>> I'’m Sue O'’Connell, tonight on "Greater Boston", we will hear from Hollywood writer on why TV and film writers have walked off the job, how studios are responding, and what this means for your favorite shows.

And inside look at the fight to save the Right Whale from extinction,.

Reality TV, the TV writers Union, the Writers Guild of America is on strike.

The contract negotiations failed with, the alliance of motion picture and film producers.

That includes Netflix, HBO and ABC.

Members of the Guild say executives refused to meet key demands for fair wages and job security.

>> Better pay and better writing conditions.

They need to be able to support their families, pay their rent, have better conditions in the workplace.

I came up at a time when I could do that, I want that for these young people.

>> The middle class of writers has fallen out, it has become harder for people like me to move up the wrongs.

>> The odds are stacked against you, and they don'’t need to be.

>> Studios have pushed backs on the industrywide budget concerns and recent layoffs at major companies.

What does this mean for the writers who have walked off the job and how will this play out for those of us watching or not watching at home?

I am joined now by Patric Verrone seven, -- Patric Verrone , and award winning writer, and Nerissa Williams Scott, and Dominic Patten who has been covering the strike.

Let'’s start with you Dominic, tell us what the latest is.

Dominic: What we are seeing is, we are on day three of what is looking like a very long strike.

I spoke to eight executive when the strike was called, he said he thought it was going to be shorter than 1988 and longer than 2008.

There are very big issues here.

We have been covering the picket lines at various studios and facilities.

We are seeing Teamsters not crossing picking lines -- picket lines.

There was a little bit of rain and let day, usually that watches everything away, it seemed to make the picket lines stronger.

Sue: Can you break it down what it is you are not getting and why the strike happened?

>> What we didn'’t get was a conversation on the important issues that we need to engage with the studios.

There were several issues that they did and gauge on, -- did engage on.

They were able and willing to talk about those things.

There has been a fundamental shift in the way writers have been hired, particularly in streaming over the past half a dozen years.

That change has resulted in a change in the way that we feel that structural change needs to happen in the way we are employed and paid.

They did not want to talk about it at all.

The other issue your viewers are familiar with, is artificial intelligence.

The writers Guild has a strong position that we believe writing should be done by human beings and the companies were resistant to talk about that issue.

Sue: My understanding is that the concerns are, when we are watching streaming shows, there are fewer episodes.

So may be in the past you might have made more money, there are fewer episodes, so you are making less.

The streaming services, you are not getting the residuals that you might fire mushing something on broadcast television.

Nerissa: There are shorter episodes, they call it limited series.

You have people who have four episodes, as opposed to the standard 13.

What happens what it is on the streaming service, and it is watch over and over again, they are able to determine the analytics.

They can tell you how many times someone has watched that show.

Are they giving that information to the union?

We are talking global, it is not just the U.S..

It is being able to determine how many times, for how long of a.

-- over how long of a period.

By the time you have hit five years, in 10 years you go back to reruns.

With streamers, it can be ongoing.

We are standing with the writers, they deserve to be paid.

Sue: Some people would argue and to say, no one knows what is happening with AI.

It is growing and we have no idea what it is going to be like.

We are all going through job changes.

NBC is laying off folks, NPR is laying off folks.

Why is the restriction or hold on some salaries, why is that out of line with what is happening in the rest of the industry?

>> Let me analogize what we are doing with AI with what the writers Guild in 2007.

When we went on strike over media, we now know as streaming.

At the time people thought it would be like radio, there was not a business model.

There was nothing to rely on that said how we should be paid.

Our proposals and discussions we had with the studios had -- they were open ended enough.

We ended up getting jurisdiction show -- so there would be a dialogue about those conditions.

The same thing is happening to AI because we don'’t know how it is going to be use.

We do know because one of the executives said that they don'’t want to restrict themselves from using a technology they may need.

The implication is that they want to be able to use AI, and we want to be able to build fences about it.

We want to be able to make sure that fundamentally, the rating belongs to a human being, to a writer, that is where the creative force begins.

Sue: Let'’s hear from a TV writer and show runner, he was on CNN on Tuesday discussing the discrepancy between what we are talking about and how much executives are making.

>> The CEO of warning -- Warner Bros. discovery, was paid $250 million last year.

