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STORY: Late-night and daytime talk shows producers were making plans to return to TV screens for the first time in five months on Monday, after Hollywood writers reached a tentative deal to end a work stoppage that had shut down production.

The Writers Guild of America, which represents more than 11,000 film and television writers, reached a preliminary three-year deal with major studios on Sunday.

Sean McNulty is a contributor at The Ankler.

“Look, there's a sense of relief. It really is, you know, as much as it's been contentious and there's still a lot of bad feelings probably on both sides, certainly on the talent side...You can't see this as anything less than a positive step in the right direction.”

The agreement still must be approved by the union's leadership and members.

Meanwhile, actors are still on strike. Scripted series will not be able to resume filming until the SAG-AFTRA actors union reaches an agreement with studios - with pay raises and the use of AI on screen being major sticking points.

"They have a bigger, you know, ask on pay raises than the other two guilds had. So, and AI has a much arguably a bigger issue for an actor to a degree than maybe even a writer, maybe just as big. But it's a different set of parameters of protections that they need. So whatever, whatever the writers got for AI, it may apply, but it may not be 'apples for apples' to SAG. So, these negotiations take, you know, as we saw with the WGA, just don't know how it's going to go. As I wrote my newsletter this morning, you'd be an optimist and maybe we're done with this by early November or a pessimist and this be go on until easily till December. So, we'll see how it goes.”

Shares of big media companies lost ground on Monday, with Warner Bros Discovery and Walt Disney ending lower at the close.