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Writers Strike Officially Over
CNN is reporting that the 100-day Hollywood writers walkout is now officially over. The new contract managed to snag two of the three major points the Writers Guild was looking for. The writers will now have "jurisdiction" for content created especially for new media (Internet, cell phones, etc) and will get paid for the reuse of content on new media when the studios get paid. "Leslie Moonves, chief executive officer of CBS Corp., told The Associated Press, 'At the end of the day, everybody won. It was a fair deal and one that the companies can live with, and it recognizes the large contribution that writers have made to the industry. [...] It's unclear how soon new episodes of scripted programs will start appearing, because production won't begin until scripts are completed, the AP reported. It will take at least four weeks for producers to get the first post-strike episodes of comedies back on the air; dramas will take six to eight weeks, the AP said.'"
Future generations will look back at this strike as "the year we almost lost Hollywood and no one really gave a crap."
I'm still not going to rush back to my television set over this.
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Im sorry, but its too late.
I took the plunge and got rid of 'pay-tv' once and for all right before this strike, and its amazing how little I actually miss it. And amazing how I was spending over $70/month for just regular ad-laced channels. Yes, paying to watch advertisements is not how I want to spend my money anymore. That INCLUDES the 'ads' that get thrown right into the shows, soap opera style(thats how they got their name after all).
The internet is now my primary tool of information sourcing and entertainment. The TV industry missed the boat, the same way the music industry did. The only thing that made it take as long as it did was the bandwidth difference between audio and video.
The TV is dead, long live TV!
So, who got screwed the most in this one? I'm assuming the writers since the studios have deeper pocketses.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Unrelated to the writers strike, I got rid of my television and cable. I use the internet for news and watch movies with a digital projector. After a couple of months, I not only didn't miss it, but realized a big quality of life increase. More time with the kids, actually eating at the dinner table, etc.
I wonder how many people turned to other entertainment venues due to the strike. If there is NOTHING good on, I am sure some people cut back on their tv watching. Now that viewers have so many options (ie netflix, internet downloads, itunes tv, youtube, dvd kiosks, etc) this could not have come at a worse time. I am curious if this writers strike was the tipping point for a lot of people to ween themselves from their tvs. Not from shows all together, but the old standard of scheduling your life around when your show comes on and sitting through commercials.
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
To the people who think that the American People (TM) have used the writers strike to go forth and do without television, leading to a new utopia, I'd like to remind you all of the 1994 baseball player's strike and how nobody ever bought a stadium ticket again after that, causing the death of major league baseball.
Now maybe they'll get started on Season 3, of course I still think they should bring Firefly back.... even though it won't be the same without Wash and Shepard...
...anyone involved in Reality TV would go on strike. Permanently, and forever. It's hard to imagine anything more anti-geek than Reality TV.
Welcome back writers. Congrats on your win. We need you, more than ever.
One thing I don't see mentioned in the comments is the fact that during the strike many writers were fired, and many shows were cancelled. 24 has decided not to air this season and will continue next season.
It may be a win for some people, but for others they are now out of a job. I don't have a pony in this race, but the strength of the writer's guild is in serious question. One Presidential candidate after another crossed the picket line in favor of publicity. They did not protect the jobs of those who they sought to protect. Actor/Writers crossed the picket line for fear of losing their jobs. And most importantly - many high value shows seemed to be airing new episodes in the middle of the strike.
I'm all for TV coming back, but make no mistake - this strike did not end well for the union. It seems that every labor union in the last several years that has gone on strike (save the port workers who affect the global economy when on strike) has yielded either poor results (eventual acceptance of offers barely different than what was available pre-strike) and in a loss of jobs for unionized workers.
I hate to turn this into a political thing, but the strength of unionized labor vs. corporate dollars has shifted dramatically in favor of corporate dollars.
It appears that a lot of people hate it because it copies the idea of Mythbusters
I don't. I hate it because it ditches the interesting parts of Mythbusters (quirky, real people; lots of tinkering and failure, a ridiculously wide variety of subjects and techniques) and keeps the boring parts (unnecessary time dilation to pad out the 44 minute format; forced expositional banter).
What really bugs me about the show is that they appear to be actually looking for alternative solutions to big problems with the aim of saving more lives/making it cheaper and easier to save more lives, but you never get a sense of that beyond the voiceover intro. Whether they succeed or not, no mention is made of the current methods they're trying to supplant or whether any of the potential insight they've gained will be used/passed on to relevant people who might then use it to save lives.
Also, the presentation of the show is still very rough around the edges. In Mythbusters, they'll happily divulge details step-by-step. In Smash Lab, there's a lot of "and thens" that can be quite jarring.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Amazing how many people share that same assumption. You may want to spend some time and take a hard look at the lifestyle you are providing to your children.
Maybe you missed what I said in stating the importance of the INTERNET over the importance of TV in providing the same services. Perhaps you should be more concerned that the rest of the kids in your childs age group are comfortably using the internet as a replacement for TV, while your children are starting blankly at a screen.
Im sorry to hear about the parenting your children received, but that was your choice.
You can't take the sky from me...
I've only watched (part of) one episode of Numb3rs, but that was enough for me to totally write off the show.
The scenario was a guy robs a gas station. He holds a gun over his head and fires up into the sky. There is no video of it, just stories from the witnesses. The math guy rambles off a bunch of math terms, says algorithm a lot, then draws on a map, marking off a couple of places that the bullet was most likely to land.
The explanation of what he was doing was just random words strung together that didn't make any sense. "A guy fired a bullet into the sky" is no where near enough info to find a bullet.
After that, he went off into another "derivative algorithm sine cosine algorithm mean median algorithm integral algorithm" rant, so I changed the channel and never looked back.
CSI and a lot of other tech/police shows do break a lot of rules to make it "work", I usually try to avoid shows like that because it frustrates the hell out of me. However there are many shows that are fictional and still follow the rules. Monk for instance doesn't use any fake tech but rather interesting fictional situations. Then there are shows like Star Trek that use fictional technology but clearly define the laws and limitations of their world.
Unless I'm watching something like the History Channel/Mythbusters/Dirty Jobs/How it's Made/etc I find most "reality" based programing to be far more of an insult to my intelligence than anything CSI and the like could throw at me...
Collector's Edition
Then there are shows like Star Trek that use fictional technology but clearly define the laws and limitations of their world.
Riiight. At least until the plot requires otherwise.
-- Alastair
While quite entertaiing that movie has almost nothing to do with math. If those are the kind of writers we're expecting to see back in business geeks can go back to not caring.
Not to mention the fact that the end of the first season made no sense whatsoever. Peter was going to explode, and Claire could have shot him, but didn't want to, despite the fact that he wouldn't have been killed. Then his brother flew him off, seemingly committing suicide to save everybody, despite the fact that Peter could fly himself.
The Heroes writers are apparently oblivious to one of the most fundamental rules of fiction: the audience can suspend their disbelief to believe in supernatural powers, but only if the story is internally consistent. When the writers forget what their own characters can do, the suspension of disbelief smacks the audience in the face and the story becomes a farce.