That'’s about the same level as what 10,000 writers are asking him to pay all of us.

These companies are making enormous amounts of money, it'’s ridiculous for them to plead poverty.

Patric: This is a great -- Sue: This is a great argument, we don'’t have a cap on how much CEOs can make.

>> I don'’t think -- I think Adam is making a good comparison, the math is strong.

I hope you will back me up, I don'’t think anyone disagrees that writers are not being paid enough.

That'’s because there are so many shows, there are so many platforms come -- of course your numbers are going up.

It used to be a pathway to a middle-class lifestyle, but it is disappearing for the majority of WGA members.

Some numbers -- the numbers are real.

That W GA sat down, ultimately what they were looking at was $429 million overall.

The studios were offering $86 million.

That is the discrepancy in the money.

We talk about AI, the Guild was talking about regulating it, keeping it in the contract, and the human component.

The studios wanted to have a meeting once a year about new technologies.

This element of this discussion, the studios are going to lead poverty.

Disney is cutting 7000 jobs, they are cutting content costs, the numbers don'’t lie.

They are making great profits.

If they had made bad is this decisions, that is capitalism.

A lot of this is being done by them to keep stock up.

What is actually happening to the people creating the content, they are not making enough money.

Writers I have spoken to have worked on hit shows on streaming.

They have to get second or third jobs to pay rent.

That is not what we call hooray for Hollywood.

Sue: I want to talk about the other challenge for a number of people who are new to the writers room.

Women, lack and brown people, -- black and brown people, what is the feeling within those communities about how this strike would impact them?

Nerissa: It all rolls downhill.

When it starts rolling, it'’s like, do we get out of the way?

Sometimes we have new voices, women of color, so many different shows that are coming down the pipe, that it is imperative that people realize that these people who are representing the predominant class in the WGA need to have a voice for these communities.

We are just starting to get in, and now there is a strike.

We want to make sure we keep with the human factor, don'’t forget about the human factor.

We are forgetting about, people have families, lives, they are not asking for the world, they are being -- they are asking for being paid a living wage.

This is the lane we have been in for a long time, we are happy to join where they are trying to erase that voice.

Sue: To the important question, how does this impact my viewing?

Patric: I want to capitalize on what she was saying.

The advent of streaming, the broadening of the audience and the production facilities to writers of color, everybody was being invited to a place at the table.

Unfortunately that place at the table was more along the limes -- along the lines of the gig economy.

There has been a trend within the business of hiring writers of color, women, LGBTQ members, who were entry level and only because there were requirements to hire those writers.

As they were joining the community of successful writers, the bar got lifted, and there was a separation between people in the writers room and writers in production.

Because of the method of production for streaming, you write the shows, and months later, you go into production.

The writers who were in the room don'’t get invited.

You have a new entry level writers who did not rise up the ladder.

It has been inappropriately -- previously unwelcome.

Sue: That might actually be the word.

Patric: First of all, you are going to see the late-night shows disappearing or going into reruns.

Saturday Night Live this week will be a rerun.

I suspect that the announcements of what the fall TV lineup is in broadcast will either be delayed or canceled because they don'’t know what they are going to be able to produce.

It is hard to say otherwise.

In the streaming era, where people do their own programming, there'’s stuff in the can, and people can go back and binge everything I'’ve ever written.

You can go rewatch that.

Sue: Can you tell me who is going to win the residential election since you have worked on The Simpsons?

>> The Simpsons take no credit for Donald Trump.

Nerissa: It also affects of the jobs that are outside of being in L.A. and New York.

Here in Boston we make movies, if we are not able to get writers to make the films, he can'’t hire producers, directors, set designers, it'’s trickle-down that will reverberate.

Sue: Thank you for all of you.

Patric Verrone, Nerissa Williams Scott, and Dominic Patten.

We are in a race against time to save the North Atlantic Right Whale.

>> We have this endangered whale species off the eastern seaboard of the United States, barely anybody knows about it, they are dating -- dying Ada rate rate.

We have a limited view on Right Whales, they are dealing with an ecosystem that is hard to figure out.

Sue: Virtually deter freak with a life expectancy of 70 years, the defendant the right will population is perplexing.

It fell 30% in a decade.

Fewer than 350 of these creatures remain on the planet.

