Julie Plec and More WGA Members Detail Writers Strike Negotiations, Demand Streamers to Release Ratings: ‘We’re Mad’
ATX TV Festival had to change up many elements of their lineup. Specifically, they added a panel specifically about the strike, which began in May. On Saturday, Beau Willimon, the president of the Writers Guild of America, East, moderated a conversation between WGA West’s Zoanne Clack and Julie Plec and WGA East’s Greg Iwinski, who is on the negotiating committee. “We did not focus group, we did not go in and ask a management company what we should be asking for,” Iwinski, who has written on “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” and “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” said at the top, explaining that they asked the 11,000 members what they were asking for and received 7,000 surveys back. “We brought these arguments to the studios and presented our solutions. And I had gone into the expectation that it would be a very difficult negotiation, and that we would be in a situation where we would be presented with a deal that was not great, but hard to say no to. And that is not what happened. We did six weeks of negotiations and at the end of it, we were still incredibly far apart.”