WGA strike
Monday the Writers' Guild of America went on strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
If you're a late night fan, this is why you aren't seeing fresh episodes of Jon Stewart, Jay Leno, Dave Letterman, Craig Ferguson, etc. If you're a soap fan, you'll stop seeing fresh episodes of your soaps roundabout January or so. If you like sitcoms, they'll run out of material soon after the holidays. If you're a drama geek, you'll last longest, but very few shows are completely in the can right now.
What do the writers want? The main issue is residuals.
Currently the writers' minimum residual on DVDs is 4¢ per DVD (hopefully this means 4¢ per disc and not 4¢ per packaged set!). They would like this to go up to 8¢ per. Increased DVD residuals was one of the non-negotiable items until Sunday when the writers agreed to take them off the table if they could get some ANPTP movement on New Media. What is New Media?
Part of the problem with this strike and having standard contracts is that the entertainment world is evolving too rapidly for everybody to keep up with developments. The hottest segment in TV and movies right now is New Media: the Internet, ringtones, iTunes, etc. The last time there was a big change in writers' contracts, none of these media were anywhere near as prevalent as they are today. Sure, there was the internet -- but back then it was mostly text-based. I didn't see my first cell phone until Mulder pulled one out of his coat on the X-Files. It was about 10 inches long! And iTunes wasn't even a twinkle in Steve Job's eye...
Currently, once the writer has written something used in New Media and been paid, that's it. No residuals. This includes episode streaming, previews, trailers, internet ads, everything. The AMPTP says this is all too new and it's promotional and they have no way to keep track and so on and so forth. I agree with the writers that the AMPTP is full of it. And the actors agree with the writers too, which could well mean another strike in the summer when the SAG contract is up.
In 1988 the writers got very little support from non-Hollywood people. Most average Americans, if they think about writers at all, thought they had cushy jobs making millions on hit shows. Most older Americans still do. But the Internet has dramatically increased the visibility of the writers. Starting with Joss Whedon, I can now name you a good dozen TV writers I know of off the top of my head, most of them working now thank goodness, but there's never a guarantee of that. Most of the people I know online are just as knowledgeable about the people behind their favorite shows.
So will all Americans support the writers? Nah. Some don't care about anything except why their show isn't on the air. Some think writers are greedy little geeks -- this is the picture usually painted by the studios and those too lazy to find out for themselves. Some think writers make more money than they do so why should the writers get a raise?
But there are a lot more strike supporters out there than the studios realize. Yesterday, the first day of the strike, Joss Whedon fans at Whedonesque.com banded together to buy pizza for Jane Espenson and her fellow scribes/picketers. The plan now is for this to be an ongoing event, Whedonesque Pizza Mondays. They're also planning other ways to show their support to the writers. I haven't heard about any other fandoms doing things but I've been concentrating on Whedon stuff. My one foray to my favorite Heroes forum showed that few people had any idea what was going on besides the fact they'd lost multiple episodes of Heroes due to the strike. Hopefully as news of the strike percolates out, more and more fans will show their support to the scribes.
ETA: Supernatural fans sent fresh fruit to picketers at the Warner Bros lot. :)
If you're a late night fan, this is why you aren't seeing fresh episodes of Jon Stewart, Jay Leno, Dave Letterman, Craig Ferguson, etc. If you're a soap fan, you'll stop seeing fresh episodes of your soaps roundabout January or so. If you like sitcoms, they'll run out of material soon after the holidays. If you're a drama geek, you'll last longest, but very few shows are completely in the can right now.
What do the writers want? The main issue is residuals.
Currently the writers' minimum residual on DVDs is 4¢ per DVD (hopefully this means 4¢ per disc and not 4¢ per packaged set!). They would like this to go up to 8¢ per. Increased DVD residuals was one of the non-negotiable items until Sunday when the writers agreed to take them off the table if they could get some ANPTP movement on New Media. What is New Media?
Part of the problem with this strike and having standard contracts is that the entertainment world is evolving too rapidly for everybody to keep up with developments. The hottest segment in TV and movies right now is New Media: the Internet, ringtones, iTunes, etc. The last time there was a big change in writers' contracts, none of these media were anywhere near as prevalent as they are today. Sure, there was the internet -- but back then it was mostly text-based. I didn't see my first cell phone until Mulder pulled one out of his coat on the X-Files. It was about 10 inches long! And iTunes wasn't even a twinkle in Steve Job's eye...
Currently, once the writer has written something used in New Media and been paid, that's it. No residuals. This includes episode streaming, previews, trailers, internet ads, everything. The AMPTP says this is all too new and it's promotional and they have no way to keep track and so on and so forth. I agree with the writers that the AMPTP is full of it. And the actors agree with the writers too, which could well mean another strike in the summer when the SAG contract is up.
In 1988 the writers got very little support from non-Hollywood people. Most average Americans, if they think about writers at all, thought they had cushy jobs making millions on hit shows. Most older Americans still do. But the Internet has dramatically increased the visibility of the writers. Starting with Joss Whedon, I can now name you a good dozen TV writers I know of off the top of my head, most of them working now thank goodness, but there's never a guarantee of that. Most of the people I know online are just as knowledgeable about the people behind their favorite shows.
So will all Americans support the writers? Nah. Some don't care about anything except why their show isn't on the air. Some think writers are greedy little geeks -- this is the picture usually painted by the studios and those too lazy to find out for themselves. Some think writers make more money than they do so why should the writers get a raise?
But there are a lot more strike supporters out there than the studios realize. Yesterday, the first day of the strike, Joss Whedon fans at Whedonesque.com banded together to buy pizza for Jane Espenson and her fellow scribes/picketers. The plan now is for this to be an ongoing event, Whedonesque Pizza Mondays. They're also planning other ways to show their support to the writers. I haven't heard about any other fandoms doing things but I've been concentrating on Whedon stuff. My one foray to my favorite Heroes forum showed that few people had any idea what was going on besides the fact they'd lost multiple episodes of Heroes due to the strike. Hopefully as news of the strike percolates out, more and more fans will show their support to the scribes.
ETA: Supernatural fans sent fresh fruit to picketers at the Warner Bros lot. :)