Today I handed in a paper for a class and it has been a pain in my ass for weeks. I had my ideas but I could NOT get the writing done.
A friend of mine writes about cars for the press. It is his "dream" job. And yet he struggles to write on demand these days.
And these incidents made me think about the Writer's Strike going on in the U.S. right now. It made me think about the work and the effort the people put in to deliver my favourite shows. I thought about how rough it must feel to have to be creative, clever, funny, insightful, topical, etc. on demand all the time. And even then there is no guarantee that the script is produced. And then you are sharing the responsibility with other people so not every episode that airs is one of your episodes. And then your show gets cancelled and you don't have a job for who knows how long and the only money you have is the residuals from your previous work. Well, all I can say is that it would drive me crazy to live like that.
Then the business side kicks in and I wonder about base salaries and residual percentages and overhead costs and everything else that is involved in making a show a reality. It is alot. I'm sure the beautiful orange plexiglass set on "Ugly Betty" (not to mention all the greenscreen technology!) isn't cheap. I bet the tailored scrubs on "Grey's Anatomy" cost a bit dough. I reckon the special effects teams on "Bones" rack up some cash. Plus everybody else in the pipeline is looking for their paycheque of this one entertaining vehicle. And when you are managing this many variables even the smallest percentage changes can mean the difference between profit and loss.
And then I got all lost in the argument. But it is an intriguing one to have and one that questions our assumptions about entertainment and the balance between creation and business and output and return. I found this great video from the Writer's Guild that explains their position. Without being able to study the financial from the a studio it is hard to determine if these demands would be crippling. What do you think?
1 comment:
I think the writers make a fairly logical case. If they did, indeed, take a pay cut on video sales in order to help the market grow and it has grown exponentially, then it's time for a raise. And it makes no sense for them not to get a percentage of internet ad revenue. If episodes are being shown merely for promotional purposes, then why is there ad revenue coming in?
But hey, I'm all for workers trying to get as big of a share of the pie as possible without the business going under. Unless the extra four cents is going to make the business go under (and I really doubt that), I'm all for the raise. We all know that there's no exact "right" or "just" amount for the writers to get paid. In a world in which arts are barely funded and the gap between the wealthiest and poorest keeps getting bigger, they need to fight for whatever they can get because lord knows the networks are doing the same.
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