Hours after Hollywood's writers strike officially ended, Bill Maher led the charge back to work by announcing early Wednesday that his HBO show "Real Time with Bill Maher" would be back on the air Friday.
"My writers and 'Real Time' are back! See you Friday night!" he posted on social media.
On Tuesday night, board members from the writers union approved a contract agreement with studios, bringing the industry at least partly back from a historic halt in production that stretched nearly five months.
Maher had delayed returning to his talk show during the ongoing strike by writers and actors, a decision that followed similar pauses by "The Drew Barrymore Show," "The Talk" and "The Jennifer Hudson Show."
The new deal paves the way for TV's late night to return to work. They were the first to be affected when the strike began, with NBC's "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" and "Late Night with Seth Meyers," ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live," and "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" on CBS instantly shuttering.
Scripted shows will take longer to return, with actors still on strike and no negotiations yet on the horizon.
The three-year agreement with studios, producers and streaming services includes significant wins in the main areas writers had fought for – compensation, length of employment, size of staffs and control of artificial intelligence – matching or nearly equaling what they had sought at the outset of the strike.
The union had sought minimum increases in pay and future residual earnings from shows and will get a raise of between 3.5% and 5% in those areas — more than the studios had offered.
The guild also negotiated new residual payments based on the popularity of streaming shows, where writers will get bonuses for being a part of the most popular shows on Netflix, Max and other services, a proposal studios initially rejected. Many writers on picket lines had complained that they weren't properly paid for helping create heavily watched properties.
On artificial intelligence, the writers got the regulation and control of the emerging technology they had sought. Under the contract, raw, AI-generated storylines will not be regarded as "literary material" — a term in their contracts for scripts and other story forms a screenwriter produces. This means they won't be competing with computers for screen credits. Nor will AI-generated stories be considered "source" material, their contractual language for the novels, video games or other works that writers may adapt into scripts.
Writers have the right under the deal to use AI in their process if the company they are working for agrees and other conditions are met. But companies cannot require a writer to use AI.
Gary Baum Is Categorically Happy About Emmy Nominations
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While the primetime Emmy nominations were announced just last week, they already represent a win-win situation for Gary Baum, ASC. Not only was he nominated twice--on the strength of episodes of How I Met Your Father (Hulu) and Frasier (Paramount+)--for Outstanding Cinematography for a Multi-Camera Half-Hour Series, but Baum also found it gratifying that the Emmy category in which he earned this dual success has been resurrected. Last year it fell by the wayside when not enough multi-camera entries materialized following the move of certain children’s and family programming from the primetime competition to the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ (NATAS) Emmy ceremony. At that point, a reduced number of such multi-camera programs were vying for just one primetime nomination slot in the Outstanding Cinematography for a Series (Half-Hour) category. (It turns out that this single slot was filled in 2023 by a Baum-lensed episode of How I Met Your Father).
Baum noted, however, that a grass-roots initiative among cinematographers yielded enough entries this time around to bring the Multi-Camera Series category back into the mix. And making the final nominations cut were a pair from Baum--for the season one finale of Frasier, “Reindeer Games,” directed by Kelsey Grammer; and the “Okay Fine, It’s A Hurricane” episode of How I Met Your Father, directed by Pamela Fryman.
This brings Baum’s career tally of primetime Emmy nods to 15. He is a three-time winner--for Mike & Molly in 2015, the revival of Will & Grace in 2018, and the pilot for How I Met Your Father in 2022.
The three episodes of How I Met Your Father which garnered Baum... Read More