative agreement with the major entertainment studios on a new labor deal on Sunday night, one big obstacle stands in the way of the film and TV industry roaring back to life: ending the strike with tens of thousands of actors.The two sides have not spoken in more than two months, and no talks are scheduled.Leaders of SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union, have indicated a willingness to negotiate, but the studios made a strategic decision in early August to focus on reaching a détente with the writers first. A big reason was the rhetoric of Fran Drescher, the president of the actors’ union, who made one fiery speech after another following the strike, including one in which she denounced studio executives as “land barons of a medieval time.”“Eventually, the people break down the gates of Versailles,” Ms. Drescher said after the actors’ strike was called in July. “And then it’s over. We’re at that moment right now.”Ms. Drescher has been less vocal in recent weeks, however. Only a resolution with the actors will determine when tens of thousands of workers — including camera operators, makeup artists, prop makers, set dressers, lighting technicians, hairstylists, cinematographers — return to work.The actors’ union offered congratulations to the Writers Guild of America, which represents more than 11,000 screenwriters, in a statement on Sunday night, adding that it was eager to review the tentative agreement with the studios. Still, it said it remained “committed to achieving the necessary terms for our members.”With a tentative deal in hand, the Writers Guild suspended picketing. But protests by actors will begin again on Tuesday, after a break for Yom Kippur on Monday. “We need everyone on the line Tuesday-Friday,” the actress Frances Fisher, a member of the SAG-AFTRA negotiating committee, said on Sunday on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “Show us your #Solidarity!”Dozens of Writers Guild members vowed to support the actors. “I know there’s a huge sign of relief reverberating through the town right now, but it’s not over for any of us until SAG-AFTRA gets their deal,” Amy Berg, a Writers Guild strike captain, wrote on X.Their support will go only so far, however. Writers Guild negotiators were unsuccessful in receiving the contractual right to honor other unions’ picket lines; writers will be required to return to work, perhaps before a ratification vote is final.It has been 74 days since the actors’ union and representatives of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of the studios, have talked. That will probably soon change given the high stakes of salvaging the 2024 theatrical box office, which will be in considerable jeopardy should Hollywood not be able to restart production within the next month. The TV production window for the remainder of the year is also closing, given the coming holidays.Restarting talks with the actors’ union is a bit more complicated than it sounds. For a start, SAG-AFTRA officials will need time to scrutinize the deal points achieved by the Writers Guild; those wins and compromises will inform a new bargaining strategy for the actors. Also, talks between studios and writers restarted only after leaders on both sides spent time back-channeling about the thorniest issues and seeing if there was a willingness to negotiate. Studios are likely to try the same strategy with the actors.The soonest that negotiations between actors and the studios could restart is next week, according to a person directly involved in the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the strike.Neither SAG-AFTRA nor the studio alliance commented on Monday.“There’s tremendous pressure on both sides to get this done,” said Bobby Schwartz, a partner at Quinn Emanuel and a longtime entertainment lawyer who has represented several of the major studios. “The deal that the Writers Guild and the studios struck economically could have been worked out in May, June. It didn’t need to go this long. I think the membership of SAG-AFTRA is going to say we’ve been out of work for months, we want to go back to work, we don’t want to be the ones that are keeping everybody else on the sidelines.”The dual strikes by the writers and the actors — the first time that has happened since 1960 — have effectively shut down TV and film production for months. The fallout has been significant, both inside and outside the industry. California’s economy alone has lost more than $5 billion, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom.Warner Bros. Discovery said this month that the impact from the labor disputes would reduce its adjusted earnings for the year by $300 million to $500 million. Additionally, share prices for other major media companies like Disney and Paramount have taken a hit in recent months.The industry took a meaningful step toward stabilization on Sunday night, though, with the tentative deal between the writers and studios all but ending a 146-day strike.The deal still needs to be approved by union leadership and ratified by rank-and-file screenwriters. “I’m waiting impatiently to see what the exact language is around A.I.,” said Joseph Vinciguerra, a Writers Guild member and a professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.The approval vote by union leadership is expected on Tuesday.Though the fine print of the terms has not been released, the agreement has much of what the writers had demanded, including increases in compensation for streaming content, concessions from studios on minimum staffing for television shows and guarantees that artificial intelligence technology will not encroach on writers’ credits and compensation.