Dio, you’ve completely missed the point. The writers aren’t asking for some kind of special bonus. There was a choice to be made. The writers could have gotten a high salary up front or they could have gotten a low salary and future residuals. The writers and the studios agree to go with the second plan - the writers are entitled to royalties the same way you’re entitled to a paycheck. Your boss isn’t doing you some favor by giving you a check every week - you worked and he’s paying you for that work.
So the issue isn’t whether or not the writers deserve royalties. Everyone, including the studios, agrees on the point. The royalties are the money that the writers get paid for doing their job.
So the issue is what royalties should be paid. There’s a general agreement on what the percentage should be for the broadcast payments. The dispute is over video/DVD percentages and online payments. The writers agreed to accept a low percentage on video/DVD sales in their previous contract because this market was a risk at the time. But they’re saying it’s no longer a risk so they want a standard percentage in their new contract. The writers also want a standard percentage of any profits that come from online broadcasts.
The studios, while they concede that the writers are entitled to royalties (because the alternative is they offer the higher salary that the writers gave up in exchange for royalties) wants to continue paying a low percentage on video/DVD sales and a zero percentage on online broadcasts. The writers have been willing to be reasonable; when the studios were able to make a legitimate argument about the high risks of opening a new market the writers agreed to a lowered percentage. But now that the risk no longer exists, the studios want to keep the lowered percentage for no reason except they want more money. You speak of entitlement - can you give any reason why the studios are entitled to keep these royalties?
Suppose you gave me ten thousand dollars to start up a store in exchange for twenty five percent of the profits. A year later you came by the store and ask for your money. How would you feel if I told you that I had been doing all the work in the store and why do you think you’re entitled a share of my profits?
And if I had put up the ten thousand dollars and you had done all the work and a year later the store was making fifty thousand dollars a year in profits, how would it be if I dropped by a year later and said I decided that since I put up the money I owned the store and I was going to put you on a straight salary instead of giving you seventy five percent of my profits.
I was operating under the impression that television writers were salaried and that they were now trying to negotiate for a bite of the residual pie in addition to their (probably already inflated) upfront salaries. I now understand that’s not the case. I’m not going to offer any more opinons about the strike because I obvioulsy don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.
Elenfair, I’ll research some stuff about television writing and churn out a script for a lark and to prove I can do it, but I’ll do it on my own time. I’m not going to put my family and my job on hold for four days and bust my ass to meet some aribitary deadline set by an internet stranger. If you want to offer me a check, I’ll meet the dealine, otherwise, I’ll do it in a time that’s comfortble to me.
It’s not enough to say “Aha! I’ve written a script.” Any talentless hack can do that. Whether your script stands up to the (hah!) quality of modern TV storytelling is another matter.
As several other posters have said, a lot of people think think they can write. Most of them are wrong.
I say that Elenfair isn’t an unbiased source for feedback. To be honest, I’d say that we get some people that don’t have a dog in the fight in addition to Elenfair to read over the script.
That’s a pretty low bar from what I can see, but I’ll post it somewhere so that people can evaluate it for themselves (Elenfair has not told me where she wants me to post it exactly, but I presume she has something in mind).
I agree that most other people are idiots. I’m not.
(1) I, also, am not an idiot; (2) I am much, much more familiar with the workings of the entertainment industry than you are; (3) I have written several scripts; (4) it’s much, much harder than you think it is.
I look forward to your effort. Maybe you’ll turn out to have a gift.
ETA: You might consider sharing your script using Google Docs.
This is just the standard anti-union rhetoric that tries to place all the blame for a prolonged negotiation on the workers, and none on the management. Any time the workers and the management disagree, the only thing the workers can do to have any leverage at all is stop working. If they keep working through the disagreement, they are by default conceding the point, since they’ll only get paid whatever management wants to pay. No one mentions that the work would continue if the management were to cave. Apparently, the proximate cause of a work stoppage is all that we’re supposed to focus on.
You see this (lame) argument all the time when essential services like police or teachers want to strike. “How can you do this?!” “Don’t you have a duty to the town/kids?!”, etc, as they wring their hands in anguish. To some extent, it’s reasonable to prohibit police officers from striking in certain circumstances because of the chaos that will result. Applying this fallacious reasoning to television writers displays an alarming lack of properly ordered priorities.
Now this is funny. Come on, Diogenes, let’s see some evidence of why you’re smarter than most other people, and why you can easily do this job. It’s one thing to write a script in four days while juggling a family and other obligations, but another to decide you get to take as much time as you want.
You seem to think that intelligence is the sole requirement for writing a good script. To be frank, this suggests that you’re probably overestimating your ability to churn out a production-quality script… not to mention underestimating the difficulty of this task.
In my company alone, there are eight Ph.D. holders. Every single one of them is quite intelligent, yet only one person considers himself to be a writer. Even that person says that he would never declare that he can write a quality TV script on the first try.
Now, maybe you’ll surprise us. Maybe we’ll be completely blown away by the quality of your work. To be honest though, based on your remarks so far, I’m skeptical.
It’s easy to run a marathon in as much time as you want, but does that make you as talented as an elite runner?
You really just have no clue, do you. You’ve stated no prior experience, you have absolutely zero understanding of how the economics of screenwriting work… it’s comical.
An agent will. He or she should be able to tell you if you got it.
When my daughter got a manager and a bunch of agents, and work, lots of parents told us that their kids could do it if they had the time. You sound just like them.
Have you ever even read a script?
I took a screenwriting class once. I write lots of fiction, but I don’t think I have the visual mind to ever do a script. I also discovered that there is a lot more structure to screenwriting than meets the eye.
I’m all for the writers. My kid got residuals from having the right look and the ability to turn on for the camera. I know the writers contributed a lot more to the shows she was on than she did. And not only stars get residuals - all featured players do.