Writers' Strike

I am a writer. I am an unpaid writer, unlike people in Hollywood who are usually paid, but are now on strike and not being paid, either.

Jay Leno is going back to work tonight, Wednesday, January 2, 2008. He has been supportive of the writers but since talks broke down nearly a month ago and there are no new talks scheduled, according to Jay, he is going to put his other 100 employees back to work.

It seems that the sticking point of this strike is how people are to be compensated when their product is used over the Internet. I understand wanting to continue to be paid for work that is in continuous use. I would like to be paid for anything I write, first, second, or continual use be damned.

So how do people feel about this? According to the responses at Market Watch, some people are not happy. Some other people are not sympathetic at all. According to one person, without writers, television will come to a grinding halt and will cease to exist.

The strike began on November 5, 2007 and as far as I can tell, there are still people on the television. Some shows don't need writers. Reality shows, talk shows, game shows. Other shows are in reruns until this strike is over. And more and more people are using Indie stuff from the cursed Internet to fill in the gap.

A man who designed conveyors for the auto industry tried to explain his stand by pointing out the irony of his demands for a piece of every car ever built, sold, resold, or scrapped if it used his conveyor system while being built. And some writer sympathizer, or perhaps simply writer, pointed out that unskilled labor was not the same a skilled writing.

First of all, designing a system is not unskilled labor.

Then the writer went on to point out that without writers a show is worthless. Oh my. There are so many shows that are worthless with writers. And then there are so many people who would love to be given the chance to become a paid writer (pick me, over here, pick me) that this is a somewhat ludicrous statement.

So second of all, writers are swarming all over the planet and if the most talented ones are currently working in Hollywood, it speaks horribly about talent and what talent alone can do.

I think I am supposed to support the writers' strike, but I don't really think that I do. I think that writers are paid to write and get paid for work in syndication as well. The Internet isn't generating tons of funds, unless these are the writers who script porn, which makes money over the net as well as anywhere else. If they are those particular writers, surely they don't think that their work is essential to the production. I mean, really, what sort of plot/dialog/suspense can a writer add to porn?

I don't really know the whole background story, but I do know that the writers are losing support with the unwashed masses. It's been two months now and nothing much is going on in the negotiation front. Soon, the Indies will be selling their finished product to the Networks and all the huffy, over-inflated, self-aggrandizing writers will find out that television CAN get along without them. Be careful what you wish for.