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It's the Money, Stupid
The Writers Guild of America is a middle-class union. Almost half our membership receives no income from Guild-covered employment in any given year. As a result, the median income of Guild members from screen and television writing work is $5,000 per year. That's right: five thousand.
Among the lucky half who actually work, one quarter earns less than $37,700 a year. And even that income is sporadic. You sell a spec screenplay in 2003, you may not sell another one until 2009. More than half of those who have 'safe' staff jobs on television series will not be on television writing staffs five years from now.
So like everyone else, we do what we do to (as the President would say) put food on our families.
One of the things that tides us over during the leaner years is residuals. In other words: when the work we create has a longer tail, a continuing revenue stream, some of that comes back to us. Marc Cherry, who created Desperate Housewives after a long dry spell, would have had to give up writing altogether as a profession had he not been supported by residuals.
But those residuals for things like television syndication are drying up, as syndication, re-runs and the like are replaced by DVDs. You don't watch re-runs of The Sopranos on channel eleven: you watch them on boxed sets. But the residual rate on DVDs is a fraction of a fraction: oh point three percent.
As re-runs and syndication dry up, and a decent formula is replaced by an indecent one, our members stand to lose roughly 80% of their residual income--of what tides them over.
This is why we're asking for four cents more for every DVD. And that's why we're asking that the DVD rate--calculated when cassettes were in their infancy, when DVDs were a gleam in no-one's eyes, when the internet was still ARPANET and closed to commercial interests, when George Michael was in Wham!--not be the determinant of how we're compensated for downloads in this brave new world.
In simplest terms: the costs of manufacturing videocassettes were relatively substantial. The costs of DVDs (stamped rather than spooled) were much less. The costs of internet downloads are smaller still: no box, no disc, no shrinkwrap, no warehouse, no inventory, no shipping, no rackjobbers, no damaged merchandise, no returns. Yet the media giants want to compensate us at the same fraction-of-a-fraction rate.
As you know, the media conglomerates are not charitable. If you believe Fox wants to compensate writers fairly, you probably believe that The No Spin Zone is a no spin zone. And just as in other industries, the gap between what the CEO makes and what the lowest-paid worker makes has multiplied exponentially. The fact that we create the intellectual property, that none of their earnings would be possible absent what we being to the table, is not a matter of large concern to them. It is truly a new Gilded Age, no less so in the IP industry than in real estate or hedge funds.
The conglomerates have put rollbacks on the table, they have put insults on the table, but they have yet to put on the table a complete economic package. We are striking because the conglomerates will not negotiate in good faith otherwise.
The news stories--on radio and television stations owned by the same conglomerates against whom we negotiate--are filled with stories of limo drivers, caterers, florists, waiters, even agents, who might be laid off if the strike is at all protracted. What they don't talk about so much are the writers, thousands of them, who are putting their houses and cars and families and kids and futures in jeopardy to fight for what they believe is right. And what the conglomerate-owned media talk about even less: that no one on this food chain, from high to low, would be eating without the intellectual property writers create.
It's the money, stupid. They have it. They don't want to let go of it. They care so deeply and profoundly about not letting go of even a little of it that they're willing to let thousands upon thousands suffer.
In their moral universe, a fifteen-buck DVD of a movie doesn't have another four cents in it for the people who dreamed up that movie in the first place. And in that same moral universe, a rate set experimentally in the 1980s for videocassettes must be set in stone for the internet era, or else.
Jake Gittes, courtesy Robert Towne, once asked of Noah Cross, "How much better can you eat? What can you buy that you can't already afford?" Noah Cross replied, "The future, Mr. Gitts, the future."
The cost of any one CEO's severance package is, the way these things have been going, in the hundreds of millions. In other words, substantially more than they are offering all screen and television writers over the next three years.
Read more thoughts about the strike on Huffington Post's writers' strike opinion page
Follow Howard A. Rodman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ivanjohnson
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I'm on the side of the writers, hands down. The creative folks seem to always get the short end of the stick, which is appalling! They actually are CREATING something, which so many others are making money from. They need to make a living too!
Without the creative people, they have NOTHING!
The concept of residules is a tough one for those of us who do not work in Hollywood to embrace. On the one hand, the writers seem to work harder and for less compensation than the actors, producers, and directors. On the other hand, the rest of us in the working world also get our modest salaries while the owners and investors make the big money off our efforts. If I want to make more money, I kow that I need to stop being an employee and become an owner. Unfortunately, I'm not particularly entrepreneurial -- I don't like risk -- and so I continue to work for somebody else. Perhaps the best way for writers to get their worth is for them to start production companies. It seems that every third-rate actor with one hit to their their name forms a production company and becomes a producer. Of course, I should have done the same thing years ago -- started my own company -- but I'm still at my job.
Quite right, Howard. (Can't wait for "Savage Grace"!)
Words. Just plain ordinary words. But put together with
thought and new ideas they open the world to us. A script, especially a good one is a delight for actors, directors and viewers. I am always looking for a good read or a good movie. I pay whatever is asked and hope to hit it big. Help them stay on course and we will support your efforts. If you don't, goodbye. We will find other avenues to entertain us.
Mr. Rodman,
This is why you should be worth your weight in gold.
Your post was the most succcinct and to the point explanation of what the issues are in the WGA strike I've posted links here all over the net.
This strike is a good thing, in that it is an educatable moment.
Kids and people who have know no historical knowledge concerning labor are suddenly interested because it effects their favorite TV shows.
