WGA strike05 Nov
The WGA is on strike as of this morning. You can follow the negotiations here. This is not the first time the WGA, or any guild/union in the entertainment industry, has been on strike. However, this time it’s different. With the huge growth of online video distribution, a strike could be devastating (especially to scripted programming). Here’s why:
- it won’t stop writers from writing*
- money is flowing to internet distributed video exceptionally quickly
- HD video is expensive to produce and online video doesn’t have to be HD
- reality programming is cheap (no "writers" req’d) and can garner viewers (American Idol anyone?)
The majority of the members of the WGA are not writing for Network television and making more than $100k a year (heck, I’d be willing to bet that most writers aren’t even working a WGA job). A strike isn’t going to affect the majority of members financially since they’re not working WGA jobs. As of right now, here are the points of contention from the WGA’s point of view:
[T]he Companies still insisted on the following:
- No jurisdiction for most of new media writing.
- No economic proposal for the part of new media writing where they do propose to give coverage.
- Internet downloads at the DVD rate.
- No residual for streaming video of theatrical product.
- A "promotional" proposal that allows them to reuse even complete movies or TV shows on any platform with no residual. This proposal alone destroys residuals.
- A "window" of free reuse on the Internet that makes a mockery of any residual.
For me, I think it’s obvious that AMPTP (the Producers/Studios) and the WGA see that the future is in internet delivery. Period. If that is indeed going to happen, then we need a well defined measurement standard. We’ll also need a way to generate residuals over time, as the advertising (read: commercial) venue will be altered. Oh, wait…deja vu all over again.
Alright, I need my afternoon coffee. Talk amongst yourselves.
* During the last strike writers would have people pick up scripts in manila envelopes from "secret" locations (like a phone booth on the corner of Sunset & Gower 
. With email it’s even easier, simply set up an alias on Gmail/Yahoo/et al and simply email the script(s) in…and you don’t have to pay a runner either.
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New Media - “we need a well defined measurement standard” at Lan Bui (November 7th, 2007 at 12:07 pm)
[...] Paul wrote this blog post about the WGA strike. Some quotes [...]
Well said. I want real and well designed measurement standard.
100,000 views on YouTube means nothing to me (well, it would tickle me on the inside a bit). But I don’t trust view numbers.
It is sad that the standard is being set by the hosting companies who have it in their best interest to have inflated numbers. If they claim that a video is getting 1,000,000 views who is verifying this information??? Their internal super secret QA?
Also, autoplay is really stupid. Some sites (I read an article somewhere which broke down which sites count partial plays as a view) just rack up the views with autoplay on their homepage. I think “WOW they get that many people to go to their homepage every day???”. I don’t watch those videos, I wonder who does. Small piece of advice for those that are annoyed by autoplay on your hosts website, bookmark the login page or some other page, not the homepage.
Ok, now, what do you think?