Revolutionary Street Cred

Self-Googling can have its downside. This morning I got a Google alert that a fellow HuffPo'er admonishes me for pointing out that trying to co-opt reality and animation writers as part of their negotiations is a sub-optimal strategy by the WGA leadership. I'm either "deceitful" or "misinformed." My first wife will say I'm both.

I don't personally have a dog in this hunt. I don't miss the shows as I am mindlessly enslaved to Guitar Hero and the Aubrey-Maturin books. I'm just commenting based on my 20 years experience with unions that behaved professionally, as opposed to the WGA's self-serving leadership, who know they screwed up and are now running to federal mediators for help (and to distract the WGA members).

The recent letter from the DGA to the WGA leadership says it all. It basically says "We are not going to let your incompetence drag us down with you. You're on your own."

When the Longshoremen in Long Beach go on strike, do they try and pull in container manufacturers into the guild as part of the negotiation? No, they tend to the needs and concerns of their current members. Current. Members. The rock star WGA leadership simply tried to get cute and increase the union's membership, at the ongoing expense of its current, striking members. And at the expense of the thousands of other entertainment workers without a job. This in an environment where prime time viewership is down 50 percent in the last 10 years, and prime time schedules will probably be reduced from 3 hours to 2.

In this morning's LA Times. there is an article about WGA members approaching venture capitalists to fund their own production companies. One sentence is notable. These writers "envision creating and distributing programming for the Web and recouping their investments by selling rights to the most successful properties to TV networks or movie companies."

Parse that sentence. These writer-producers know they won't make much money off the web, and will have to depend on the mean ol' big corporations to recoup their investment. You can protest big companies all you want, but they are the ones with the capital to deploy, and you can't begrudge them for fulfilling their fiduciary obligation to try to make a profit. They take the risk. Are the writers of The Golden Compass going to take the hit on the downside? Nope, the entities that funded it are. The risk in entertainment is the reason GE is trying to get rid of NBC Universal.

The WGA members sign the back of the check, the producers sign the front. This morning's LA Times article indicates some WGA members will soon be producers. This is a good trend. 20 years ago there were hundreds of production companies. Now after consolidation there are in effect a baker's dozen. It's probable the future for WGA members lies in becoming big, bad producers, instead of passing time proving their revolutionary street cred.

Read more about the strike on the Huffington Post's writers' strike page.

Follow Ron Galloway on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rongalloway

Comments

[medinaroad]

Mr. Galloway, I think you're a little light on your history of these negotiations. You seem to think that the demand for reality and animation jurisdiction was somehow a surprise recently pulled by a self-serving WGA leadership.

In fact, those demands have been on the WGA's list since July when their pattern of demands were announced. They are nothing new. They are only newly objectionable to the AMPTP.

Unreasonable demands? Yeah, probably..­.since the AMPTP has zero obligation to even discuss them. Even more unreasonable than that obnoxiously offensive AMPTP proposal of payments based on profits and a host of roll-backs that they arrogantly started things off with a few months ago?

Hardly.

The AMPTP immediately set the tone of the negotiations with that stunt. So let's not pretend that the AMPTP has not had a large share in causing an atmosphere of distrust and unprofessionalism in these talks. Their suits might be a lot more expensive, but they fight like dirty dogs.

Now, it's fair criticism to say that the WGA should not have brought up reality and animation as the negotiations were proceeding a few weeks ago. But the WGA negotiators had been sitting around for the better part of two days twiddling their thumbs as Counter continued to promise that a new counter proposal was coming.

So they moved on to other business. And the only reason that was a flawed tactic was because they walked into the AMPTP's plan. Counter was looking for reasons to storm out of negotiations once again. And the WGA handed him a juicy one.

And by the way, if the WGA negotiating team were really incompetent and out of touch, don't you think Nick Counter would be praising them up and down?

The problem the AMPTP is having is that this particular team from the WGA is that they are not laying down at the sight of a force majeur letter and taking another crappy deal like they all expected.

And it's made them a little snippy.

[thetvdecider]

bravo.