By MARK KENNEDY and ANDREW DALTON (AP Entertainment Writer)<\/p>\n
NEW YORK — Hours after Hollywood\u2019s writers strike officially ended, Bill Maher led the charge back to work by announcing early Wednesday that his HBO show \u201cReal Time with Bill Maher\u201d would be back on the air Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy writers and \u2018Real Time\u2019 are back! See you Friday night!\u201d he posted on social media.<\/p>\n
By mid-morning, the hosts of NBC\u2019s \u201cThe Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon\u201d and \u201cLate Night with Seth Meyers,\u201d ABC\u2019s \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live,\u201d and \u201cThe Late Show With Stephen Colbert\u201d on CBS had announced they\u2019d also return, all by Monday. \u201cLast Week Tonight\u201d with John Oliver was slated to return to the air Sunday.<\/p>\n
Fallon, Meyers, Kimmel, Colbert and Oliver had spent the latter part of the strike teaming up for a popular podcast called \u201cStrike Force Five\u201d — named after their personal text chain and with all proceeds benefiting their out-of-work writers. On Instagram on Wednesday, they announced \u201ctheir mission complete.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Maher had delayed returning to his talk show during the ongoing strike by writers and actors, a decision that followed similar pauses by \u201cThe Drew Barrymore Show,\u201d \u201cThe Talk\u201d and \u201cThe Jennifer Hudson Show.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scripted shows will take longer to return, with actors still on strike and no negotiations yet on the horizon.<\/p>\n
The three-year agreement with studios, producers and streaming services includes significant wins in the main areas writers had fought for \u2013 compensation, length of employment, size of staffs and control of artificial intelligence \u2013 matching or nearly equaling what they had sought at the outset of the strike.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t properly paid for helping create heavily watched properties.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cliterary material\u201d — a term in their contracts for scripts and other story forms a screenwriter produces. This means they won\u2019t be competing with computers for screen credits. Nor will AI-generated stories be considered \u201csource\u201d material, their contractual language for the novels, video games or other works that writers may adapt into scripts.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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Dalton reported from Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
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For more on the writers and actors strikes, visit: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/hollywood-strikes\/<\/p>\n