“We can say, with great pride, that this deal is exceptional — with meaningful gains and protections for writers in every sector of the membership,” the Writers Guild’s negotiating committee said in an email to members.On Monday, President Biden released a statement applauding the deal, saying it would “allow writers to return to the important work of telling the stories of our nation, our world — and of all of us.”The prospective writers’ deal should provide a blueprint for the actors, since many of their demands are similar.Union leaders for the actors said their compensation levels, as well as their working conditions, were worsened by the rise of streaming. Like screenwriters, actors have been terrified by the prospects of artificial intelligence. They are worried that it could be used to create digital replicas of their likenesses — or that performances could be digitally altered — without payment or approval, and are seeking significant guardrails to protect against that.The actors, however, have had several demands that the studios balked at, including a revenue-sharing agreement for successful streaming shows. The actors have also asked for significant wage increases, including an 11 percent raise in the first year of a new contract. The studios last proposed a 5 percent raise.Though the entertainment industry had been bracing for a work stoppage by the writers going back to the beginning of the year, the actors’ uncharacteristic resolve this past summer caught studio executives off guard.The actors last went on strike in 1980. By comparison, the writers previously walked out in 2007 for 100 days.The first worrying sign came in June when more than 60,000 actors authorized a walkout with 98 percent of the vote — a margin that even eclipsed the writers’ strike authorization. Then, as bargaining began, the studios saw the actors’ list of demands. Union leaders handed over a list that totaled 48 pages, nearly triple the size of their asks during the last contract negotiations in 2020.While bargaining was going on, more than 1,000 actors, including Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence and Ben Stiller, signed a letter to guild leadership saying that “we are prepared to strike.” The union called for a strike a little more than two weeks later. More

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      David McCallum, Actor in ‘NCIS’ and ‘The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,’ Dies at 90

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      An experienced character actor, he found fame in the 1960s as the enigmatic Illya Kuryakin, and again in the 2000s as an eccentric medical examiner on “N.C.I.S.”David McCallum, the Scottish-born actor who became a surprise sensation as the enigmatic Russian spy Illya Kuryakin on “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” in the 1960s and found television stardom again almost 40 years later on the hit series “N.C.I.S.,” died on Monday in New York. He was 90.“N.C.I.S.” announced his death in a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. The announcement did not include any further information.Trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, Mr. McCallum was an experienced character actor who could use an accent or an odd piece of clothing to give depth to a role. He played a wide range of parts across theater, film and television, from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in Central Park in 2000 to the voice of Professor Paradox on the animated television series “Ben 10: Ultimate Alien,” a decade later.He was hired in 1964 to play Illya Kuryakin, the Russian-accented sidekick of Robert Vaughn’s Napoleon Solo, on “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,” a tongue-in-cheek series about secret agents working for the fictional United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. His part was meant to be small; he had just four lines in the first episode. He suggested that Illya be made more interesting by having him be closemouthed about his personal life (“Nobody knows what Illya Kuryakin does when he goes home at night,” he told one interviewer) and somewhat antagonistic to Solo.The writers began to build up his character, and he became a fixture of the series and a two-time Emmy Award nominee. Somewhat to his annoyance, he also became a sex symbol.With his mysterious air, his Beatle haircut and his trademark black turtleneck, Mr. McCallum was a magnet for teenage fans. Sent on a publicity junket for the show to Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge in 1965, he was mobbed by screaming female students and had to be rescued by police officers.“McCallum’s motorcades are now, by order of the police chiefs of the cities he visits, forbidden to stop anywhere along the line of drive,” The New York Times reported in a 1965 profile. “If the entourage slowed, there would be carnage in the streets.”