Why do you think you’re entitled to share profits?
The downloads ARE promotional, aren’t they? I say give them an extra cent or two on the DVDs but demanding to get paid for internet downloads is just greedy.
Are you really this obtuse, or are you just playing at it? This has been gone over numerous times in this exact thread.
- They are not salaried workers.
- The standard practice is that they are paid residuals when their work is reused.
- The previous contract expired, and in the new contract, they want residual payments extended to new media, such as downloads and streaming media.
I really don’t get it. This was explained to you repeatedly, yet you keep harping on the false argument of “oh, well, other people don’t get paid residuals to do their job, so there’s no reason you should too”.
Really? You don’t think there’s a significant chunk of people who now get, say, The Daily Show exclusively off iTunes? It’s not a gimmick, it’s an alternate form of delivering the content to the viewer.
This is what I understand:
Writers currently get 4 cents per DVD. They were asking for 8 cents, but took that off the table just before the strike in order to facilitate an agreement. Even though when the 4 cent per video/DVD was originally negotiated, the sale of full seasons of shows on DVD wasn’t even a twinkle in anyone’s eye. This is where studios are now making TONS of their money off of shows. But not the writers.
They currently get nothing for Internet viewing of shows. They want some money for this. After all, the network is selling ads, right? And as TV and Internet begin to merge even more, there may come a time when an exec claims that any specific run of a show is on the “Internet” and not pay out any residuals at all.
In the end, it’s not about writers trying to get rich and whining when they aren’t; it’s more about distributing the wealth fairly. If a show that a writer is working on is making tons of money, why are the producers and studios entitled to the additional profits, but not the writer?
Their pay is based on profits, and as technologies change, the new technologies need to be incorporated into the pay structure.
True dat. Residuals are almost merit pay. Who’s gonna buy DVDs or watch YouTube clips from crap like Til Death and According to Jim? Nobody. But you can bet that shows like The Wire will continue to make money for years to come. Hell, I’ve watched some of The Wire’s YouTube clips on an almost daily basis, even though I own the DVDs.
You just can’t see the Brother Mouzone-Omar showdown too many times. 
I’m fine with the strike. It’s just a shame that crappy writers will reap the same (initial) benefit as the good ones.
So the people that do/write actual promotions (write ads, update the webpage, etc.) shouldn’t get paid either? They should just do it for their love and support of the network?
Plus, the networks are selling ads for these online “promotions.” They’re making money off these “promotions.” And in some instances (“The Office” webisodes), the writers were actually doing additional work (writing the webisodes) for no additional money.
Nah. They really aren’t just promotional. Full episodes were up for download going for 1.99 a pop on Itunes (The writers saw nothing from that.), full episodes were up on Network sites with ads, there were webisodes up for the Office that was the same length as an episode. The writers not only weren’t getting residuals for the webisodes, but according to them they weren’t paid for those at all. Also, as time goes on internet delivered media will become more and more important. They need to get the mechanism for payment in streaming media in place now, so they don’t get screwed for 20 years as the way things are broadcast, and where the profit centers are for things they helped create.
The contracts have always been set up so the writers are paid little up front, but make their money on the back end as time goes on. I don’t see how it is greedy to want to keep compensation equitable for the profit they help create with the actors, directors, crew, and yes even the producers.
pat
Hey, wait, some of us work two jobs – I do… but alright, give me an episode of House, with the Season 3 cast of characters. 4 days is the usual turn-around time for a script, and usually, you have other work to do on other development projects, so the fact that you work and you have a family balances that time out about right.
So – You have til Tuesday morning to turn in a fully workable 50-60 pager. Remember, no descriptions of setting and crap. Nobody reads those and they’re never counted in page count anyway. Try to make your episode work for time.
Then, we’ll take your script through what a script and a writer goes through. We’ll see how you feel about residuals and compensation afterwards.
Dio, I’m extremely disappointed. I thought you were more perceptive than this.
