Sweet Catastrophe

Bold all of the following television shows which you’ve ever seen three or more episodes of in your lifetime. Italicise a show if you’re positive you’ve seen every episode of it. If you want, add up to three additional shows (but keep the list in alphabetical order).

I think I bolded and italicized all the right stuff… 

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I’m still getting people who think the strike is about already rich people wanting more money. Let’s see if Mike Schur’s words make any more sense to you.

It’s sometimes hard to explain to people that we are not striking to make sure Aaron Sorkin doesn’t have to fall out of escrow on his eleventh vacation home, but rather for the vast majority of our union who work sporadically, who average $62,000 a year, and who often find themselves undesirable hirees around age 40 if they never managed to land a job on a hit show.

So how do we get our point across, to people who don’t understand why we’re doing this? The best way I have found, is to say: everything on the internet? We get zero. They get everything. They get millions and millions and eventually billions and billions, and we get zero. And the “they,” here, is basically six of the biggest baddest companies in the world, run by men who annually receive salaries and compensation well north of 50 million dollars.

Almost there? No? How about a number you can really understand.

…well, over time they will end up reducing my salary by something like 85%.

Get it now? This isn’t about the rich kids, so drop all the crap about Condo Hotels, Ferraris. and 3 vacation homes. Those aren’t the people we’re talking about here.

There’s very little job safety for these people. When they’re in a slump, or out of work altogether, they rely on residuals to get them through. What they’re making this year may have to cover all their bills next year as well.

So from talking about it at work and with neighbors and everyone, it seems some don’t quite grasp what the strike is about. Jenna Fischer (Pam–The Office) has been blogging about it and she tells it in a way that’s pretty easy to understand.

Who benefits from the strike? Who are we fighting for?

Some people have asked if everyone will benefit from the strike or if only the writers benefit. The Writers Guild only negotiates for writers. However, they are the first union contract to be up with the studios. The Actor’s Guild contract is up in June 2008 and you can bet we will be fighting for the same residuals. It is important to support the writer’s strike because the results of this strike will trickle down to the other union contracts…just like how a court ruling effects future rulings. We are a union show and hire union crew members.

And, as James put it in his blog: “This is for middle-class writers – your regular TV staff writers and people who may have done one or two small feature films. Residuals are a way they can make perhaps a few thousand dollars a year between gigs. This is a way they can put food on the table and pay the rent during downtime – and downtime is something almost all writers (and actors and directors) have.”

Let’s say you write a movie script and you sell it for $100,000…that’s GREAT money! Your movie gets made and yada yada. You start churning away writing more scripts. But it takes you 4 years before you sell your next script. That $100,000 windfall is now stretched to $25,000 a year for 4 years. (And, I’m not even counting the 30% that goes to taxes and 25% to your agent/manager.) If during that 4 years they sell your movie on DVD or run it on Pay-per-view you get little residual checks for $1,000 here or $2,500 there. That money is essential for getting by. This scenerio is what the majority of writers, actors and directors in Hollywood face. You have a few flush years and then a big drought.

The future of media is the internet. In a few years it is more likely that you will download a movie or television show than buy it on DVD. But as it currently stands, those downloads produce no residuals for the creative types that made them. All the profit goes to the studio.

This is a great video with snazzy graphics that helps explain the strike. The studios stand to earn a projected $2 billion over the next few years from internet downloads. But they dont’ want to share.

So yeah, it’s a big deal. For instance, I pretty much always work the nights my shows air, so I watch them online. This season, I’ve spent countless hours on NBC.com watching shows. They generally have about 4 ‘commercials’ within an episode, all on the same product. Those ads are paid for. That’s money the network is making, that no one else is seeing.

I mentioned not knowing what I want to do about DMI–the writers create content for that site as part of ‘promotion.’ Ads are sold to be run on the site and they don’t get compensated for that.

I keep seeing this argument that networks are saying that the internet media is too new to gauge what would be appropriate–that really doesn’t trump the idea that if you’re making money from it, they should be too. I think the idea of doing a percentage is perfect.

And yeah, right now this is about the writers, but in less than a year, the actors will be facing this same problem, and if they don’t give anything to the writers, the actors won’t be getting anything either. It just happened that the writers were first up to bat.

After this next set of episodes, I’m thinking about killing my tv schedule until all this is clear.

if fans want to help, they should write letters to NBC at this address:

Jeff Zucker
30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10112

ETA: the West Coast address, from killersharky:

Jeff Zucker, President and CEO
NBC Universal
3000 W. Alameda Ave.
Burbank, CA. 91523

According to Michael, bombarding the studios with lots of mail is a good way to get the message across that we won’t put up with going without quality, scripted shows. So if you were wondering how you could help, here’s a suggestion from the writers themselves.

