My personal opinions have me on the side of the writers in regards to the current WGA writers’ strike situation. The studios have got to be kidding when they cry “we can’t afford it” when it comes to compensating the folks that are the foundation of the TV and movie entertainment business. Yes, the bulk of the issue is “new” digital media includes the streaming of TV shows on the web where perhaps it’s so new that the studios don’t have the economics of the whole thing worked out, but writers should get residuals from this as they do from any other media as far as I’m concerned.
There is no doubt that the current WGA writers’ strike is going to have a big impact on the 2007/2008 televsion season, maybe even bigger than was originally anticipated. Many popular TV series and talk shows have already stopped production, and there are rumors that some series that are supposed to start in January like Lost and 24 may end up getting their premiere dates pushed way back due to this whole thing. 24 may not begin until the strike is over and Lost may end up getting pushed back to 2009.
As has been mentioned here, this also affects movie production since most movies have ongoing script tweaking going on during the process of shooting a film, so there are movies going into production that could end up being that much worse when they’re released.
Which leads me to this thought: Although I support the writers’ side in this conflict, I don’t support all of them.
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