[hey, Tessa actually wrote my blog today! YAY! - ed.]
I announced to Ian on Thursday night – after our big Writer’s Guild meeting – that I wanted to guest write his blog for the first time. First, I should say that I am not a natural blogger. I kept a blog for about three days before I realized that having an audience for what was essentially my diary forced me into a twisted mess of ponderous nuance.
But, damn man, this strike thing is intense. And you’ve put in your time here – you might as well hear about it from us.
Ian did a great job of making clear the central issue on Friday. Basically, we get 4 pennies for a DVD or permanent internet download and we’d like 8. My mother feels like our problem is that we’re not asking for more. We’re being too wimpy. Could be.
But here are a couple of other things worth knowing:
1) From what I can tell, the AMPTP just has not taken this negotiation seriously at all. There are a million examples – they took four-hour lunch breaks, refused to break into small groups in hopes of a more reasonable discussion. But, you know, he said, she said. Who knows what’s really happening in that room. I hope my guys are behaving themselves. But in the last day the AMPTP shut down the talks by saying that nothing could be discussed unless we pulled our four cents off the table. There was no counter proposal, no healthy haggling, nada. Every preschooler knows better than that.
So why are they being so belligerent? Either they’ve got some trick up their sleeve, or they radically miscalculated, or they’ll do anything to break the unions, or, well, you decide….
2) The producers are refusing to pay us residuals for all movies or tv shows streamed on the web because they consider that to be “promotional use”. Entire 2-hour movies with commercials. Sounds, oh I don’t know, a lot like television. And how cynical can you get – watching an entire movie is a promotion for the, um, movie you just watched?
3) The press has occasionally given this debate short shrift by saying that this is really just a fight between rich writers and rich producers. But, having parsed the income numbers, the WGA is overwhelmingly a middle-class union. Members have a 55% chance of working in a given year (because every year is a gamble). And in years they do work, they will earn about $100K. So, if you average out the years you don't work with the years you do, you get about $55,000 per year.
Now it may be true that this whole system should be scrapped. Or that the smart decision is to work independently. Or some other savvy macroeconomic analysis.
I worked independently most of my life and I am really proud of what I accomplished. But it was always a financial challenge and, honestly, it got really lonely. I have been deeply gratified in the last couple years. I get paid for telling stories. It’s been one of the greatest accomplishments of my life. And we’ve had the opportunity to work with great, smart people while we do it.
Which brings me to another thing… It feels a little ludicrous to go hold placards and yell at executives driving to work. For one thing, writers are far more comfortable holding court than holding signs. For another, I generally like those executives. Sure, we hated this one chick (and we’re going to her studio lot tomorrow in hopes of being able to lob a well-placed invective) but everyone else has been great. They’ve fought for our work, given smart notes, sent Christmas cards. They would give us those 4 cents if they could.
Look, we know that this is not the most important issue in the world. We get it. The financial fate of some 12,000 writers doesn’t stack up next to the very real circumstances of famine and war and crappy health care.
But people don’t become writers to get rich. And (most days) we have enough humility to know that inspired dialogue won’t change the world. Writers write for a million reasons – we hate it, we love it, we can’t help it. But we provide a service to the marketplace. A service I know many of you value. The people we work for make A LOT OF MONEY. Heck, on the day the strike was announced, Viacom reported their net earnings were up 80% to $641 million and revenue rose 24% to 3.3 billion this quarter.
So we’ll be out there tomorrow, wearing silly t-shirts and lots of sunscreen, because I want to show Lucy that are some things that are worth fighting for – even if that thing is four cents.
I'm rooting for you.
Me too!
Heeellll yeeeaaahhh! GO Tessa and Ian!
well said. my daughter will be out there too. and i agree with your mom - 8 cents is not enough.
Good luck! I'm rooting for your side too.
The practical fallout for me from this strike--if it goes on for a while--is that I will get to catch up on all of the shows I've got on my DVR.
I appreciate the insights Ian and Tessa have provided for us. I'd love for someone to give us the other side's view, too, if you know it.