“The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” ended in 1968, and Mr. McCallum retreated happily to lower-profile roles. He continued to work steadily, mostly in B-movies and in supporting parts on television. He also played the title role in the short-lived series “The Invisible Man” (1975-76) and Emperor Joseph II in a revival of “Amadeus” on Broadway in 1999.But everywhere he went, he said, the Russian secret agent stalked him. “It’s been 30 years, but I can’t escape him,” he told The Times in 1998. “Illya Kuryakin is there 24 hours a day.”In 2003, the Russian shadow finally met his match in the bow-tied, bespectacled and eccentric medical examiner Donald Mallard, better known as Ducky, on the hit CBS crime series “N.C.I.S.” He remained with the show, which consistently ranked in the Nielsen Top 10, for two decades. He was still a member of the cast at his death.Mr. McCallum as the eccentric medical examiner Donald Mallard, known as Ducky, on the CBS crime series “N.C.I.S,” a role he played for 20 years.Monty Brinton/CBSIn interviews, Mr. McCallum said that besides Julius Caesar, Dr. Mallard was his favorite role, in part because it taught him so much about forensics. He studied with pathologists in Los Angeles and even sat in on autopsies, learning enough that the show’s writers would ask him for technical advice.David Keith McCallum Jr. was born on Sept. 19, 1933, into a musical family in Glasgow. His father was the first violinist for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London; his mother, Dorothy Dorman, was a cellist. He would later tell interviewers that his Scotch Presbyterian upbringing had left him emotionally circumscribed.“We Scots, we tend to be awfully tight inside,” he told TV Guide in 1965. “It has hurt me as an actor to be so — so naturally restricted.”Expected to follow in the family footsteps and pursue a career in music, he enrolled in the Royal Academy of Music to study oboe. But he found himself drawn to acting and switched to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. (He never completely lost interest in music, however; at the height of his “U.N.C.L.E.” fame, Capitol Records released several albums under his name, on which he conducted instrumental renditions of pop hits.)Mr. McCallum was drafted into the British military in 1951 and served two years, including 10 months in what is now Ghana as a small-arms expert. Not long after his discharge, he signed with the Rank Organization, a British production company, and began acting both in movies and on television.He met Jill Ireland, already a rising actress in Britain, when they were both cast in the Rank production “Robbery Under Arms” in 1957. He proposed seven days after they met, and they married that spring. In 1961, when he was cast as Judas Iscariot in “The Greatest Story Ever Told” (the movie would not be completed and released until 1965), the couple moved to Los Angeles.They appeared to flourish. They had three children. She became a busy TV actress and made several guest appearances on “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,” playing three different characters.But the strain of Mr. McCallum’s stardom took a toll on their marriage, and she left him for the actor Charles Bronson, whom she had met when Mr. McCallum and Mr. Bronson were both filming “The Great Escape” (1963). Less than a year after their divorce in 1967, Mr. McCallum married Katherine Carpenter, a model.She survives him. Further information about his survivors was not immediately available. Mr. McCallum and his wife lived in Manhattan. The Associated Press said that CBS said he died at a Manhattan hospital but did not explain why he had been hospitalized.When “N.C.I.S.” made Mr. McCallum a television star for the second time, he found fame much less oppressive than he had the first time. “In New York now I leave 15 minutes — because I walk everywhere in New York — between appointments because I am going to be stopped on the street to talk about N.C.I.S. for at least 15 minutes,” he told BBC Radio in a 2009 interview.“I love it,” he said, when asked if he ever grew tired of that kind of attention. “I’ve never got fed up with anything in my whole life.” More

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      The Best True Crime to Stream: Women Who Do Wrong

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      By and large, women and girls are the victims of violent crimes, not the perpetrators. But not always. Here are four picks across TV, film and podcast that turn the tables.If there’s one constant across the true crime genre, it’s that women and girls do not fare well. For those of us who follow it, there’s no avoiding or softening the horrific fates that often befall them. True crime, after all, is real life. And in the United States, men accounted for nearly 80 percent of arrests involving violent crimes in 2019, according to the F.B.I.; men also made up 88 percent of the arrests in instances of murder and non-negligent manslaughter that year.That said, there is a much smaller subset of true crime that is perhaps more gripping because it’s so rare: crimes perpetrated by women and even girls.Here are four picks you can watch or listen to:Television“Snapped”There are over 600 episodes across 32 seasons of this Oxygen series, which has been a true crime staple since its debut in 2004. Sure, “Snapped” has all the addictively cheesy trappings of bingeable, guilty-pleasure viewing — indulgent voice-over narration, abundant re-enactments. (The tagline? “From socialites to secretaries, female killers share one thing in common: They all snapped.”)But what this show delivers cannot be found anywhere else. Each episode explores a crime committed by a woman — crimes you probably would never have heard about otherwise, in part because they happen in America’s nooks and crannies. The stories are largely told through interviews with those involved, often including the criminals or victims themselves. And you get an entire story in about 45 minutes.While there are some re-emerging themes — namely, women who feel trapped in their lives — the crimes and motivations are expansive. Seasons 12 through 32 are streaming on Peacock, and new episodes and reruns are broadcast on Oxygen.DOCUSERIES“Evil Genius”The bizarre details of the crimes at the heart of this four-part 2018 Netflix series still linger in my mind: In 2003, Brian Wells, a pizza delivery guy, entered a small-town Pennsylvania