I’m considering this letter as well. I can always pick back up when this all settles and catch up on old episodes, so it won’t kill me. In the meantime, I’ve gotta find some old shows to watch or something!

The strike is still going strong, with most nighttime talk shows such as Leno, Letterman, The Daily Show and Colbert report all going to immediate reruns. Leno even showed up at a picket to bring doughnuts to the group.

This is the first walkout since 1988–the 1988 strike lasted 22 weeks and cost over $500 million in losses for the industry.

This time around, only a few days into it, large ads for sweeps have already been pulled.

They’re still saying the internet marketing of shows/movies is still too new to gauge proper compensation for writers. Writers are just asking for a percentage. That way, if it works out, they make money, if it doesn’t, they don’t! Gosh, what a concept.

Daniels Pickets ‘Office’ Production
TV Week.com

“The Office” showrunner Greg Daniels has joined the picket line at his production company’s Van Nuys location in an attempt to shut down production of his show.

“We’re trying to shut down ‘The Office,’” Mr. Daniels said. “We have the star of our show and the entire writing staff behind us.”

Mr. Daniels says he arrived at 4:15 this morning and none of the show’s actors have crossed the line. “The Office” cast includes several performers who are also writers on the show, like B.J. Novak, Mindy Kaling and Paul Lieberstein. “Office” star Steve Carell is a WGA member and is not showing up for work as well, he said.

Ouch. I think Kristi was right that they only have 2 episodes that have been shot, so who knows where my Thursday will be going. *sigh*

This is shaping up to be an interesting season, to say the least.

Anyone remember that song from Rocco’s Modern Life? It was the episode where they went to the movies–I think this was a preview for some movie about garbage workers on strike–they were singing rats, I believe.

Anyhow, the writer’s strike is officially under way. The part of me that enjoys drama can’t wait to see these daily shows feel the burn, but at the same time, I really don’t want to see the impact on my beloved shows. I’m not even so much worried about the risk of running out of material, but even the shows they’ve got written, but not taped will be affected. There’s so much re-writing during shooting to change things that don’t work, and cut for time, and write in things to make sure it all makes sense when you have to cut something for time…I just hope it doesn’t all go downhill. I’d almost rather see a bunch of re-runs than a bunch of botched episodes.

I’ve been looking through a lot of the articles on the whole situation and I think the most interesting idea that keeps popping up is about hyphenates–writer-producers, actor-writer, etc. The idea is for there to be a totally dedicated strike, meaning that even these hyphenates wouldn’t show up to work at all so that they’d really be strapped, but in their dual roles, they’re still under contract to show up in their non-writing capacity, strike or not. So not only do they have to struggle with the decision of what to do there, but if they decide to show up, how do they refrain from assisting on re-writes and such? How do they just stand back and let the show sink?

I definitely don’t envy the situation the hyphenates are in. I don’t think this bodes well for shows that have just started.

Oh! But I did read a tidbit the other day suggesting that news shows that really should’ve already been cancelled (*ahem* the Caveman thing…) are probably still around because networks wanted to prolong the amount of taped shows they have. Good to know they’re not completely blind to crappy material.

Echo (Eliza Dushku) [is] a young woman who is literally everybody’s fantasy. She is one of a group of men and women who can be imprinted with personality packages, including memories, skills, language—even muscle memory—for different assignments. The assignments can be romantic, adventurous, outlandish, uplifting, sexual and/or very illegal. When not imprinted with a personality package, Echo and the others are basically mind-wiped, living like children in a futuristic dorm/lab dubbed the Dollhouse, with no memory of their assignments—or of much else. The show revolves around the childlike Echo’s burgeoning self-awareness, and her desire to know who she was before, a desire that begins to seep into her various imprinted personalities and puts her in danger both in the field and in the closely monitored confines of the Dollhouse.

Kristi brought this to my attention earlier and all I could say was “squeeee!!” But as she not-so-gently reminded me, it’s on FOX, which means it’ll be prematurely canceled. Can this please not just be Tru Calling all over again? I loved that show, dammit!

I’m only a little wary of the fact that reminds me so much of the premise of The Island. Mostly I’m just excited to see what Joss has in store for us now!

Photo courtesy of E!

Writer’s Strike Deadline is Midnight Tonight

I’ll only summarize to say that basically, Writer’s Guild of America is ready to go on strike. They want a bigger cut of DVD sales–I think that’s the basic gist of everything. Tonight is the deadline for an agreement to be made, or they’ll be on strike. This means shows like The Daily Show and Leno that air daily, will cease almost immediately. Prime time shows all have different amounts of shows already taped before they’ll cut to reruns, and eventually fall off and make way for more reality tv.

Honestly, I’m concerned. No, I don’t spend ridiculous amounts of time watching tv, but the few shows I do watch, I’m quite attached to.