As for my thoughts, I'm siding with the writers. If the strike continues and the average viewer gets fed up with re-runs and reality TV programming, it will hit the advertisers, who will then lean on the studios.
Have the writers prepared and rationed and saved and budgeted for a drawn out affair or will they collectively cave on Friday, after standing outside all week? Not being cynical, but trying to get a feel for the will of your brethren.
You know what you could do, since you're all writers anyway? Go to bookstores and libraries and promote books! Picket or "educate" consumers in front of book stores. That STILL promotes writers while steering folks away from television.
If enough suits see lazy fat Americans getting off of their asses to get to the libraries or bookstores, THEY might cave. Then, after you get your $.08 per DVD, you'll have to rally those same fat and lazy Americans out of the bookstores and back to the couches! Smile.
Take photos and blog about it. Make it real for us, like you always do.
Good luck.
Solidarity with the writers!
I was listening to the news on the way to work, and the newsreader was quoting Patrick Dempsey of "Grey's Anatomy" saying how terrible this strike was going to be for the people who work on the production side of TV shows and live "paycheck to paycheck." Now... how much does Patrick Dempsey make per episode?
Keep fighting Ian and Tessa and good luck to all of the writers going through this.
What do we want?
Eight cents!
When do we want it?
Over the next 10-15 years!
--
Sounds like you all are fighting the good fight out there. And, Tessa, you better watch out because if enough people read this, someone is going to want to recruit you as a union organizer.Great post. Good luck!
GFWD: absolutely love the scenario wherein Americans descend upon libraries en masse. fantastic! it would make for a great movie....
Good luck to you guys. You are getting a lot of press! I just heard John Oliver (from the Daily Show) interviewed. He is picketing in NYC.
Tessa, good for you for setting a good example for Lucy. Little girls need to see women standing up for themselves and their work.
i <3 writers!!! go, ian and tessa!!
Best of luck to you and your fellow writers. Please tell your daughter that the people walking/driving by yelling, "Get a real job!", "Get Back to Work!", etc. can be compared to people going to a casino and then rooting for the House in blackjack. As Ian discussed last week, it never ceases to amaze me the amount of people that immediately line up with the GE's and Fox's of the world and berate those trying to get their fair share. $.04 More Cents!
I agree with your Mom. Why the hell can't they give the writers 50 cents per DVD! What is wrong with the studios? Everybody wants something for nothing I guess. Perhaps the studios think they can outsource the writing to China or India.
Good luck. I hope the strike lasts long enough for people to really see the impact. I'm rooting for you guys!
Reply to Anne: I don't think Depsey was talking about himself but more like the technical crews and office workers of television shows. A Production Assistant, at most, makes $10 an hour. Non-union background make at most $90-$100 a day. A grip makes about $28 an hour, which is not too shabby, but add in a few kids and a mortgage payment and the $400 a week you get from unemployment does not stretch as far. Luckily they are unionized and their union has emergency funds. P.As and Non-union background will be filling at forms at temp agencies throughout the coming weeks, they don't even have insurance provided.
If Dempsey is the one living paycheck to paycheck, he needs to hire a financial planner.
late to the big-up party here, but i do have this question still confounding me with respect to the strike.
aren't the TV studios very much like dinosaurs at this point?
if the goal is to earn more for digital downloads, then isn't asking for more money from the AMPTP like asking Digital Equipment Corp for a share of their personal computer buisness? i mean, the writing is on the wall, right? the future is all about disintermediation of entertainment. hell, even the present is all about disntermediation of entertainment.
as far as i can see, web 2.0 is the model where advertisers tap directly into customers. they can place a ton of ads on multiple content providers, reach an equivalent number of click-throughs, or possibly even more because they can fine-tune their marketing into specific demographics and learn exactly where the ads are working. big production houses no longer have any hold on big advertisers, it's anyone's game now.
the only thing big production houses have are their current eyeballs - due to the writers/directors/etc - and just a very very broad set of eyeballs at that, which is not as helpful for advertisers vs. the pinpoint demographics.
so my point is this.
suppose, for example, i was to create a small vc-funded web content production and distribution site, let's call it a web "channel". and on my web channel i decide to offer production and distribution deals, paying writers, say, $.04 more than they are making right now. i don't have a bulge bracket overhead like a big studio, all i have is a couple of web programmers, folks doing ad sales and folks working on viral marketing. i just outsource my content production using writers, cinematographers, etc.
has the strike prevented you from working for a web-based company like this one i just invented, where, i would argue, the real future of digital download profitability lives?