bank wearing a collar bomb and carrying a cane fashioned into a shotgun. He produced a lengthy note demanding $250,000. Wells then failed to complete a complex scavenger hunt that presumably would have ended with a code or key to unlock the bomb affixed around his neck. News footage of him sitting on the street pleading with officers as the explosive ticks down is unforgettable. But this is just one layer of an onion that grows only more rotten.Directed by Barbara Schroeder and executive produced by Jay and Mark Duplass, “Evil Genius: The True Story of America’s Most Diabolical Bank Heist” quickly turns its focus to Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, the brilliant, terrifying, mentally unwell “evil genius” of the title. The life of Diehl-Armstrong, who had a string of dead boyfriends behind her, is explored in detail, uncovering a winding tale that never feels fully resolved.Documentary“I Love You, Now Die”Not long ago, this strange and sad story could have been the premise for a “Black Mirror” episode. Over thousands of text messages exchanged between two Massachusetts teenagers, Michelle Carter and Conrad Roy III, from 2012 to 2014, a tragedy unfolds that culminates in Roy’s suicide and Carter’s trial for her role in his death.In the two-part 2019 HBO documentary film “I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth v. Michelle Carter,” the director Erin Lee Carr does the difficult job of centering the teenagers’ mind-set. Carr fills the screen with the texts sent between them — complete with the dings and swooshes of messages coming and going. “Romeo and Juliet” is mentioned. “It’s okay to be scared and it’s normal,” reads a text from Carter to Roy. “I mean you’re about to die.”Their exchanges, combined with courtroom footage of Carter sitting quietly as the proceedings are underway, raise all of the necessary questions. I found myself spinning in circles, turning over thoughts about accountability, coercion and the nebulous boundaries of technology.Podcast“The Retrievals”Over about five months in 2020, as many as 200 women who had egg-retrieval procedures at the Yale Fertility Center in Connecticut were exposed to a medical nightmare. A nurse at the clinic was stealing untold amounts of the pain medication fentanyl, swapping the liquid in the vials with saline — which was administered to the patients instead. Some of the women cried out during their procedures; others complained of pain later, while some blamed themselves, saying they had doubted their own intuition. Almost all were dismissed by those in charge, often blamed for their own pain.“The Retrievals,” from Serial Productions and The New York Times, is reported by Susan Burton, who interviews a dozen of these patients, all of whom are grappling with what they endured. Prepare to be bewildered by how the clinic tried to brush off the ordeal as mostly harmless, underscoring how women’s accounts of their own bodies are so commonly disrespected and diminished. More

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      Writers Guild and Studios Reach Deal to End Their Strike

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      The Writers Guild of America got most of what it wanted. With actors still on picket lines, however, much of Hollywood will remain shut down.Hollywood’s bitter, monthslong labor dispute has taken a big first step toward a resolution.The Writers Guild of America, which represents more than 11,000 screenwriters, reached a tentative deal on a new contract with entertainment companies on Sunday night, all but ending a 146-day strike that has contributed to a shutdown of television and film production.In the coming days, guild members will vote on whether to accept the deal, which has much of what they had demanded, including increases in compensation for streaming content, concessions from studios on minimum staffing for television shows, and guarantees that artificial intelligence technology will not encroach on writers’ credits and compensation.“We can say, with great pride, that this deal is exceptional — with meaningful gains and protections for writers in every sector of the membership,” the Writers Guild’s negotiating committee said in an email to members.Conspicuously not doing a victory lap was the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of studios. “The W.G.A. and A.M.P.T.P. have reached a tentative agreement” was its only comment.For an industry upended by the streaming revolution, which the pandemic sped up, the tentative accord represents a meaningful step toward stabilization.But much of Hollywood will remain at a standstill: Tens of thousands of actors remain on strike, and no talks between the actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA, and the studios were scheduled.The only productions that could restart in short order would be ones without actors, like the late-night shows hosted by Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert and daytime talk shows hosted by Drew Barrymore and Jennifer Hudson.The upshot: In addition to actors, more than 100,000 behind-the-scenes workers (directors, camera operators, publicists, makeup artists, prop makers, set dressers, lighting technicians, hairstylists, cinematographers) in Los Angeles and New York will continue to stand idle, many with mounting financial hardship. California’s economy alone has lost more than $5 billion from the Hollywood shutdown, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom.SAG-AFTRA has been on strike since July 14. Its demands exceed those of the Writers Guild and the studio alliance decided to prioritize talks with the Writers Guild, in part because of the hard line taken by