WGA Strike: Your thoughts?

Nessephanie · Post by **Nessephanie** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 4:34 am

Vlad G Pohnert wrote:Well, there are a ton of jobs that are underpaid! Not just writers....

Vlad

Yes, and were it a whole union (or guild, which come on, close enough), they should negotiate for more money when their contract comes up. :P

requiett · Post by **requiett** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 5:41 am

How hard is it to replace writers? I mean... really.

Willen · Post by **Willen** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 7:23 am

requiett wrote:How hard is it to replace writers? I mean... really.

With other good writers? Look at the vast landscape that is the graveyard of failed shows.

The writer's guild knows that the distribution medium of media is changing from traditional broadcasts (OTA TV, cable, sat.) and hard copies (VHS, DVD, etc.) to online distribution. Even if online distro doesn't make a huge chunk of money (look at the numbers for NBC's old iTunes deal), it's still a sizable amount for some of the people involved.

JaddziaDax · Post by **JaddziaDax** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 8:22 am

requiett wrote:How hard is it to replace writers? I mean... really.

considering that the networks are contracted to hire guild members only... when they are on strike, legally pretty damn hard.

I hate the unions in Hollywood, but that might be my personal bias.

Don't take it that I think the new mediums shouldn't be negotiated because I clearly said the opposite. They are revenues that didn't exist when their last contract was up, and I think it's something that should be in their contract just so the fricken networks can "cover their asses"

Kalium · Post by **Kalium** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 9:58 am

AtomX wrote:I'm not saying 62k is a small amount of money. Far from it. I'd be THRILLED to make that much. But I'd be less thrilled if I knew that I DESERVED more that I was not getting for my creative work.

How much ones 'deserves' for creative work is a notoriously slippery idea. Some would say they deserve every penny anyone makes from their work, ever. This is obviously not economically tenable. Others would say they deserve nothing, and this is likewise economically untenable.

A happy medium is required, then. As the studios interests lie in paying as little as they can get away with and the writers' lie in getting as much as they can get away with, finding a number both groups will be happy with will be tricky at best. Ultimately, what they get is determined by a series of negotiations much like this, including trial-by-media when one side thinks they can gain an advantage in the process. But I digress.

It's impossible to define what a writer 'deserves'. There's no way to measure or calculate such a thing. It all comes down to how much the writers can wheedle out of their employers, and that is something measurable. The whole angle about how much a writer 'deserves' is a canard. It's similar to the way that radio stations don't pay performance royalties.

Nessephanie · Post by **Nessephanie** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 3:12 pm

It isn't about a specific amount if money that they deserve. It's about that they deserve to be compensated in all mediums that their work is being shown on and making money from.

Even if the companies are to be believed, in that there is no money now and it really isn't going to get them anything, as Willen said, they know that the distribution mediums are changing, and they DESERVE to have a part of all of them.

godix · Post by **godix** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 3:38 pm

Writers want a cut of a successful show but they aren't willing to take the risk of a show with poor ratings and there's a lot more of those than successful shows. If the writers were saying they'd be willing to not get paid if the show bombs then I could understand giving them a cut of success. But they aren't. This isn't something like a painter who just doesn't get paid if no one likes his work, this is a person who gets paid no matter how little money his work for a show actually earns. I can understand giving a small percentage of successful shows as a form of bonus or incentive but I don't think the writers actually deserve it since they aren't taking on the risk.

Plus lets be honest here, it's not most of these guys are any good at their job. The hallmark of good writing is that the lines wouldn't work for any character but the one they were written for. Now seriously, how many times can you watch a sitcom and see jokes and a plot that would work for almost any other sitcom in existence? How many soap opera plots would work regardless of what soap opera they'd be used for? How many shows of any type have two dimensional cardboard stock characters instead of characters actually fleshed out and believable? TV viewership has been in decline for decades now and the reason is the writers, among others, just plain suck at their job. There are exceptions of course but not all that many considering how many shows are out there. In the literary world these writers are worse than the cheap ass romance novel hacks.