Scientists say they could be extinct within 20 years.

A dedicated team of biologists are on the Cape and determined to keep that from happening.

Their efforts are the focus of a new documentary from nova called "Saving the Right Whale".

I am joined Frank -- I am joined by the producer Nadine Pequeneza , and Dr. Charles Mayo.

Welcome to both of you, congratulations Nadine on the episodes.

I will start with you stormy.

I know this is a broad question.

What do we think is happening, why can'’t we get enough information to make changes to help these whales?

Dr. Mayo: I think the principal difficulty we have across almost all of the issues that we confront is these whales are rare.

They live in a huge ecosystem.

The encounters we have with them, when we are trying to study them, are few and far between except for a few locations, once that were featured in the film.

Cape Cod Bay, is really a remarkable research space.

But there are other locations where they have been studied, the coast of Florida and up in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

The whales are so rare and the habitat so large, and not well known, areas of ocean space where we have little information, we don'’t know they are there or what they are doing.

Sue: Nadine, the challenges in researching the Right Whale, would be a challenge in making a production about a Right Whale.

Talk to me about how you approach this project.

Nadine: it was a challenge for all of the reasons that he just talked about.

We did not know if we were going to be able to get the footage that we needed to introduce people to the North Atlantic Right Whale.

Many people have never seen or have heard about it.

Trying to get access to be able to work with the scientists, and someone else we worked with, and someone in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

We had to work with scientists.

So that we would have information that we wanted to impart in the film, and to be able to film with the whales.

Sue: How is the Right Whale different than other species?

Dr. Mayo: They look different, they act different, they feed differently, they calve in different areas.

These are whales more closely related to the bow heads that we see on PBS shows.

The bowhead of the Western Arctic.

They are animals that feed on plankton, unlike most of the species that we have in New England waters, that feed on fish.

Humpbacks, thin whales, that we would see on a whale watch or off the shore are fish feeders.

They are in all respects very different looking, acting, behaving animals than are the whales that most of us are more used to seeing.

Sue: Nadine, what did you learn as you were working on this?

Was there a notion you had going into this or something surprising that you learned?

Nadine: We found something -- maybe I should start with something on a happier note.

One of the things I learned was that the scientists have been following the whales for many years, they have a catalog that surpasses any other species in terms of studying.

Where they travel, how they use the areas they are in, you can identify individual whales because of the patterns on their head.

Have unique information about individuals.

What scientists are starting to see is that within generations, what seems to be information that somehow is passed down through lineage.

Whales will have a preference for where they choose to feed or where moms and cows -- moms and calves will feed.

There is a particular place where they will have their babies and nurse them.

Some of the mothers like to hang out in particular areas.

The scientists have documented that over generations.

Sue: Our relationship with animals and our expectation of what we project on them has changed in our lifetime.

I was talking with my daughter about our pet dogs and how her relationship and how we treat our pets is different than how my family treated our pets in the 1960'’s.

Does that emerging recognition of them as beings help us when we are working towards saving them from extinction and understanding?

Argue cautiously optimistic that we are on the right path -- argue cautiously optimistic that we are on the right path?

>> I'’m not optimistic.

There doesn'’t seem to be anything obvious that leads to optimism.

On the earlier part of your question, we save whales because we think of them as sent into beings with -- we give them emotions, and intelligence, we probably stretch our knowledge a lot when we make those comments.

Because people have gained a special sense of Right Whales, there has been a move to save them.

A lot have been saved because of that.

I'’m not sure it is well placed, we don'’t understand these animals, they are not creatures we do understand.

We have enough trouble understanding the intelligence of our pets, let alone creatures most of us will never see.

I am happy to have people thinking they are smarter than humans and more sensitive, because it has led to their saving.

The problem is that there is a whole ecosystem out there.

There is a great, wide ocean, which for many animals doesn'’t have the qualities that causes the saving that it does for Right Whales.

Sue: I highly recommend watching this, I am thankfully that you joined us today.

You can watch "Saving the Right Whale", right now at PBS.org/ nova.

CNN is holding a Trump town Hall next week and treat him like any other candidate.

Is that the right move?

Is Mayor wu'’s approach working?

Thank you for watching, I am Sue O'’Connell, good night.

♪