The WGA West picketed American Idol today. Hollywood Reportersays over 150 guild members showed up to protest the working conditions on the reality tv show.
Varietyexamines
the state of Hollywood one year after the writers' strike and the conclusion is that times are tough. After the writers' strike the global recession hit. The perfect storm of events has left many screenwriters out of work or taking much lower salaries.
At the outset, the strike starved the major nets and some cablers of original scripted programming at the worst possible time for a disruption to primetime's status quo. Even top-tier shows -- think "CSI," "Grey's Anatomy," "House" and "Heroes" -- haven't recovered from the ratings hit they took after being MIA for most of the second half of last season. As any network skedding exec will tell you, when viewers break a given habit, even for just a few weeks, it's next to impossible to get them all back.
Nonetheless, WGA leaders and many members remain resolute that the sacrifices of the strike were well worth it. The hard-fought contract set a template for residual formulas in new media on which the guild hopes to build in future deals. Most importantly, from the WGA's perspective, the deal prevented a repeat of the reviled homevid compensation battle of the 1980s, in which scribe residuals were based on only 20% of revenues generated by vid sales.
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Most painfully for the town, the strike gave the congloms the force majeure cover to make deep, immediate cuts without fear of losing competitive advantage in the creative community or appearing as if they were retrenching. In the space of a few days in mid-January 2008, NBC Universal, Disney, News Corp., Time Warner and CBS Corp. wiped many millions of dollars in overall deals and other development obligations off their books.
In the year that has passed, series budgets have been hacked; ABC and CBS asked for cuts of 3%-10% from all scripted series even before the worst of the financial crisis hit last year. It's understood that several established drama series on the Big Three are under pressure to cut budgets by double digits or they will not be returning even though they deliver respectable ratings.
Now that there are fewer studios due to corporate mergers, budgets are even tighter than they ever have been. When the economy rebounds -- whenever that might be -- things will recover. But in the meantime, things are very tough for everyone but the biggest stars and producers.
The WGA writers strike could end as soon as Monday reports the Associated Press. Writers are gathering for meetings in Los Angeles and New York this weekend to consider a proposed contract.
The L.A. Times reports that WGA officials have confirmed the the Writers' Strike is on. Details will be released tomorrow. The Timessays these are the hot issues for writers and for producers.
Writers want:
Residuals for shows and movies streamed over the Web and on cellphones.
A doubling of residual payments from home video sales.
Extension of guild pay and benefits to writers on reality TV programs.
Producers say:
DVD sales are needed to offset rising marketing and production costs.
It's too early to lock into pay formulas for online shows because technologies are changing rapidly.
No pay for streaming of TV shows on the Web because it is a form of promotion.
More background on the writers' strike can be found on The Writer's Blog's Writers' Strike section.
