Hollywood actors supporting the strike...

Here is the beginning of the "Speechless" campaign. Ahh, the Internet...
BTW - it's kind of fun to see these people looking like regular people! :-) How many do you recognize?

Wesley and Dr. Brown

The 80s geek in me enjoyed last night's episode of Numb3rs. It guest-starred Wil Wheaton and Christopher Lloyd. And it was about comic books. Fun times. :-)

In response to a comment...

For some reason, Blogger isn't letting me comment, so here is my answer to Ren's comment. (BTW - I'm so glad you stopped by my Blog!)

Ummm...actually there is tremendous ad revenue that comes from streaming video. Check out streaming from most Hollywood sources - the big studio dotcoms, E-online, etc. Most of them have a short commercial embedded in the video that you must watch before the clip, interview, etc. There is some thought that this type of advertising space is actually more valuable than commercials on TV. The viewer cannot fast forward or skip these commercials, the way I do the ones on my DVR. Even one ad before a streamed show generates a significant amount of revenue for the studio. Just like authors are paid a royalty for every book sold, screen writers are asking for a royalty for every time profit is made from their creative product. It seems pretty reasonable to me. They are the initial creative force behind the show -- they should get a small cut of the profit. Notice, they are only asking for .6%. Not even six percent. Sixth tenths of one percent.

One of the reasons they are fighting so hard for this is the future. No one really knows what media is going to look like in ten years, but it's a pretty safe bet that "new media" will play a huge role. Television as we know it today might not even exist. I know that I never watch a show when it is actually on anymore. I always delay my viewing until later. Traditionally, a writer is paid for the initial broadcast of a show and then again when it is re-broadcast later in the season. Writers depend on this as part of their yearly income. Most of them do not make much at all and need the 2nd residual. In the past year, several shows (The Office, Heroes, Desperate Housewives, etc.) have stopped running that second broadcast and just streamed the episode online instead. The writers' salary is cut in half. This is what they are trying to deal with. It's not only an increase -- it's fighting the loss of current income to a format that is not covered under their contract.

More on the Writers Strike

One of the best arguments I've seen for the writers. Interestingly, it uses the words of the studio heads!



As you can see from this video, the primary issue for the writers is not DVD revenue as I reported before. In fact, the night before the strike, the WGA took their DVD demands off the table in hopes that the studios would compromise on Internet revenue (of which writers receive NOTHING.) The studios refused to meet them part way on the Internet revenue issue, insisting that downloading and streaming video are purely for promotional purposes. (My question is this - if it's promotional...why do I have to watch the commercial before my show or clip???)

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.