2008 Woodie Awards
Writers Strike a shenanigan
Lance Park
Issue date: 11/28/07 Section: Opinion
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This writers strike is ridiculous; it's taking away my planned entertainment and replacing it with chaos. What will I have to look forward to come spring if the strike delays important script-writing for my favorite shows?
Now, I'll have to wait even longer for my Family Guy fix! I could care less about Grey's Anatomy or Desperate Housewives, but damn it, I need my Stewie and Brian Griffin laugh! I want my shows! What the deuce is wrong with the networks?
The strike is ridiculous to begin with; the networks and such just need to man up and pay the writers what's due. Sorry big corporate networks, but the writers got wise to the booming medium of the Internet and want their slice of the pie! They wrote the stories, the very groundwork of any good show, and to find out that their product is technically being sold on a popular medium without the foundation layers getting their cut? That's a hell of a thing to pull. It seems like a contractual snafu that doesn't give them some residuals off the internet, but apparently networks are taking advantage of that and are refusing to budge.
The fact the strikers took a bigger cut in the DVD sales off the table in favor of getting some money off the "new media" angle, also known as the internet or inter-webs, is a statement on how serious they are. The 4 or 5 percent the writers get off the DVD sales is a drop in the bucket for the DVD sales for popular shows, and the writers are asking for 2.5 percent on new media sales. Only 2.5 percent! If it was me, I'd be asking for more, so why, in the name of common sense, are the companies saying no? An almost 3 percent cut for the writers is going to be nothing compared to the money they'll lose with this strike.
I call shenanigans on the whole thing, because this strike will probably end up costing so much more money if it goes on longer than it would if the networks just gave up the goose. The last strike in 1988 went on for 22 weeks and cost about $500 million dollars, and that was almost twenty years ago! If we went that long today, it'd run into the billions, and it probably will at this rate. The way I look at it, you can give the writers their 2.5 percent or lose massive wads of cash with the strike. Either way the companies are going to be losing money, so the question becomes; how much do they really want to lose?
Now, I'll have to wait even longer for my Family Guy fix! I could care less about Grey's Anatomy or Desperate Housewives, but damn it, I need my Stewie and Brian Griffin laugh! I want my shows! What the deuce is wrong with the networks?
The strike is ridiculous to begin with; the networks and such just need to man up and pay the writers what's due. Sorry big corporate networks, but the writers got wise to the booming medium of the Internet and want their slice of the pie! They wrote the stories, the very groundwork of any good show, and to find out that their product is technically being sold on a popular medium without the foundation layers getting their cut? That's a hell of a thing to pull. It seems like a contractual snafu that doesn't give them some residuals off the internet, but apparently networks are taking advantage of that and are refusing to budge.
The fact the strikers took a bigger cut in the DVD sales off the table in favor of getting some money off the "new media" angle, also known as the internet or inter-webs, is a statement on how serious they are. The 4 or 5 percent the writers get off the DVD sales is a drop in the bucket for the DVD sales for popular shows, and the writers are asking for 2.5 percent on new media sales. Only 2.5 percent! If it was me, I'd be asking for more, so why, in the name of common sense, are the companies saying no? An almost 3 percent cut for the writers is going to be nothing compared to the money they'll lose with this strike.
I call shenanigans on the whole thing, because this strike will probably end up costing so much more money if it goes on longer than it would if the networks just gave up the goose. The last strike in 1988 went on for 22 weeks and cost about $500 million dollars, and that was almost twenty years ago! If we went that long today, it'd run into the billions, and it probably will at this rate. The way I look at it, you can give the writers their 2.5 percent or lose massive wads of cash with the strike. Either way the companies are going to be losing money, so the question becomes; how much do they really want to lose?
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