Members of the Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists union officially went on strike Friday after negotiations broke down with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Cheddar News explains.

<div class="block">Members of the Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists union officially went on strike Friday after negotiations broke down with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Cheddar News explains.</div>

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SAG-AFTRA Members Officially on Strike

After members are officially on strike. The union representing 160,000 performers including Hollywood's biggest stars announced to stop work yesterday. Our new senior reporter Michelle Castillo is at one of the picket sites at 30 rock here in New York. Michelle, a lot of activity behind you tell us what's going on. This is the first of the planned strikes for Sag Ara. They're protesting what they feel are unfair pay conditions, especially when it comes to the streaming world as well as the concerns over A I taking over their jobs. So as I mentioned here in New York City, there are four planned protest sites. We're here at 30 rock. If you look behind me, you can see that people have just started to gather, started to pick it. They, we spoke to some people earlier and they said they are willing to stay as long as it takes to get fair compensation for what they believe is their lives work. Now, behind me is mostly Sag Afra Actors. But around you'll start to see some of those white and orange picket signs. Those are actually members of the Writers Guild of America East they are in support of SA A. Now during the writers strike which started in May, we saw plenty of actors, their picket lines. Now both groups are joining together to show support in Los Angeles. We're going to see plenty of other strikes. They're mostly targeting the studios and the big media companies at this time. Of course, 30 Rock, the headquarters for NBC. We're also going to see strikes over in here in New York, near Paramount, as well as HBO and Amazon. So lots of going on here and these actors are ready to stand up for what they believe in. How are production studios like Disney per se reacting to this news, Michelle. Well, at the center of this strike is really two main things, streaming residuals, meaning every single time you watch a streaming episode, actors will get payment for that similar to the TV model and the growth of A I which actors are concerned will take over their likenesses and voices without permission. Now, studios say, hey, we've been hit pretty hard, the pandemic. We need the ability to make that money back so we can keep this industry going. In fact, CEO of Disney Bob Iger spoke at Sun Valley conference just yesterday saying that he felt that the Actors Union was being unfair. The association of motion picture and television producers also said this was going to cause undue financial hardship, they represent the studios. They believe that the union was being too strong at this time, especially at a time where everyone is still struggling, whether it's actors or these big media companies, which are still trying to make their losses from the stop losses during the COVID-19 pandemic. And the multi million dollar question here, Michelle, how long do we think the strike will last? We spoke to strike, Captain Kevin Scullin and he said he's willing to stay here as long as possible. The big question though here again is the livelihood, New York City and Los Angeles are such expensive cities to live in. And that was one of the main reasons for the strike to see if they could get more payments for their work. A lot of people said they were looking at jobs in the hospitality industry. I spoke to some other organizations that said, training people to work on social media, use those creative skills. But again, it really will come down to, we saw a line in a report in deadline saying that the studios are willing to go until the actors lost their apartments reportedly. So it really will determine who is going to be the stronger foothold. Here again, as you mentioned, 160,000 members of SA A was about 11,000 and 500 members of the Writers Guild of America. So that's plenty of people also considering that with these productions shut down, you're also looking at the shutdown of camera people, directors and nothing can actually go on at this time. In fact, that also includes promotional things. So this is not just going to be a stop work for actors and writers, it's also going to be a stop work for the entire entertainment industry.