A writer creates a script for a show. The show that is produced from this script has value in perpetuity. Movies, TV shows, whatever, can be sold by the studio that owns them basically forever, after they’ve been produced. Tune in to TVLand sometime; these series are decades old, and the studios are still squeezing dollars out of them. Ditto movies; look at the shelves at Blockbuster, or the listings on Netflix, and see how much of the available product go back years and years and years. In other words, over the life of the property, there is enormous potential value.
But: potential value. Until the movie is released, or the TV show starts airing (or is eventually released on DVD), nobody really knows what it’s worth.
That gives you basically three options.
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The old, pre-union system. Writers, actors, etc., got paid shit. The moguls raked in every penny for themselves. Do you want this?
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A system in which an attempt is made to predict the eventual value, over fifty years, of a given property, from which appropriate fees are calculated. You think you’ve got a $200 million dollar blockbuster? Pay the writer a hefty fee. Or you think you’re making a giant bomb? Pay the writer peanuts, or don’t make the movie. Thing is, nobody thinks they’re making a bomb, unless they’re Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder. Everybody makes their movies on the hope that everything will work out and a huge profit will be reaped. So that means you jack up the fees for everybody right up front, and then moviemaking and TV production become prohibitively expensive at the outset. Result: drastically reduced output.
Option 3? Residuals. Defer the majority of the compensation. Pay the writer (and the actor and the director and anyone else who qualifies) a fair but not outrageous rate for the initial delivery of the work, and then share the revenue over time. That’s all a residual is: a fancy industry term for “shared revenue over time.” Reduce the expense at the beginning, the fees paid to the participants for delivery, and defer the remaining compensation until you see how the property actually performs. Big hit? Everybody shares. Big bomb? Move on. Low-key success, not a big smash but gets word of mouth and a steady trickle of profits over many years? That also gets shared. Result: fair wages, and a system in which the initial expense of production startup is not a huge obstacle.
Why is this so difficult for some people to grasp?
Dio, if you don’t grasp the basic facts, why are you telling screenwriters to go suck eggs?
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Screenwriters work under a contract negotiated between the WGA and the television producers.
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The contract was last agreed to in 1987 or so and specified 4 cents for every VHS sold and more generous residuals every time a program was broadcast on television.
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The contract made no specification for online delivery of content, because it didn’t exist at the time.
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The contract has now expired and the WGA is positioning itself for a better deal, including higher royalties for VHS/DVD and some royalty (based on profits) for online delivery.
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The television producers are positioning themselves to preserve the status quo.
It’s a negotiation, Dio. If the writers don’t get a deal they can live with, they are entitled to withhold their labour under federal law.
See where the entitlement comes in?
Apparently, the main entitlement involved here is the entitlement to continuous uninterrupted entertainment that American television viewers feel they’re owed, regardless of what’s fair or not to the people who are one leg of the tripod that makes that entertainment possible. As has been noted upthread, some people are REALLY going to get upset come June…
Wow, it’s amazing how some people can be so profoundly ignorant and unwilling to accept even the tiniest possibility that some tiny part of their long-cherished world view might not be accurate.
As a software engineer, there’s an old saying that I’ve always liked: “Software without hardware is an idea; hardware without software is a space heater.”
I wish I was writer enough to come up with some snappy analog that replaced “software” with “writer”, because it seems so blaringly obvious to me that when it comes to things like TV shows and movies, without the writers you’ve got nothing; maybe the director and actors standing around with their thumbs up their butts.
I’ve never understood why the director of a movie gets all the credit; without the script, he’d produce two hours of blank film (or actors standing around with their thumbs up their butts).
And just in case the point’s been missed by those whose reading skills are apparently on par with their writing skills: I totally support the writers in this matter.
Why the fixation here on whether writers are “entitled” to residuals? When you come right down to it, no one is “entitled” to anything, so it’s just a pointless point in the absence of a context.
