Writers & Studios Reach A Deal; ChatGPT Can Now Speak; New Power Couple: Taylor Swift & Travis Kelce – Mo News Rundown

Good morning, everyone. It is Tuesday, September 26th, and you're listening to the Mo News podcast. I'm Jill Wagner. This is the place where we bring you just the facts. We read all of the news and read between the lines so you don't have to. It's just me today, which means baby, oh, has arrived. Congratulations to Moche and Alex on their beautiful baby girl. Olivia Gray, Wannunu, I spoke to Moche on Monday night. He says they're all home. They're doing great. And like a true journalist in the making, Olivia arrived right on that line. Alex is due date. So best of luck to all three. In the meantime, I will be holding things down until Moche comes back from his paternity leave. Now to the headlines, let's make a deal. Studios and writers have reached an agreement. What comes next? And what does that mean for our favorite shows? And in a tale of two strikes, the UAW expands its strike against General Motors and Stellantis. What's going on with Ford? Now to politics, somewhere in an alternative political universe. Gavin Newsom and Ron DeSantis have agreed to debate on Fox News. And back to our actual political universe. The second Republican debate is Wednesday. In tech news, chat GPT can now speak, listen, and process images. And my favorite story of the day, we've got a new power couple, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey, and even coach Bill Belichack, weigh in in. Plus, I'll have on this day in history. All right, Hollywood writers and studios have reached a tentative deal on a new contract, essentially ending the writers, 146-day strike. The agreement still needs to be approved by the union's board and members. But that could happen as soon as this week. There were expectations that a deal would be reached because the big players like Disney's Bob Eiger and Netflix's Ted Cerandos took part in this most recent round of talks directly. All right, what is in the agreement? According to reports, the WGA was able to get concessions from the studios on most of their demands. Writers will reportedly be receiving bonuses for popular shows on streaming services. That was a huge point of contention. The writers also reportedly have guarantees that AI won't impact writers' credits and compensation. And the studios have agreed to staff a certain number of writers per TV show. According to Time Magazine, that is a figure that will increase with the number of episodes in a season. The union's negotiating committee took a victory lap saying, we could say with great pride that this deal is exceptional, with meaningful gains and protections for writers in every sector of the membership. On the other hand, the Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of studios, would only say that, quote, the WGA and AMPTP have reached a tentative agreement. As for what comes next, as soon as today, the leadership boards of the WGA are expected to vote on whether to approve the contract. If the leadership approves, then the members will vote to ratify it. The leaders of the guild have already called for picketing to stop, but writers are not returning to work until that contract is formalized and ratified. Theoretically though, writers could get back to work within days. However, SAG-AFTRA, which is the union that represents 160,000 actors, well, they're still on strike. The tentative writers deal does put pressure on SAG-AFTRA to reach an agreement along the same lines and analysts tell the New York Times that the studio's resolution with the WGA will likely pave the way for a deal with SAG-AFTRA within the next few weeks. Now, what to expect as far as programming, late night and daytime talk shows, like late night with Jimmy Fallon, the Drew Barrymore show, they are likely to resume work as soon as possible. Other shows though that you require actors could take a bit longer. And this strike has really taken a toll on everyone, nearly 100,000 workers behind the scenes, like directors, camera operators, costume designers. They've also been out of work because of the standstill in Hollywood. California's economy lost about $5 billion from the shutdown. Hollywood workers have taken more than $45 million in hardship with draws from the motion picture industry pension plan. The studios have taken a hit. Warner Brothers' discovery said the dual strikes would reduce its earnings for the year by about $300 to $500 million. And studios have lost about $1.6 billion in global ticket sales for movie releases that were pushed to 2024. But all in all, finally, it does look like there is a light at the end of the tunnel here, at least when it comes to the writers and Hollywood. Meanwhile, the UAW strike against the big three automakers is still happening. In fact, on Friday, the Union expanded the targeted strikes on two of the three automakers, GM and Stellantis, saying the Ford had done more to meet their demands. Negotiations continued over the weekend. And while there is no imminent deal with Ford in the works, analysts tell the New York Times that it could put pressure on the other two, GM and Stellantis, which is the parent company of Chrysler, to offer those same terms as Ford and ultimately end this strike sooner than later. All right, we have plenty of news coming up. But first word from a couple of our sponsors. We've often talked to the only one who endorsed things on this podcast that we really love. And bowl and branch betting and sheets is one of those things. We've had them for a few months in my house and have been loving them. Bowling branch has made the summer of record heat a bit easier. They've got really soft and breathable sheets. Bowling branch, that is B-O-L-L. And branch sheets are made with organic cotton. 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With your first purchase of AG1, athletic greens is giving Monoos listeners a free one-year supply of their vitamin D. And five free travel packs of AG1. Visit drinkag1.com slash Monoos to take advantage of this offer. You can get a discounted monthly subscription. Or try it one time for just a month. Again, that is drinkag1.com slash Monoos M-O-N-E-W-S for this special deal. And really start to take ownership of your health. All right, time now for the speed read. Let's start with politics from ABC News. Florida Governor and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis. And California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, will be debating each other on Fox News on November 30 in Georgia. A news release from Fox News describes the 90-minute event as a red versus blue state debate. Sean Hannity will moderate a debate between the governors has been in the works for about two months now, according to both of their public comments over that time. Still, they have sometimes appeared at odds over the particulars. Fox News' announcement on Monday, though, did not include specifics on the debate format or the topics. DeSantis and Newsom previously agreed to debate