Dispatches From The Picket Lines: Game Show Day With Mikey Day In Busy New York; L.A. Sees Action At Amazon, Fox

Sean Piccoli and Katie Campione
·3 min read
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It’s Day 6 of the SAG-AFTRA strike and Day 79 of the WGA strike.

On Wednesday, actors and writers were joined at Amazon Studios in Culver City by members of the Teamsters, after SAG-AFTRA and WGA members joined Teamsters picket lines earlier in the day in a massive demonstration in downtown Los Angeles ahead of a possible strike against UPS. See Deadline’s story here.

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In New York today, there were picket lines involving both guilds at 30 Rock, where attendees included now-ex-Fox News personality Geraldo Rivera; in front of Netflix and Warner Bros Discovery on Broadway, where Susan Sarandon, America Ferrera, F. Murray Abraham, Jaimie Alexander, Jack Quaid, David Krumholtz, Samantha Mathis and AnnaSophia Robb were among those walking the line; and at Paramount, which saw attendees including Christian Slater and Michelle and Adrienne Hurd. SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland walked the line at both 30 Rock and Paramount today.

Meanwhile, at CBS Broadcast Center in Hell’s Kitchen, demonstrations included Saturday Night Live castmember and writer Mikey Day hosting a live, un-televised, 15-minute send-up of The Price Is Right. The show, titled The Price Is Write, was presented al fresco and without commercial breaks.

Writers on the picket lines Wednesday in New York
Writers on the picket lines Wednesday in New York

Wednesday’s picket line at CBS Broadcast Center doubled as a celebration of television game show writers, a numerically small but culturally influential subset of the union whose 11,500 members went on strike in May against film and television studios over pay, working conditions and fears about artificial intelligence.

“Game show writers are brilliant,” said David Levinson Wilk, head writer of The Chase, a rapid-fire trivia battle that airs on ABC. “They are talented. They are hardworking. And they like to do nothing more than to win contestants life-changing money.”

“They would also, themselves, like to be able to pay their rent,” Levinson Wilk said to cheers.

While actors on strike picketed at other locations in Manhattan, several dozen demonstrators walked loops inside a barricaded section of curb and roadway in front of the CBS building’s brushed metal canopy.

Some carried game show-themed picket signs with messages such as “Who wants to defeat a billionaire?” and “Come on down and bargain.” They paused the march around 10 a.m., to watch and take part in the first and possibly last episode of The Price Is Write.

Modeled on the price-guessing format of the long-running original, “The Price Is Write” had a real host in Day, who also hosts Netflix’s game show Is It Cake? Contestants on Wednesday got their names picked out of an upturned tambourine and were asked to guess union-promoted financial figures pertaining to the strike.

The eventual winner was Liam Saban, a new graduate of the film and television production program at New York University, who got a tote bag as a prize. Saban told Deadline afterward that he’s not yet working in the industry he trained for but he hopes to. “This is my future so I’m just here to support,” he said.

Back on the West Coast at Fox Studios in Culver City, picketers arrived to a “sidewalk closed” sign on the Pico Avenue side of the lot. Eventually, the sidewalk was partially reopened to the structure at the East Motor Avenue gate on the way to Avenue of the Stars, where there was city construction activity evident.

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