Thoughts on the Hollywood Writer's Strike

I realize it's been ages since I've posted anything. It's not that I don't have anything to say...it's just that I'm not sure this is the best forum. :-) However, there's something going on that I'd like to mention. I'm sure that many of you don't care, but this is close to my heart! :-)

The Writers Guild of America (both East and West) are going on strike! The strike could begin as soon as Monday. The writers have been unable to reach an agreement with producers and studios over the money they receive from DVD sales and other recently popular forms of media distribution. This might not seem like a big deal to many of you, but imagine something you created bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars (if not millions)to studios, while your portion of that is less than six figures. That might seem like a lot of money to those of us sitting here in middle America. (In fact, if I earned even $40,000 in a year, that would be amazing. Why can't this country pay teachers??) However, we need to keep in mind that most writers are not on salary. They are paid one job at a time. Even a writer for a television show has very little job security. A successful show might last for a few years, but then the writer is back to square one. They have little or no income and must rely on savings from previous jobs. Writers are basically self-employed, and there are significant risks that come with that. When a writer is supporting a family with children in Southern California, money gets tight very quickly. Writers are asking that their contracts are renegotiated in light of the media trends of recent years. DVD sales and digital media have changed the profit landscape. Studios are making significant amounts of money on distribution formats that didn't exist even a few years ago. The writers are asking for their share of the profit from the art they have created.

All of that said, I remember the last time the writers went on strike. It was 1988, and I was fourteen years old. The television season that year was abysmal. Television lost ten percent of its audience, and they never came back. I fear that something worse will happen now. Studios have tried to stockpile scripts to last for awhile, but if the teamsters join the writers like they did last time -- the studios will find it very hard to function in any capacity. The networks are going to have to fill the schedule with more reality TV and other so-called "unscripted" shows. Shows like Letterman and The Colbert Report are going to suffer immediately. There will be no writers to write sketches and jokes.

The current season of TV could be drastically reduced. New shows that are good but struggling in the ratings could be destroyed if they aren't given time to build an audience. In fact, the entire landscape of scripted television could change. Audiences are already dwindling, and this strike could have permanent negative consequences. I hope, for the sake of the television drama that I love, this strike will end quickly. I hope that the producers and studios will give the writers fair compensation for their creative property.

Clarification: Just to put some of these money issues into perspective -- the writers guild is proposing "to double the home video residual formula from 0.3% to 0.6% for the first $1 million in reportable gross and from 0.36% to 0.72% over $1 million." (WGA website) To translate that into English = If a TV season on DVD sells for $50.00, the writer earns fifteen cents. They would like to earn thirty cents.