Here you go, Robert Reich explains the strike:
robert reich is great at restating the obvious. it's about "who owns what" - brilliant deduction.
but i do agree with him to some extent, as far as global digital downloads distribution, but i'm not sure that is the model that is most at stake, i think that is just one model, with another being streaming video. but that debate is a whole other can of worms.
i'm just thinking that if the artists, i.e., the writers/producers/showrunners/directors/etc. of "lost" or any other hit content creators truly collectively "own" the success of the show, then they can take that success elsewhere to a higher bidder, to a competing company where they have bigger upside potential, i.e., more residuals, i.e., more IP ownership rights. in regular old business, that usually means the IP holder will put his or her own equity at risk by going to a start up or other growth oriented venture, such as a web 2.0 content distributor, tying their success to the success of the company.
if, on the other hand, the artists are not really "owners" whose intellectual property is responsible for the success of their content, but instead they are really more like factory workers at GM, and if the artists are truly able to capture the attention of the masses *only if* they are backed by these behemoth studio corporations, then i guess they are in a position to have to hold out in the hopes the studios will pay them more. unfortuntely, if the studios really do control viewers eyeballs that strongly, and the demand is really that inelastic (which i don't believe), with people watching network shows regardless of quality, then the artists really don't have any negotiating power anyway and i imagine they are just going to have to give in eventually and concede somehow.
the only real negotating power comes when folks are truly willing to walk away, right? seems to me that in this case, the artists are just hoping to inflict enough financial damage by temporarily walking away in the hopes of making it more financially logical for the AMPTP folks to just go ahead and give in on the $.04, rather than go further past a pain threshold. or if the artists are able to simply walk away from the existing system and step into web 2.0 instead.
the really unfortunate thing i am seeing is that the content demand won't be properly put to the test under the strike scenario. if shitty reality shows and re-runs are all we see on tv *because the artists aren't working elsewhere* then we won't know if viewers wind up watching the shitty substitute tv and reruns on abc.com because there is no other content available, or whether the viewers actually would have reached a tipping point to switch over to *elsewhere.com* because that's the artist-friendly shop where all their favorite artists behind their favorite shows have now migrated to.
ah. this is what i am trying to get at, from a Craig Mazin post on artful writer -
" When Writing Partners members bring their specs to Fox, the studio will pay the comparatively small fee of $300,000 to get going, and then the studio will pony up only the writer's usual lucrative fee when the project is going to get made. At that point, the scribes also become gross players and producers. Gross compensation will be in the neighborhood of 2.5%."
xuxE-
Thanks for your thoughtful posts. I'm slammed until tomorrow night when I will try to give equally thoughtful responses!
sorry i didn't mean to innundate you, i'm just hell bent on researching this train of thought to the end before my brain can sleep.
according to thr, looks like the wga has limited writers from working for online content providers (i am even more convinced now this is a mistake) except for aome secret special list of non-signatory sites or something? asking the guild members to go write for non-signatory internet sites somewhat on the down low sounds totally bizarre to me, but maybe it's part of a covert strategy, i don't know. or maybe the info has been twisted around.
all i can say is that the new channels to watch are looking like:
revver.com
mydamnchannel.com
revision3.com
nextnewnetworks.com
blip.tv
and about a bazillion other up-and-coming start-up content providers that offer a 40-50% ad revenue share.here's another conference that could be fascinating given what's happening with the strike: live.newteevee.com i would love to go to it but i'll be in nyc.