Let’s Talk Turkey

On Saturday, Congress agreed to keep the government open through midnight on Friday, November 17^th. And the first fallout was removal of Kevin McCarthy as speaker this afternoon. 

No matter who permanently fills McCarthy’s shoes, control of Congress remains split between the two parties and government funding will continue to be the top priority this fall. The path to progress on government funding will require bipartisan negotiation.

Additional aid to Ukraine continues to have bipartisan support. However, there needs to be an agreement on the amount, and key Republicans want it to be paired with domestic border security funding and reforms.

The choices are clear. Come November 17^th, the government can shut down, Congress can pass another continuing resolution, or they can pass a bipartisan appropriations bill. It’s up to the House Republicans how long they want to wait to begin serious, bipartisan negotiations. 

Do legislators really want to interrupt the supply chain during the holiday season by slowing imports and exports because of reduced staff at ports and customs or wreak havoc at the airports by not paying TSA agents? 

If not, they need to buckle down and start real negotiations now or be faced with a half-baked turkey at Thanksgiving. 

After a 148 day-strike that cost nearly $6 billion and 35,000 industry jobs, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and Hollywood studios reached a historic new agreement.

For many, the dual writers and actors strikes hit an existential nerve as the industry grapples with rapidly changing technologies and shifting profit models. Three key outcomes for leaders in related sectors include:

• The deal sets a precedent for aligning on industry-wide AI guidelines. By explicitly protecting human jobs and intellectual property, the agreement establishes a baseline for regulating AI use, a key concession for an industry built on content generation. As apprehension about AI grows across film and television, publishing, journalism and beyond, company leaders should be proactive in managing employee concerns and collaborating around meaningful and constructive applications for AI.

• The deal represents significant gains for the creative community. The guarantee of more streaming data transparency, a new viewership-based residuals model and minimum staffing requirements underscore the WGA’s effectiveness in earning public support (increasingly via social media) and the multiplier effect of union solidarity. Two-thirds of Americans support unions, a key data point for leaders engaging in a public conversation around unionization efforts and strikes.

• Fallout from stalled content production and promotion is widespread and largely unquantified. Industry insiders anticipate that revenue losses from the strike may result in further belt-tightening and higher costs passed onto the consumer. So, while writers won this round, expect to see studios look for ways to offset higher labor costs and maintain their revenue targets.

​Facing cratering advertising revenues due to his erratic stewardship of the platform, X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk has announced he’ll begin charging all users of X a monthly subscription fee. 

While the platform has not yet confirmed whether this will become an official policy, Musk claims that a nominal fee is necessary to prevent bots from proliferating on the platform.  

The seemingly impromptu announcement was made during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Its main topic was meant to be an overview of what X was doing to curb antisemitism and other hate speech on the platform.  

“It’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots,” Musk said. “Because a bot costs a fraction of a penny…but if somebody even has to pay a few dollars, some minor amount, the effective cost of bots is very high.” 

Depending on the market, Twitter currently charges around $8 USD for ‘Premium X’, formerly Twitter Blue.