Fran Drescher, the SAG-AFTRA’s leader. Among other things, the actors want 2 percent of the total revenue generated by streaming shows, something that studios have said is a nonstarter.Even so, the deal with the Writers Guild could speed up negotiations with the actors’ union. Some of SAG-AFTRA’s concerns are similar to ones raised by the Writers Guild. Actors, for instance, worry that A.I. could be used to create digital replicas of their likenesses (or that performances could be digitally altered) without payment or approval.The last sticking point between the Writers Guild and studios involved artificial intelligence. On Saturday, lawyers for the entertainment companies came up with language — a couple paragraphs inside a contract that runs hundreds of pages — that addressed a guild concern about A.I. and old scripts that studios own. The sides spent several hours on Sunday making additional tweaks.Talks between the writers and the studios began again this past week after a hiatus of nearly a month.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesThe tentative deal came after several senior company leaders joined the talks directly — among them Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive; Donna Langley, chair of the NBCUniversal Studio Group; Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s co-chief executive; and David Zaslav, who runs Warner Bros. Discovery. Typically, talks took place between union negotiators and Carol Lombardini, who leads the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, an organization that bargains on behalf of the eight biggest Hollywood content companies.Talks resumed on Wednesday after a hiatus of nearly a month, a period when each side insisted that the other was the one refusing to negotiate. Writers Guild leaders had come under intense pressure from some of its A-list members, including Ryan Murphy (“American Horror Story”), Kenya Barris (“black-ish”) and Noah Hawley (“Fargo”).Showrunners like Mr. Murphy did not push Writers Guild leaders to take what was already on the table. Rather, they agitated for an immediate return to negotiations, and cited as a reason the increasing financial hardship on idled Hollywood workers.Hollywood workers have taken more than $45 million in hardship withdrawals from the Motion Picture Industry Pension Plan since Sept. 1, according to a document compiled by plan administrators that was viewed by The New York Times. Mr. Murphy set up a financial assistance fund for idled workers on his shows and committed $500,000 as a starting amount. Within days, he had $10 million in requests.Studios have also been hurting. This month, Warner Bros. Discovery said that the dual strikes would reduce its adjusted earnings for the year by $300 million to $500 million. The stock prices for Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global have taken a hit. Analysts have estimated that studios will forgo as much as $1.6 billion in global ticket sales for movies that were initially scheduled for release this fall but pushed to next year because of the actors’ strike.Negotiations between the studios and the writers began over six months ago. Union leaders repeatedly called the moment “existential,” arguing that the rise of streaming had worsened both compensation levels for writers as well as their working conditions.Over the last decade, the number of episodes for television series went down from the old broadcast network standard of more than 20 per season to as little as six or seven. Writers Guild officials said that fewer episodes often translated to lower income for writers, and left them scrambling to find multiple jobs in a year.The writers also took particular aim at so-called minirooms, a streaming-era innovation where fewer writers were hired to help conceive of a show, and they were frequently paid less.Putting guardrails around the use of artificial intelligence was an issue of some significance when negotiations began in late March, but it took on greater urgency to members as bargaining — and the strike — wore on.Prominent members of the Writers Guild had framed the strike as being about something loftier than Hollywood — they were taking a stand, they argued, against the evils of capitalism. Some of that sentiment peppered the reaction to the denouement. In a post late Sunday on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, Billy Ray, whose credits include “Captain Phillips” and “Shattered Glass,” encouraged fellow writers to “stand with the actors” and workers everywhere. “That’s how we’ll save America.”The strike was one of the longest in the history of the Writers Guild. The last time writers and actors were both on strike at the same time was in 1960.With a tentative deal in hand, the Writers Guild suspended picketing. The union, however, encouraged members to join the striking actors’ picket lines, which will begin again on Tuesday. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘The Golden Bachelor’ and ‘The Irrational’