Even if this all gets properly sorted out in time, there’s still an effect as a lot of shows have changed their course so that if they do get cut off where they are, they’ll be set with either a cliffhanger, a season finale-type episode, or something more resolved.

I’m really interested to see where it all goes. I just started watching Pushing Daisies! It just wouldn’t be fair to take it away from me just yet!

So NBC has done away with their YouTube channel to start their own site–hulu.com. You can read more about it on their blog. I’m all in favor of the concept of hulu. It looks as though there will be full episodes available, as well as talk of some full length films. My annoyance lies in their reasoning–their motivation.

You can read for yourself what NBC Universal chief executive Jeff Zucker had to say about their past, now ended, partnership with iTunes, but I have a few things I’d like to call bullshit on.

“We know that Apple has destroyed the music business — in terms of pricing — and if we don’t take control, they’ll do the same thing on the video side,”

Wait, you mean that whole thing where people are more likely to actually pay for their music since they can now pay for just that one song instead of having to buy a whole album? I’ve paid for SO much more music than I used to since iTunes came around. I didn’t even do this with Napster, but with iTunes, I’ve already got the software because I need it for my iPod, and oh look! There’s a handy little store where I can use PayPal to pay less than a dollar for a song! I can do that.

NBC originally claimed to be seeking more control over the pricing of songs and videos that it was selling on iTunes, in addition to better piracy controls and more flexibility to bundle video content in an effort to increase revenues.

For its part in the bitter feud, Apple responded by saying NBC was asking for a twofold increase in the wholesale price of its TV show content, which would have resulted in the retail price to iTunes customers increasing to $4.99 per episode from $1.99.

Answering questions at the breakfast Sunday, Zucker offered substantially more color on the iTunes matter, explaining that it was “a relatively easy decision” for NBC to walk away from the Apple download service because it had only earned about $15 million from the service last year in spite of accounting for about 40 per cent of the videos sold on the store.

He said NBC routinely propositioned Apple to breach its standard pricing model and experiment with higher pricing for one hit show such as “Heroes” by raising the price from the iTunes standard $1.99 to $2.99 on a trial basis.

Awl only $15 million? As opposed to nothing? That’s heartbreaking guys…really.

$2.99 or $4.99, either way, charging that much is ridiculous. That’s more than you’ll pay for a physical copy of the show. I understand you’re also paying for the convenience of having it right now, but even at $2.99, I’ll save my $70 to buy the dvds later–for now I’ll download the show and you’ll get nothing. At $1.99, you’re leaving the door open for people not to feel completely ridiculous if they download the show, and then later decide to buy the dvd.

“Apple sold millions of dollars worth of hardware off the back of our content and made a lot of money,” he said. “They did not want to share in what they were making off the hardware or allow us to adjust pricing.”

Wow, you’re giving yourself a whollle lotta credit there darlin. I own an iPod to listen to music. If I can watch episodes of my favorite shows between classes as well, then that’s just icing on the cake, but I don’t currently know anyone who bought an iPod specifically so they could watch tv on it. I’m sure those people are out there, but I feel certain they’re in the minority.

Get over yourselves NBC. You’re a great network, but it’s not up to you to decide it’s time to change the way we watch television online. Especially when you want to bring ridiculous ideas to the table.

Um, where was I when daytime television aired its first gay kiss?!

As The World Turns was the show to finally do the honors and I just watched it myself on YouTube. Those boys didn’t disappoint! They did a really great job of not looking awkward, which is something you run the risk of when doing scenes like that.

I can’t believe I’m almost two months behind! I really would’ve liked to have seen this when it originally aired! Thank God for the internet though, I was probably in class anyway!

I haven’t been much on watching television lately. I’ve got a lot of shows on my pc right now, and I’d much rather watch uninterrupted programming than subject myself to the crappy commercials stuffed in my tiny little half hour of humor.

I’m surrounded by creativity, for free! Why am I paying to watch uninventive ads, doing nothing to hide the fact that they’re desperately trying to force something on me?

Every semester, I see a handful of projects from the Theatre students here, at VSU. I’d actually pay to see what they could come up with. I see ads all the time with great concepts, but they just don’t follow through right, or they get lazy and just don’t do the concept justice. Viewers should create commercials.

Ah, there’s the idea! Black Turtle Media thought the same thing, and thus they promote amateur and professional producers of commercial-grade advertising. And Black Turtle Media wants your work! They’re currently offering a contest for commercials on the Apple iPhone, Halo 3, and Decision 2008. The winner receives $5,000. I think I’m gonna pass that on to Brian. He’s one of the more prolific in turning out new projects, and I’m sure he wouldn’t mind the opportunity to earn some cash. Besides, he and Josh are always looking for their next project. They can’t just relax!

Everyone is encouraged to submit their own masterpieces, or just vote on the ones you like best. You could be voting on what you have to watch between segments of your favorite prime time drama *serious look*