p2pnet - rss feed: Hollywood writers strike looms
p2pnet news | TV:- Unionised Hollywood writers say they’ll go on strike for the first time in 20 years.
The isue? Broadband and Net profits.
The 12,000 Writers’ Guild of America (WGA) members want an increase in their fees when their work shows up on on DVDs, online, mobile phones and other “electronic devices”.
But the producers say the demands are impossible to meet.
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers won’t budge and if it happens, it’ll be bad, says E! Online.
It’s effects will be seen to be “trickling down from the likes of executive producers to writers to actors to caterers to dry cleaners to office-supply workers to janitors to the wives and children of all of the above,” says the story.
Does that look familiar? It’s already happening, according to Hollywood’s MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America).
But the cause isn’t striking writers: it’s file sharers, says a Hollywood enforcement organisation, which claims its owners, Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney, are being ruined, at the same time reporting record, ‘best-ever’ profits.
“Some of the most popular shows on US television could be forced off the air if writers go ahead with the strike,” says the BBC, going on:
“Hollywood writers fear networks will resort to repeats and reality shows
“Five thousand members of the WGA recently took part in a ballot and 90% voted in favour of industrial action.
“The dispute focuses attention on the rapidly growing market for on-demand entertainment.”
But writer-directors and writer-producers, also called ‘hyphenates” would be allowed to do “non-writing” during a strike, “although there’s considerable disagreement over how this is defined,” says the Los Angeles Times.
Says the New York Times:
In the near term, a writers’ strike will have an immediate impact on more than 200,000 workers in the movie and TV industry here and the thousands more who produce or sell entertainment elsewhere in the United States and abroad. The dispute may also signal more labor trouble to come, as directors and actors face similar issues when their contracts expire next June.
Over the long haul, multiple strikes could lead to a drastic overhaul of the economics of Hollywood. They could redefine the industry’s relationship with its highly unionized work force at a time when DVD sales are cooling and changing movie and TV markets have workers and companies alike vying for their perceived fair share of a yet-to-be-identified next digital bonanza.
But people watching shows such as Pariah Island, which just named mininova as its primary distribution channel, won’t be hit. Writers for commercials, sports programs and reality TV, who are not covered under the guild contract, says the LA Timnes.
Don’t leave your couches.
Also See:
E! Online - Hold Onto Your Couch Cushions: The Strike Is Here, November 1, 2007
BBC - Hollywood writers close to strike, November 2, 2007
Los Angeles Times - Q & A: How a writers strike would play out, November 2, 2007
New York Times - Writers Set to Strike, Threatening Hollywood, November 2, 2007
Pariah Island - mininova nails TV distribution deal, November 1, 2007
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November 2nd, 2007 at 7:14 am
They use writers?
November 2nd, 2007 at 8:10 am
i believed they used a auto generate function on a pc to get there plot lines. most of which don’t have any relevance to history or fact. e.g u571, Tudors and virtually every program concerning nuclear material.
November 2nd, 2007 at 12:50 pm
I thought “reality shows” weren’t scripted…
November 2nd, 2007 at 1:58 pm
what are we gonna do? what are we gonna DOOOOOOO?
November 3rd, 2007 at 12:33 pm
What am I gonna dooooo?
Im going to watch all the tv shows and videos that I have collected since 1999, when I first started amassing my collection.
who cares if the writers go on strike?
by the time I get through all the stuff Ive downloaded, the writers will have reached retirement age! Ha-Ha
February 20th, 2008 at 6:32 am
Looks like they’re already at retirement age. So what’s with the Acdemy Awards using writers. Is the strike over. Based on what we’ve been seeing lately, I think not.