As many know, the Writers Guild of America went on strike last week over the issue of receiving royalties from Internet distribution. Should the strike continue through the end of the year, nearly all shows on TV currently will end mid-season. The show 24 has delayed its upcoming season indefinitely until the strike is over as they don't want to risk a break in the season as it airs.
Damon Lindelof, head writer and co-creator of LOST, wrote a great article about the strike and the future of the TV medium. Here's an excerpt:
The Writers Guild of America (of which I am a proud member) has gone on strike. I have spent the past week on the picket line outside Walt Disney Studios, my employer, chanting slogans and trudging slowly across the crosswalk.
The motivation for this drastic action — and a strike is drastic, a fact I grow more aware of every passing day — is the guild’s desire for a portion of revenues derived from the Internet. This is nothing new: for more than 50 years, writers have been entitled to a small cut of the studios’ profits from the reuse of our shows or movies; whenever something we created ends up in syndication or is sold on DVD, we receive royalties. But the studios refuse to apply the same rules to the Internet.
My show, “Lost,” has been streamed hundreds of millions of times since it was made available on ABC’s Web site. The downloads require the viewer to first watch an advertisement, from which the network obviously generates some income. The writers of the episodes get nothing. We’re also a hit on iTunes (where shows are sold for $1.99 each). Again, we get nothing.
You can read the whole article here.
While I'm not happy with the idea that my favorite shows might end mid-season, I completely agree with the motivations behind the strike. Writers deserve to be paid for non-traditional distribution. It's often the work of a good team of writers more than anything that makes a show great or not - shows like LOST, Battlestar Galactica, House and Heroes turn on the strength of their writers - and those writers deserve their fair share as distribution moves into the future. |