The real question is (or should be): Are writers entitled to reasonable compensation for their work? If you believe “no”, that writing is so easy that it ought to be done for free, then there’s no further discussion. But if you are reasonable enough to believe “yes”, then we can drill down into what’s reasonable, and what form that compensation should take.
I know nothing about the business, but I’m inclined to take the self-proclaimed writers here at their word, and to dismiss out of hand what Mr. Cynic says, since it’s abundantly clear that he has no clue what he’s talking about (including his declaration of his writing skills; put up or shut up, I see no evidence of your skill here).
So then, to me, it seems as obvious as anything can be that since the writers are not, in fact, paid the total worth of their product up front, and that they do not do it as a “work for hire”, and that part of the fair value of their work is clearly agreed by all parties to be realized in the form of residuals, the only rational conclusion is that they are, without a doubt, entitled to said residuals.
And then, finally, the only sticking point can be how much the residuals should be, and whether the calculation thereof should include revenue earned from newer sources such as DVD sales, online views, iTunes purchases, etc.
And – brace for the shock – that seems to be exactly what the strike is about.
I don’t hear that there is a disagreement between the writers and TPTB about whether the writers should get residuals at all, so the OP’s and the cynic’s statements about non-entitlement aren’t supported, even by those being striked against. The disagreement is about how much of the revenue from sources that didn’t even exist the last time the writers’ contracts were negotiated should be included now in the calculation of the writers’ residuals.
I just have to add: this is, without a doubt, the single dumbest thing I’ve ever read in my many years on the SDMB. It is just so profoundly dumb that I can’t even find words to refute it. Performers, writers, athletes, etc. are no different from anyone else. They ain’t got no duty to you, nor to the fans, not no way, not no how. They have a duty to themselves and to their families. They have a duty to live up to their contract for the lifetime of that contract. Since it’s been made abundantly clear many times on this thread that the current contract has expired, they have (dare I say it?) a duty to negotiate a new one to get the best terms that they can.
Not to even mention the profound disconnect and hypocrisy of someone who belittles a group in one sentence, and then claims that group has a duty to you in another.
Incidentally, those who keep saying that writing is easy and that writers contribute little or no value clearly don’t remember the stupefyingly bad horseshit that got produced during the last writers’ strike.
No, most television writing right now is, clearly, not very good.
But it can be, and probably will be, a whole helluva lot worse, if this strike isn’t resolved quickly. And then don’t come cryin’ about it.
And when/if all content ends up on the 'net? There is a real possibility that sometime fairly soon, television set-top boxes will just be computers, hooked up to the internet. All progrmming will be downloaded. No on will buy DVDs anymore, they’ll just save stuff on a hard drive (or whatever storage system then exists).
Under the contract the studios are offering, the writers would get nothing with such a system and the studios would keep all money made from what viewers see. Are you saying that’s fair?
Let’s put it in manufacturing terms: if you made a widget and sold it to a store, you’d charge a wholesale price that reflected the expected retail price. If the widget suddenly started to make a lot more money for the store, you’d probably want to adjust the wholesale price the next time the contract was negotiated. Do you think that’s unreasonable? I know this is a loose analogy, but if you think the widget-maker deserves to base his cut on the final revenue, tell me exactly why that same reasoning doesn’t apply to writers, actors, and directors.
Shows were reduced to “clip” shows…I remember a horrendous season 2 episode of Star Trek: TNG, where Riker got bit by something and to cure him, Pulaski and Troi first tried a series of “bad memories,” followed by a series of “good memories.”
So, there was minimum of writing needed, since most of the show was a montage of previous episodes, but it was still bad.
I have also seen a serious decline of “clip shows” of late…maybe TPTB are realizing they’re icky?
I don’t remember how the soap operas handled this…they don’t do reruns.
Shades of Grey. It was actually the 2nd-season finale.
No, I’m not particularly proud that I can call that up that easily…
Oh, are you majoring in film, or just concentrating?
You really believe that, don’t you?