each other earlier this summer. A DeSantis spokesperson tells ABC News that comparing California and Florida, quote, demonstrates that Ron DeSantis is right. DeSantis is merely a choice. Ron DeSantis rejects that choice. And as president will reverse America's decline, he went on to say that they look forward to putting Ron DeSantis' record of success up against Newsom's track record. A Newsom spokesperson says we've agreed to the debate, provided there is no cheering section, no hype videos, or any of the other crutches that DeSantis requested. We want a real debate, not a circus. Newsom, who has sparked 2024 presidential speculation, but has said he would not run against fellow Democrat President Biden, has repeatedly challenged DeSantis to debate on varying issues, neither Newsom or DeSantis can run for reelection as governor because of term limits that you have taken public jabs at each other on topics like immigration, abortion, gun rights, and education. And to be clear here, Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has put his full support behind President Biden for reelection. All right, as for the actual candidates here from ABC News, the leading 2024 Republican presidential candidates will go ahead to head once again at the second GOP primary debate on Wednesday, September 27th at 6 p.m. Pacific time, 9 p.m. Eastern time. It will be held at the Ronald Reagan presidential library. After last month's debate in Milwaukee, the candidates are set to spark again, but this time there will be potentially fewer on stage as a result of higher thresholds for candidates to qualify. And once again, the front runner, former president Donald Trump, is expected to skip the event. Ron DeSantis, who we're just mentioning, he is expected to be there. We'll have plenty more on the debate and what to expect tomorrow. From CNBC, OpenAI's chat GPT can now quote, see, hear and speak, or at least understand spoken words, respond with a synthetic voice and process images. The company made this announcement on Monday, the update to Chatbot, OpenAI's biggest since the introduction of GPT4 allows users to opt into voice conversations on chat GPT's mobile app and choose from five different synthetic voices for the bots to respond with. Users will be able to share images with chat GPT and highlight areas of focus or analysis. The changes will be rolling out to paying users in the next two weeks. The big feature push comes alongside ever rising stakes of the artificial intelligence arms rates among chatbot leaders like OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Anthropic in an effort to encourage consumers to adopt generative AI into their daily lives. Tech giants are racing to launch not only new chatbot apps but also new features, especially this summer. Google announced a slew of updates to its barred chatbot and Microsoft added visual search to Bing, experts have raised concerns about AI-generated synthetic voices, which in this case could allow users a more natural experience, but also enable more convincing deep fakes. OpenAI acknowledged those concerns, saying that synthetic voices were, quote, created with voice actors we have directly worked with, rather than collected from strangers. From CNN, Game On, Travis Kelsey had said the ball was in Taylor Swift's court after he made a play for her and the singer appears to have caught his pass, pardon the pun. To be clear, we still don't know what is or what is not going on with Taylor Swift and the NFL tight end. We do know, however, that Swift had a lot of people paying attention to Sunday's game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Chicago Bears. Swift was seen sitting next to Kelsey's mom in an Arrowhead stadium suite. A CNN puts it for the, why is this news crew? Please know that when music's biggest star attracts the attention of a football player, reality TV bachelor, it is most definitely a topic of high interest. The Taylor Swift, Travis Kelsey pairing, has everyone in the NFL talking about them, including noted pop culture, aficionado, and Taylor Swift fan, Bill Bellachet, the New England Patriots coach in his Monday morning appearance on Boston radio station. WEEI was actually asked about the power couple and delivered a classic response. Can I try one that's not about the Cowboys? Swiftie to Swiftie. Taylor Swift was in attendance to watch Travis Kelsey's game with his mom in the box. Seems like they may be the new it couple. Where do you follow that? Travis Kelsey, Taylor Swift, power couple in the NFL. Well, I would say that Travis Kelsey's had a lot of, the Kelsey's had a lot of big catches in his career. This would be the biggest. Nailed it. Yeah, pretty big. Nothing. It was red. And this is also big business from TMZ, Travis Kelsey Jersey sales seemed to swiftly rise after Taylor Swift attended that Kansas City Chiefs game on Sunday. Fanatics, a sportswear company telling TMZ that Travis Kelsey was one of the top five selling NFL players and saw nearly 400% spike in sales throughout the fanatics network of sites. All right, time for on this day in history. On this day in 1957, West Side Story composed by Leonard Bernstein opened at the Wintergarden Theatre on Broadway. On this day in 1960, some political history for the first time ever, a debate between major party presidential candidates is broadcast on live television. I'm talking, of course, about Democrat John F. Kennedy, who is a senator for Massachusetts, and Richard Nixon, the vice president of the United States. They met in a Chicago studio to talk about U.S. domestic matters. And a lot of people credit Kennedy's eventual win to this debate where Kennedy was young and energetic and photogenic. While Nixon, who was recently in the hospital, looked pale and a little bit sickly, some had said. On to pop culture history on this day in 1969, the Beatles released Abby Road. They're last recorded album. Also on this day in 1969, the Brady Bunch premiered on ABC. It went on to become an enduring cultural phenomenon. By the way, the house in LA that served as the exterior of the Brady home just sold for $3.2 million. That's actually 9% less than HGTV, the TV network. Which is the seller. Then they paid for the home back in 2018. The buyer, though, says she plans to use it for fundraising and charitable events according to the Wall Street Journal and won't change a thing about it, even though apparently none of the appliances actually work. Hmm, at least get a new microwave, I don't know. All right, a big thank you for listening to the Monews podcast. If you like what you hear, share this with your friends who will really help us grow. Follow us and subscribe. You don't miss an episode and review us in the app store and give us a call at 1-800-711-MOS. And of course, don't forget to follow us on Instagram, at MoSH, M-O-S-H-E-H. Again, a big congratulations in Mazatav to MoSH, Alex, and Baby-O, who we now know is named Olivia. Love the name. Congratulations, guys, and see you all tomorrow. Thanks for listening to the Monews podcast.