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TV's Golden Age Is Anything But, Say Writers Preparing To Strike (bloomberg.com)
The world's largest media companies returned to the negotiating table Monday with Hollywood screenwriters, seeking to avert a strike that could cost the entertainment industry billions of dollars and take popular TV shows off the air indefinitely. From a report on Bloomberg: Hollywood is bracing for the worst-case scenario after the Writers Guild of America warned advertisers and investors of the financial fallout and said members will most likely walk out May 2 if the new round of talks fail. Major TV programmers, such as NBC and CBS' flagship network, are scanning their slates of upcoming shows to determine which ones can air without guild writers. Negotiators on both sides are counting on cooler heads to prevail as they seek to avoid a repeat of the 100-day work stoppage in 2007-08 that cost the entertainment industry more than $2 billion, according to Milken Institute estimates. Yet the entertainment business, specifically TV, has undergone myriad changes that are creating new sticking points since the last strike almost a decade ago, and the writers say they haven't benefited.
think it would be quite amusing to watch the whole broadcast model just implode.
You would, would you? So, you're going to pay for my streaming accounts, and a better computer that'll actually run 1080p content, all because you want to make obsolete the antenna I put on my roof when I cancelled cable TV years and years ago? Thanks so much, corporate America appreciates you voting for them making even more money, charging for streaming ***AND*** making people watch commercials, too. Really appreciate that.