As long as there is a counterveiling voice to all the Reganesque propagandisms and Ayn Randims against collective bargaining which both Regan and Ayd Rand benefited from in their respective careers. I have hope.
In Rodman's "It's the Money Stupid" article, one has to wonder if the writer's in Hollywood and New York today are a creative step backward's from the more demanding skill of past generations TV/Film scripts?
Since half of prime-time TV is 'reality based', non-writer's guild in-put, TV is running on pratically empty filled writer's scripts today. There is very little of the great writer's of past generations that brought you Rod Serling's 'Twilight Zone', or Sid Ceaser's 'Show of Shows', or the more recent "All In the Family", "The Munsters', or 'Bonanza", "Beverley Hillbellies", "MASH', etc.
What has happened to the great American sit-coms and dramas that once dominated prime-time Broadcast TV? Yes, some of the more contemporary Cable stations have this creative spirit, but it is limited and focused more on fewer and fewer well written/scripted weekly shows, then vice versa.
So, with the demand of the TV/and film script writer's wanting more money guranteed in their craft with the Producers and studio owner's, why not stipulate the replacement of that 'crap' and 'junk' 'reality show' garbage, with some new creative and substansive sit-coms and dramas in its place? In that way, the writer's guild could expand its base, and put to work the real talent and skill that sits most of the year unemployed?
Now, that's what i call putting your mouth where the money lies....producing more greater shows, that in turn will bring in higher ratings of viewership, and in turn bring in more advertising dollars for the Producers? A win-win proposition, hey!?
So complain to any of the other unions that have been "busted" since Reagan decided to fire all the ATC guys in the early 80s (only to discover all those "new hires" would, someday, be retiring -- all at once -- creating a crisis of another sort).
Or complain to any union guys who're now just plain out of work. Republicans always have hated the unions and the union movement. I mean from the '20s; from the time my own great uncle CLOSED THE DOOR OF HIS VERY PROFITABLE MANUFACTURING BUSINESS RATHER THAN HAVE A UNION. Never made another widget, but never "gave in" to the union movement either. Polo is so much more entertaining than running a business.
What's remarkable is how many union guys vote for Republicans. Wasn't it also Reagan who sold the domestic steel industry to Japan -- and then did a 2-day, $5M speech "tour" for the ever-so-grateful Japanese the day after he was replaced in office? I'm sure all the former steel-worker-folks in Western Pennsylvania loved Reagan for that. Oh. They did. How dumb can you get?
Sure, let's do unions. Let's do lots of unions and get them to support each other when one is attacked. So far, unions look a lot like all the rest of us greedy, self-interested slobs called Americans. If the screen-writers are just now waking up to the fact there aren't any other unions to help them, they need to find another line of work. Without mutual support, the union movement is dead. Union guys have fallen for the Republican BS for almost 30 years and grown weaker every year. Is it time to re-think party loyalties based on what IS rather than what some rich, white anglican tells us? You bet.
In the meantime, i'll miss stewart and colbert. I suspect Bill Maher writes most of his own stuff -- after all, it's only once a week. Otherwise, who gives a damn what MSM has to say anyway? maybe the silence will be golden. Sure hope you guys get what you want.
No residuals, no 'Desperate Hosewives'? Down with residuals! Seriously, buildings I've worked on will be used, resold, condoized, rented for years to come. Why don't I get a nickel every time someone grabs one of my railings or takes a glass off of one of my fixtures or turns on one of my lights? Because I've been PAID. I finished the job, got what I thought it was worth at the time and moved on. They continue to be used everyday, but I don't expect to get paid everyday. Once is enough.
"The future, Mr. Gitts, the future" -- that's why the four cents is crucial.
Any sentient observer of television knows that the writers are the ones who make it work. They deserve a bigger piece of the pie.
That's the worst defense of residuals I've ever heard:
We wouldn't have had Desperate Housewives.
I think we would have been better off.
I am a firm believer in the power of the market place.
So, if a writer is worth $5,000 a year, (according to his talent, or perhaps, more appropriately, the lack thereof) according to the market, I have no sympathy for his/her misfortune. By the same token if a writer EARNS $1,000,000 a year, I do not envy him/her.
What I find trouble with is that the no-talent nobody needs a highly paid thug to speak for him/her.
Being a writer implies mental acuity, superiority and/or excellence.
Why is one such person unable to get out of life without the help of a union?
DVDs? Are you kidding me? Someone at WGA better be hammering out a solution that is not tied to ANY format or delivery system. The days of data (that's really what's on a DVD) being tied to physical media are numbered and if the WGA doesn't figure out that the future is going to be about sharing revenue based upon things like page views, unique visitor counts, click-throughs, data throughput over deliver systems, etc. then they might as well fight for upping the residuals on VHS tape as well. Revenue sharing will be enormously complex, but it's the only solution. And to the detriment of the WGA and other unions it's not likely to be something that can be codified in the traditional sense of a union contract. What would benefit all would be the recognition that revenue sharing is essential and that a contract must include the flexibility for both parties to create one of a kind deals for each situation.
Since most of the blogs here on the subject seem to be written by members of the writer's guild, here is an opinion for all you that might be interested in a non-Hollywood writer's perspective of the strike
http://www.celebitchy.com/7299/predicted_consequences_of_the_writers_strike/
This post should be applauded for its coherence. Like every other profession in this country, only top execs and quarterly profits are honored. Laborers are seen as whiny, replaceable and disposable.
Let the grossly overpaid board members write a script that will turn a profit. Nothing changes without some blood on the floor.
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