FAVOURITE TV SHOWS ON HOLD

author=demondestiny link=topic=411.msg5350#msg5350 date=1195694998
The other night i was watching prison break on tv and the episode stopped as usual at a great part. So i am ready to see what is going to happen next week when i found out that it doesn't return till late january next year. After all this i learn that it is happening to many great shows such as 24. I had read that the reason of this was because of a writers strike as the writers of these shows aren't getting the right money that they deserve which is like an extra couple of cents per episode.

What does everyone think about this? Is anyone as pissed off as i am about this?

It's more than just "a few cents per episode." It's a few cents per episode on dvd, but the main deal is new media. The writers are basically making nothing when the networks decide to put episodes online because they classify it as "advertisement," so the writers are not being paid their rightful dividends, which most of them depend on to survive. And since contracts last for a pretty long period of time, by the time their next contract comes around, internet might become the primary vehicle through which programs are shown. This is in addition to a host of other concerns, like the fact that writers for Reality programming aren't covered under the WGA contract, even though there's a lot that gets written down for those shows, even if it's not the dialogue, and that writers don't get any sort of compensation for web-based "extras" like Webisodes, in-character blogs, or ARGs, all of which they still have to write.

This same thing applies to the actors and directors, who also aren't given any sort of dividends on this stuff, and whose contracts are up for negotiation next year. The actors and directors are with the writers on this because whatever the writers get, they're going to get next year.

And you have to keep in mind that most writers are not making much money. The show-runners, sure, they're probably making decent scratch, but the lower rung writers who you don't know by name (and that's 99% of them) probably don't make much more than you and me, and they're living in one of the most expensive places in the country. Even if they make a pretty decent figure per episode, they're only working about half the year, and they're not always guaranteed that they'll have a job next season. Royalties are a pretty huge necessity to them being able to live.

Yeah, I'm pissed, but I'm pissed for the writers. The studios are screwing them, and want to continue screwing them for as long as they can. And I'm even more pissed that this means the studios are going to start shifting to more reality television again.

For more information on the strike, the WGA's stance and that sort of thing, check out United Hollywood

Also, to hear the writers themselves sum it up, here's a YouTube clip from the writers of the Daily Show in classic Daily Show style: NOT the Daily Show with Some Writer.

Yeah, those poor guys, making as much as you or I.

Wait.... Shadowtext, you make $200,000 per year? Because that is the average salary for a member of the WGA. Sure, some make over a million a year, but even the lowliest guys on the totem pole make over $50,000 (WGA's own statistics). I guess the $50k lowball doesn't count the over 50% of the WGA that doesn't have a job. They're on strike too, though!

I'm all for fairness in contracts, but this is as much a power play as it is trying to put food on the table.

No, and that is why I listed the $50,000 median salary also. Of course, that doesn't get you terribly far in LA or NYC, but the median salary for workers across the board in both cities is $43,000, so it's not like they're among the poor.

Somehow, I doubt Joe Pakaski would be worth the $200,000 a year anyways. Especially if he had anything to do with the first several episodes of Heroes this year.

The lifespan of your average TV writer isn't really that long. Lots of competition, constant cancellations, etc. It's not really a job where you plan on doing it the rest of your life - unless you're one of the few big name ones. Kind of like a minor league baseball player - he may get called up the majors for a year and make a couple of hundred thousand, but the next year he is cut and is bagging groceries somewhere. You have to think of what you're doing beyond now - and lets face it: living in Hollywood is a dream for the vast majority of people, even if you managed to get a taste of it.

The average writer last less than five years in Hollywood, and, as you pointed out previously, averages are skewed because of the few people who get way more out of it. That means lots of them are there for far shoter periods of time. Of course the relatively successful ones makes careers out of it. But the rest... they go back to working at Starbucks or move back home.

I declare to have no mastery over the statistics of the writers!!!

But, call it a power play or else just putting food on the table, it still seems ethical to me that the writers try to take a bigger cut of the profits. I know, profits belong to the capitalist who assembles the work power, yeah yeah, but I feel sympathetic to the writers' demands.

My favorite show is the Office. I watch it a lot. I especially like watching the new episodes online, because I can't catch new episodes on television when I'm always busy doing something. Watching them online lets me pick a time when convenient... like at midnight when I'm catching up on a little work, or when playing a little FFXII. Best yet, I can watch the five most recent episodes of the Office, in case I want to recap what happened or else just get more out of them. The show also has deleted scenes placed online, as well as the webisodes , video from their Office convention, and additional written material from the writers.

What seems unethical to me, in the case of the Office, is that NBC calls all of this online material 'promotional,' as if its main purpose is to just generate interest for watching the show on TV or to buy the DVD of the entire season in 2008. I agree with the writers when they say that all of this is just additional ad revenue for NBC, because NBC has online advertisements with all of these episodes. The online episodes help soak up some of the revenue that would be lost with Internet users just downloading episodes illegally, while genuinely raising long-term interest in the show and building up its fanbase further. A lot of revenue is made through the Internet this way though, and I think the writers have a fair share to some of it. They deserve more on DVD sales, too.

Sucks for us that the writers choose now rather than later to strike, of course, but it's just as much in the networks' power to agree to their demands as it is in the writers' power to just give up on it. I dunno though- maybe my opinion is slighted because the writers are very mobilized in gaining public opinion, while networks are just making private statements about shoring up for a long siege.