OTOH the media companies aren't really doing much. Other people put together the show, act in the show, write the show, etc. So it's similar to the RIAA where the companies are getting the lions share of the money for work that other people do. I tend to think distribution and financing other peoples creative work doesn't deserve more than a few percent of the profit.

So all told I'm vaguely on the writers side of this. However if the studios decide to go to all reality programming all the time and the writers end up unemployed and living in cardboard boxes sucking peoples dick for $5 then I wouldn't pity them in the slightest. In fact I'd probably be laughing as I zipped up my pants and tossed $5 in a sewer grate just to watch the bums rooting around in the sewer. Then I'd cross the street and piss on a studio execs shoes just for fun.

Brad · Post by **Brad** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 4:13 pm

Kalium wrote:
AtomX wrote:I'm not saying 62k is a small amount of money. Far from it. I'd be THRILLED to make that much. But I'd be less thrilled if I knew that I DESERVED more that I was not getting for my creative work.
How much ones 'deserves' for creative work is a notoriously slippery idea. Some would say they deserve every penny anyone makes from their work, ever. This is obviously not economically tenable. Others would say they deserve nothing, and this is likewise economically untenable.

A happy medium is required, then. As the studios interests lie in paying as little as they can get away with and the writers' lie in getting as much as they can get away with, finding a number both groups will be happy with will be tricky at best. Ultimately, what they get is determined by a series of negotiations much like this, including trial-by-media when one side thinks they can gain an advantage in the process. But I digress.

It's impossible to define what a writer 'deserves'. There's no way to measure or calculate such a thing. It all comes down to how much the writers can wheedle out of their employers, and that is something measurable. The whole angle about how much a writer 'deserves' is a canard. It's similar to the way that radio stations don't pay performance royalties.

Nessephanie wrote:It isn't about a specific amount if money that they deserve. It's about that they deserve to be compensated in all mediums that their work is being shown on and making money from.

Even if the companies are to be believed, in that there is no money now and it really isn't going to get them anything, as Willen said, they know that the distribution mediums are changing, and they DESERVE to have a part of all of them.

This is what I was getting at. I'm not saying "All writers deserve X amount of dollars cause thats what a writer deserves!" I'm saying that, if I'm putting forth my creative effort to make the backbone of an otherwise larger project that eventually is making money in some medium that is perpetually compensating one party and completely excluding me, I would take harsh issue with that. It doesn't mean that what I wrote was any GOOD or that the money being made is a fortune, it's simply the principle of getting a portion of the monetary concession that higher-ups are essentially monopolizing.

I'm not even bringing the question of quality into the picture here. Granted, I do watch a lot of television shows and if you look past the traditional fluff that most people associate with primetime television and are actually well written programs (see: Friday Night Lights, Arrested Development, Scrubs, The Wire, Entourage, The Office [in before HURHUR IT WAS A BRITISH SHOW. It still takes writers. Shut it], Grey's Anatomy, etc. I'm not talking about all of the sitcom fluff of yesteryear or the stuff that gets canned. But even if I was, my view would be the exact same. The distribution/production company is still making a profit that the writers are not being privy to, and I just think it's wrong on pure principle. So what if a lot of them are writing to cater to the lowest common denominator. The cycle is still the same.

Org Profile · Post by **Vlad G Pohnert** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 7:31 pm

Nessephanie wrote:
Vlad G Pohnert wrote:Well, there are a ton of jobs that are underpaid! Not just writers....

Vlad
Yes, and were it a whole union (or guild, which come on, close enough), they should negotiate for more money when their contract comes up.

The problem here is human greed all around... Unions are a good idea until they too get too greedy... Like I said before, you'd think that everyone could work out a model of how much share of the pie they can get amongst themselves... However as I mentioned usually the solution is to pass the costs to the consumer instead of properly sharing the pie...

Vlad

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 2:32 pm

Is this still going on? I've heard a few shows that have a bunch of scripts already written are going to a more spread-out new episode structure - to wait the writers out perhaps?