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      A spinoff of the popular dating show joins the ABC franchise. And NBC premieres a new crime procedural show.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Sept. 25-Oct. 1. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE VOICE 8 p.m. on NBC. Niall Horan, John Legend and Gwen Stefani are welcoming another a new judge to join them in their red swivel chairs: the country-music star Reba McEntire. Per usual, the season will begin with blind auditions.BELOW DECK MEDITERRANEAN 9 p.m. on Bravo. You all thought I was done talking about the Below Deck franchise? Nope! Captain Sandy Yawn will be back at the helm of this show and also a new boat. Some familiar cast returns (including the deckhand Luka Brunton, who was on TV screens just last week as the crew said goodbye to each other on “Below Deck Down Under.”) and we’ll also get to know a new bosun, chef and a stew. If you want to make the show more enjoyable, take a drink every time Sandy micromanages or mentions the infamous slide.Jesse L. Martin plays the professor Alec Mercer on “The Irrational.”Sergei Bachlakov/NBCTHE IRRATIONAL 10 p.m. on NBC. Apparently 2023 is the year that cable TV is bringing back the art of the crime procedural a la “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” or “Criminal Minds.” This new series follows the behavioral science professor Alec Mercer (Jesse L. Martin) as he uses his expertise on psychology and body language to solve high-stakes crimes.TuesdayDANCING WITH THE STARS 8 p.m. on ABC. Though this is the 32nd season of this show, things are feeling new: There is a new host (Julianne Hough joins Alfonso Ribeiro), a new pro dancer (Rylee Arnold) and, of course, new celebrity contestants. This season is a little trickier than others because of the ongoing Hollywood strikes. A writer on staff is a member of the Writers Guild of America, for instance, and many of the contestants are members of SAG-AFTRA union, which represents TV and movie actors. Though it makes things a little more complicated, “DWTS” also continued amid the 2007-8 writers’ strike.SAVIOR COMPLEX 9 p.m. on HBO. In 2010, Renee Bach, an evangelical missionary from the United States, went to Uganda to set up a charity hospital. She was 20 years old and didn’t have a medical degree. In five years, Bach said that her hospital took in 940 children — and 105 of them died. In 2020, she settled a lawsuit after two mothers of children who had died in her care sued. This three-part documentary examines the lead-up and the aftermath.WednesdaySURVIVOR 8 p.m. on CBS. This season’s castaways are headed to Fiji and are going to be divided up into three tribes of six people. The man we all know and love, Jeff Probst, will be back to host as the season gets underway with a new 90-minute episode.ThursdayTHE GOLDEN BACHELOR 8 p.m. on ABC. The host, Jesse Palmer, is working overtime to get his check this month with two new “Bachelor” franchise shows premiering back to back. First up, we have the new series with the 72-year-old bachelor from Indiana, Gerry Turner, and the women vying for his heart. Since Instagram and influencing isn’t as much the rage with Boomers and Gen Xers, we will hopefully have less of the “here for the right reasons” conversations. Although, my grandfather loved scrolling TikTok, so who really knows?Rachel Recchia and Jesse Palmer on “Bachelor in Paradise.”ABC/Craig SjodinBACHELOR IN PARADISE 9 p.m. on ABC. Jesse Palmer travels to Mexico for the new season of “Paradise.” We know the drill by now: singles who have previously been on “The Bachelor” or “The Bachelorette” head down to Puerto Vallarta with the hope of another chance at love.FridayTHE NEW YORK TIMES PRESENTS: HOW TO FIX A PAGEANT 10 p.m. on FX. The third season of this stand-alone documentary series begins with a look into the world of pageants. Crystle Stewart, a beauty pageant titleholder, became the president of the Miss USA organization in 2020. Three years later, she left the role. This episode features an interview with Stewart after her departure.SaturdayLeonardo DiCaprio in “The Wolf of Wall Street.”Mary Cybulski/Paramount PicturesTHE WOLF OF WALL STREET (2013) 9:30 p.m. on IFC. Jordan Belfort, a corrupt stock trader played by Leonardo DiCaprio, becomes simultaneously lauded and reviled onscreen in this movie about greed directed by Martin Scorsese. What makes the movie “a vital and troubling document of the present is not so much Jordan’s business plan — he tells us repeatedly that it’s too complicated and boring to explain — as his approach to life,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times.SundayFAMILY GUY 9:30 p.m. on Fox. This beloved and long-running adult cartoon is back for its 22nd season and things are starting out with … an accidental baby? Meg agrees to be a surrogate, but when the couple never comes to pick up their baby, the Griffins must welcome another family member. More

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      Netflix Prepares to Send Its Final Red Envelope

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      The company’s DVD subscription service is ending this month, bringing to a close an origin story that ultimately upended the entertainment industry.In a nondescript office park minutes from Disneyland sits a nondescript warehouse. Inside this nameless, faceless building, an era is ending.The building is a Netflix DVD distribution plant. Once a bustling ecosystem that processed 1.2 million DVDs a week, employed 50 people and generated millions of dollars in revenue, it now has just six employees left to sift through the metallic discs. And even that will cease on Friday, when Netflix officially shuts the door on its origin story and stops mailing out its trademark red envelopes.