This year’s Tony Awards ceremony, which had been in doubt ever since Hollywood’s screenwriters went on strike earlier this month, will proceed as scheduled in an altered form after the writers’ union said Monday night that it would not picket the show.
“As they have stood by us, we stand with our fellow workers on Broadway who are impacted by our strike,” the Writers Guild of America, which represents screenwriters, said in a statement late Monday.
A disruption could have been damaging to Broadway, which sees the televised ceremony as a key marketing opportunity, particularly now, when audiences have yet to return to prepandemic levels. Several nominated shows have been operating at a loss, holding on in the hopes that a Tony win — or even exposure on the broadcast — could boost sales.
The union made it clear that the broadcast, which is scheduled to air on CBS on June 11, would be different from past ceremonies. But the union did not detail what those differences would be, and the Tony Awards administrators did not have any immediate comment. It is expected that the broadcast will still feature awards honoring the best plays and musicals of the 2022-23 Broadway season, but it is not clear how musical numbers, which are a key for many shows, will be affected.
“Tony Awards Productions (a joint venture of the Broadway League and the American Theater Wing) has communicated with us that they are altering this year’s show to conform with specific requests from the W.G.A., and therefore the W.G.A. will not be picketing the show,” the union said in a statement. “Responsibility for having to make changes to the format of the 2023 Tony Awards rests squarely on the shoulders of Paramount/CBS and their allies. They continue to refuse to negotiate a fair contract for the writers represented by the W.G.A.”
Though the Tony Awards is not a big ratings draw compared to other awards shows, the televised ceremony is a critical marketing opportunity for the theater industry, which is still drawing audiences well below prepandemic figures.
It became clear immediately after the screenwriters went on strike that the labor disruption could affect the Tony Awards, because the awards ceremony is televised (by CBS) and live-streamed (by Paramount+) and ordinarily features a script written by screenwriters.
Broadway is a heavily unionized industry, and unionized theater workers like actors and musicians were not going to participate in an awards ceremony being protested by another labor union. Tony Awards administrators, aware of those concerns, asked the W.G.A. for a waiver that would have allowed its writers to work on the show, given the dire straits of the theater industry; on Friday, the W.G.A. denied that request, and on Monday night it reiterated that denial, saying that the guild “will not negotiate an interim agreement or a waiver for the Tony Awards.”
But Tony Awards administrators did not give up, and asked the guild if, even without a waiver to allow screenwriters to work on the show, it would allow the broadcast to proceed without writers as long as it meets certain conditions.
Prominent theater artists who work on Broadway and are allied with the writers guild also spoke up on behalf of the Tonys, arguing that forcing the show off the air would be devastating to the art form and to the many arts workers it employs. The combination of the lobbying efforts and the new conditions — which neither Broadway officials nor union officials specified — appears to have prompted the guild to say Monday night that it would not picket the broadcast.
The striking screenwriters have argued that their wages have stagnated and working conditions have deteriorated despite the fact that television production has exploded over the last decade. Negotiations between the major Hollywood studios — represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers — and the W.G.A. broke down three weeks ago. Roughly 11,500 writers went on strike beginning on May 2.
Over the last two weeks, the writers have assembled picket lines outside the major studios in Los Angeles and production sound stages in New York. But the writers have also gone farther afield, with some taking to picket outside productions in more far-flung locales like Maplewood, N.J., Chicago and Philadelphia.
The threat of demonstrations forced Netflix to cancel a major in-person showcase for advertisers, which was scheduled for Wednesday, and to turn it into a virtual format instead. The company also canceled an appearance for Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s co-chief executive, at the PEN America Literary Gala at the Museum of Natural History on Thursday, where he was scheduled to be honored alongside the longtime “Saturday Night Live” executive producer Lorne Michaels.
