I haven’t payed close attention to the Hollywood writers’ strike, but given that the heart of the issue is digital media distribution, I probably should. Multichannel News notes that the Writers Guild of America is penning a strike blog, and from today’s posts comes a succinct video on media moguls discussing the riches to be made in digital content. Sumner Redstone in a clip says flat out, “Viacom will double its revenues this year from digital.” The video then goes on to point out that writers will double their digital revenues too, from $0 to $0.
Given that content is king, writers should be eligible for some of the royal treasure. Unfortunately it looks like big media isn’t interested in sharing the digital wealth.
This is a complex issue. I would suggest reading the following post from someone in the industry (not a writer) who’s being affect severely by the strike. Are the production workers just collateral damage?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/darkshapesprowl/1975020614/
Ken Levine (MASH writer among others) also has some coverage on his blog http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/. In addition, his blog is very enjoyable in non-strike times. It is one of the funniest blogs I read on a regular basis.
Frankly, Alexander, the answer is yes. That’s the problem with almost every strike that has ever occurred, including when people involved in the production have gone on strike. The only way to avoid this is to never strike, and if that happened, we’d all be working 7 day weeks for minimal wages.
okay – let me get this straight. Writers are asking for an additional .04 of the revenues generated by the sale of future media (internet, etc.) from a product THEY created (as the writer) and the studios feel that is unfair?
The phrase “do the math” comes to mind…
wake up studios and pay the people who help make you successful!
The only thing that could be better than the writer’s strike were if it continued for another 2 years. Perhaps we could salvage the moral collapse of the country