“It’s sad when you get to the end, because it’s been a big part of all of our lives for so long,” Hank Breeggemann, the general manager of Netflix’s DVD division, said in an interview. “But everything runs its cycle. We had a great 25-year run and changed the entertainment industry, the way people viewed movies at home.”When Netflix began mailing DVDs in 1998 — the first movie shipped was “Beetlejuice” — no one in Hollywood expected the company to eventually upend the entire entertainment industry. It started as a brainstorm between Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph, successful businessmen looking to reinvent the DVD rental business. No due dates, no late fees, no monthly rental limits.Edgar Ramos working at one of the facility’s DVD sorting machines. Despite the reduced staff, this operation still receives and sends some 50,000 discs a week. “I am sad,” Mr. Ramos said. “When the day comes, I’m sure we will all be crying. Wish we could do streaming over here, but it is what it is.”It did much more than that. The DVD business destroyed competitors like Blockbuster and altered the viewing habits of the public. Once Netflix began its streaming business and then started producing original content, it transformed the entire entertainment industry. So much so that the economics of streaming — which actors and writers argue are worse for them — is at the heart of the strikes that have brought Hollywood to a standstill.Even before the strikes, streaming had rendered DVDs obsolete, at least from a business perspective. At its height, Netflix was the Postal Service’s fifth-largest customer, operating 58 shipping facilities and 128 shuttle locations that allowed Netflix to serve 98.5 percent of its customer base with one-day delivery. Today, there are five such facilities — the others are in Fremont, Calif.; Trenton, N.J.; Dallas; and Duluth, Ga. — and DVD revenue totaled $60 million for the first six months of 2023. In comparison, Netflix’s streaming revenue for the same period reached $6.5 billion.Despite the reduced staff, this operation still receives and sends some 50,000 discs a week with titles ranging from the popular (“Avatar: The Way of Water” and “The Fabelmans”) to the obscure (the 1998 Catherine Deneuve crime thriller, “Place Vendôme”). Each of the employees at the Anaheim facility has been with the company for more than a decade, some as long as 18 years. (One hundred people at Netflix still work on the DVD side of the business, though most will soon be leaving the company.)Erik Melendrez, 33, who has worked at the warehouse since he was 18, at one of the automated stations that sorts DVDs.Anh Tran and Mr. Melendrez at a station that sorts returned DVDs. At its height, Netflix operated 58 shipping facilities and 128 shuttle locations. Today, there are five such facilities. A few of them started straight out of high school, like Edgar Ramos, and they can run Netflix’s proprietary auto-sorting machines and its Automated Rental Return Machine (ARRM), which processes 3,500 DVDs an hour, with the precision of Swiss watch engineers.“I am sad,” Mr. Ramos said while sorting envelopes into their ZIP code bins. “When the day comes, I’m sure we will all be crying. Wish we could do streaming over here, but it is what it is.”Mike Calabro, Netflix’s senior operations manager, has been with the company for more than 13 years. He said the unexpected moments of frivolity were a big part of why he had stayed, like the drawings made by renters on the envelopes or the Cheetos dust and coffee stains that often mark the returns, evidence of a product that has been well integrated into customers’ lives.But when asked if he had ever met some of the most active customers in person, Mr. Calabro quickly replied, “No!” In fact, the anonymous look of the facility, which provides a stark contrast to the giant Netflix logos that adorn the company’s other real estate, is intentional. Visitors, it is clear, are not welcome.“If we put Netflix out on the door, we would have people showing up with their discs, saying: ‘Hey, I’d like to return this. Can you give me my next disc?’” Mr. Calabro said.That was the usual transaction with a video rental retailer, but Netflix wanted to make sure customers knew this was something different.“It was a decision we made very early on,” Mr. Breeggemann said. “If they knew where we were, we’d run into that problem. And then it wouldn’t be a good customer experience. We wanted to mail both ways.”Lorraine Segura, a senior operations manager, works with the labels that go on packages. Ms. Segura, who started in 2008, used to rip open 650 envelopes an hour. When automation came, she was one of the few employees who traveled to the facility in Fremont, Calif., to learn how to run the machines. Netflix’s DVD operations still serve around one million customers, many of them very loyal.Bean Porter, 35, lives in St. Charles, Ill., and has subscribed to Netflix’s DVD and streaming services since 2015. She said she was “devastated” that there would be no more DVDs. Ms. Porter was able to use her subscription to watch DVDs of shows like “Yellowstone” and “The Handmaid’s Tale” — episodic television made for other streaming services that would have required her to buy additional subscriptions.She and her husband also watch three or four movies a week and find Netflix’s DVD library to be deeper and more diverse than any other subscription service. She often hosts cookouts in her backyard and invites neighbors to watch movies on an outdoor screen. That is easier to do with a DVD, she said, than with streaming because of internet connectivity issues. And she has become involved with the DVD operations’ social media channel, posting videos, interacting with other customers and chatting directly with the social media managers working for the company.“I’m pretty angry,” she said. “I’m just going to have to do streaming, and I feel like what they’re doing is forcing me into having less options.”To ease the backlash, Netflix is allowing its DVD customers to hold on to their final rentals. Ms. Porter intends to keep “The Breakfast Club,” “Goonies” and “The Sound of Music.” As for the last DVD she intends to watch: She’s leaving that up to fate.