WGA Strike & all related issues

[Veruka]

Stacerace, you've summed up the studio's position pretty well. These sort of fights happen any time that new media is developed, and at the core, it all comes down to where the line between the art aspect of the entertainment business and the business aspect converge. The writers (and actors, and directors) sell a product to the studios that the studios use to make money. The witers (and directors, and actors) say there'd be no money to make from the product if they didn't create it. They're right. The studios say there'd be no product to make money from if they didn't invest in in and distribute it. They're also right. Everyone has a rightful claim to a piece of the pie. They just have to hammer out what size everyone's piece is. The studios maintain that they brought the pie to the party, so if there are any leftovers, they get to keep them. The artists say they gave the ingredients to make the pie, so they get the leftovers too. At the end of the day, they'll all get a piece. It just takes time to agree on the percentages.

[Missyboxers]

This is what I don't get about this strike. What extra work did they do?

One example: remember the webisodes of the Office that NBC released on their website? They weren't paid for those, and if you sum the minutes up, it's about the length of an episode. For which I'd look up the amount they'd ordinarily be paid to write an episode, but I'm running out the door. Off the top of my head, it's in the range of $20k but that might be incorrect.

[Miss_Griss]

They want their cut of shows on the net, etc. The advertisers pay good money to the networks to have their commercials on the web casts and the writers aren't seeing anything from it or any other forms of showing other than the tv.

I think DVDs is included in that, too, and there are huge revenues there. The money is getting bigger every day. I just discovered Amazon Unbox where people can download episodes of a lot of the shows for $1.99 each.

The writers should be getting a piece of this. It's not fair that they aren't. (I read somewhere, though that the networks have paid so much for sports events that they don't have money to pay for settling the strike now.)

As for Jay and Conan (and others like Jon Stewart) what the union wants is for them not to be scabs. They are members of the union, and for them to be doing their shows while the strike on is basically union-busting (unless they are totally improvising, which I highly doubt). For them to even write notes before the show about what they might say, jokes they might make, etc. is considered "writing," and as union members, they shouldn't be doing it.

They may not have a choice (although one really always has a choice; it's just a question of what one is willing to sacrifice), but they are sabotaging the strike and that's why union members are mad at them.

[CantGetNuf]

So whats going on with the strike? They don't report on it anymore and yet I still don't have any new episodes of my shows to watch. Are they even trying to come to an agreement?

[Veruka]

There was a rumor earlier in the week that they may have come to a tenative agreement, but nothing has been reported officially yet. They are supposed to be in informal discussions of some sort right now.

Even if it is settled in the near future, don't expect to get new episodes of the shows in re-runs until next season at the soonest. In the amount of time it would take to write the episodes, and then bring the cast and crew back to film them, anything that has run all their episodes for the season thus far is done for the season.

At this point, the official launch of next season is starting to get into problem territory. Without writers, there is no pilot season goin on right now. So the networks are very very limited in what they can do with regards to developing new programming for next season. that could mean that in the Fall, shows start rolling out at more random times instead of a premiere week or two like we're used to.

[razorbacker]

They cut a deal with the Grammy's, so that show will go on as planned on the 10th.

[Missyboxers]

At this point, the official launch of next season is starting to get into problem territory. Without writers, there is no pilot season goin on right now. So the networks are very very limited in what they can do with regards to developing new programming for next season. that could mean that in the Fall, shows start rolling out at more random times instead of a premiere week or two like we're used to.

Regarding pilots, I've been reading a lot about how certain networks, particularly NBC, have been re-evaluating the way business is done, and as a result, they plan to move away from the way they've done things in the past, which specifically means that they plan to severely cut the number of pilots they'll make, because the result doesn't justify the cost.

Source

[Krom]

There was a rumor earlier in the week that they may have come to a tenative agreement, but nothing has been reported officially yet. They are supposed to be in informal discussions of some sort right now.

Even if it is settled in the near future, don't expect to get new episodes of the shows in re-runs until next season at the soonest. In the amount of time it would take to write the episodes, and then bring the cast and crew back to film them, anything that has run all their episodes for the season thus far is done for the season.

At this point, the official launch of next season is starting to get into problem territory. Without writers, there is no pilot season goin on right now. So the networks are very very limited in what they can do with regards to developing new programming for next season. that could mean that in the Fall, shows start rolling out at more random times instead of a premiere week or two like we're used to.

There are plenty of stories indicating this WGA strike really is close to over. Of course it may roll right over into a Screen Actor's Guild strike--in June.

Goodbye Fall 2008 season! And this one would hit the movies JUST as hard.

Oh this is interesting, from September of last year:

List of Pre-Strike Films Getting Made - Movie Whores - tribe.net

I wonder how relevant it still is this many months later?

[Bubba-Jo-Lyn]

One other thing that the networks are doing for the fall season is picking up shows that they normally wouldn't have. It was a big entertainment story in Canada last week that NBC & CBS (I think) bought the rights to 2 new Canadian productions. So there will be some new TV in the fall it just isn't coming out of Hollywood.

[Amy Lee]

I'm actually enjoying the comfort of not much tv to watch.