Linda Moss

The WGA Didn't Wage A Quixotic Battle
February 11, 2008

Who won?

That’s the question media writers, assorted bloggers and more traditional print pundits are weighing in on today now that it looks like the TV and film writers’ strike is about to end.

The Writers Guild of America waged a rancorous fight over what may just be virtually pennies right now: residuals for new-media platforms whose financial potential is a big-fat unknown. It was a three-month-long, bare-knuckle battle, but were the writers the victors?

Many will disagree with me, but I say yes.

As controversial film-maker Michael Moore put it over the weekend: Writers, the eyeglass-wearing kids that usually got picked on by bullies at school, came out ahead in this fisticuffs affair.

WGA leaders jogged my memory when, over the weekend, they reminded their membership that initially, the studios were seeking a rollback on traditional residuals -- only paying them out when a TV show or film was profitable -- and wanted to wait for a three-year study before setting down a formula to mete out new-media compensation to writers.

In fact, I was at the Television Critics Association press tour last July in Beverly Hills when several studio chiefs -- Marc Graboff of NBC Entertainment and Bruce Rosenblum of Warner Bros. -- outlined those demands. The idea that a union should even consider such rollbacks seemed absurd, at best.

For example, in an industry known for its tricky accounting -- where blockbuster movies may generate $150 million in box office receipts, but somehow don’t make any money on paper -- writers were only supposed to agree to residuals based on “profits”?

And these same writers were supposed to wait years for residuals when their TV shows are streamed online on ad-supported Web sites? Yikes!

The WGA conceded upfront that it didn’t get everything it wanted, in terms of new media, with its tentative deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. But the guild succeeded in getting some of its demands, including increased fees for downloads of TV shows and compensation for TV programs that are streamed online.

Some argue that the writers will end up sabotaging themselves in the short- and long-term. Their strike shut down Hollywood, scotching the production of TV shows and movies, throwing entertainment-industry employees out of work and making media moguls take at good hard look at the old ways of doing things, like making pricey pilots.

By throwing this TV season into disarray, the writers will encourage the Big Four to depend even more on reality shows rather than scripted fare, so the argument by some goes.

All over just “pennies,” as one media mogul put it early on in the strike. So permit me to paraphrase Rescue Me writer/executive producer Peter Tolan’s response on that point: Pennies add up to dollars.

Posted by Linda Moss on February 11, 2008 | Comments (0)