“I have 45 movies left in my queue, and where I land is where I’ll land, as there are too many good options to pick from,” she said.The morning’s DVDs being shipped out to subscribers. At its height, Netflix was the Postal Service’s fifth-largest customer. Netflix’s DVD operations still serve around one million customers. The employees have a more sanguine attitude. Lorraine Segura started at Netflix in 2008 and used to rip open envelopes — 650 envelopes an hour. When automation came, she was one of the few employees who traveled to the facility in Fremont to learn how to run the machines and pass that training on to others. Now she runs the floor with Mr. Calabro as a senior operations manager.“I’ve learned a lot here: how to fix machines, how to make goals and hit targets,” she said before leading her team in a round of ergonomic exercises to prevent repetitive stress injuries. “I feel empowered now to get out in the world and do something new.” More

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      Progress in Hollywood Writers’ Strike Negotiations, but No Deal Yet

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      A third straight day of bargaining between the studios and the union ended without an agreement. Talks will continue on Saturday.A third straight day of marathon negotiations between Hollywood studios and striking screenwriters ended on Friday night without a deal. But the sides made substantial progress, according to three people briefed on the talks.The sides plan to reconvene on Saturday.The Friday session started at 11 a.m. Pacific time at the suburban Los Angeles headquarters of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of the major entertainment companies. For the third day in a row, several Hollywood moguls directly participated in the negotiations, which ended a little after 8 p.m.Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive; Donna Langley, NBCUniversal’s chief content officer of Universal Pictures; Ted Sarandos, co-chief executive of Netflix; and David Zaslav, the chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery had previously delegated bargaining with the union to others. Their direct involvement — which many screenwriters and some analysts said was long overdue — contributed to meaningful progress over the past few days, according to the people familiar with the talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic nature of the efforts.During the Thursday negotiations, the sides had narrowed their differences, for instance, on the topic of minimum staffing for television show writers’ rooms, a point that studios had been unwilling to engage on before the guild called a strike in early May. The Thursday session took a turn, however, after the sides agreed to take a short break at roughly 5 p.m., according to the people familiar with the talks. The executives and studio labor lawyers had expected guild negotiators to return to discuss points they had been working on earlier. Instead, the guild made additional requests — one being that a return to work by screenwriters be tied to a resolution of the actors’ strike.The actors’ union, known as SAG-AFTRA, joined writers on picket lines on July 14. Its demands exceed those of the Writers Guild. Among other things, the actors want 2 percent of the total revenue generated by streaming shows, something that studios have said is a nonstarter.Several hours after talks ended on Thursday night, the guild emailed its membership to say that the sides would meet on Friday.“Your negotiating committee appreciates all the messages of solidarity and support we have received the last few days, and ask as many of you as possible to come out to the picket lines tomorrow,” the email said.The guild extended picketing hours on Friday to 2 p.m. Pickets have typically ended at noon.In Los Angeles, several hundred writers turned up to picket outside the arching Paramount Pictures gate, far more than in recent weeks. The Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA have been staging themed pickets to keep members engaged, and the theme on Friday happened to be “puppet day,” meaning that, in addition to picket signs, some marchers held felt hand puppets and marionettes. The mood was optimistic.Outside Netflix’s Hollywood offices on Friday afternoon, picketing writers even began offering goodbye speeches, delivered via bullhorn. At the CBS lot in Studio City, the theme was “silent disco,” with several hundred writers dance-picketing while wearing headphones.The talks were mostly back on track by the time picketing ended on Friday, according to two of the people familiar with the matter. On the sticky issue of minimum staffing for television shows, the sides were discussing a proposal in which at least four writers would be hired regardless of the number of episodes or whether a showrunner felt that the work could be done with fewer. (Earlier in the week, studios were pushing for a sliding number based on the number of episodes.)They were also discussing a plan in which writers would for the first time receive payments from streaming services — in addition to other fees — based on a percentage of active subscribers. The guild had originally asked the entertainment companies to establish a viewership-based royalty payment (known in Hollywood as a residual) to “reward programs with greater viewership.”The writers have been on strike for 144 days. The longest writers’ strike was 153 days in 1988.“Thank you for the wonderful show of support on the picket lines today!” the guild’s negotiating committee said in an email to members late Friday. “It means so much to us as we continue to work toward a deal that writers deserve.”Nicole Sperling More