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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.
Why is it that people who don't watch TV are so damned proud of it that they need to announce it every time TV is mentioned? Please share, what else makes you special?
TWD is off till next Oct, etc....
Not much new content to watch in summer anyway, so, let them strike.
Just curious, do streaming services like Netflix/Amazon Prime have to bother with writers unions/guilds? If not, well, certainly a boon to them, they can keep churning out what is becoming more and more good independent content that is worth watching.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
It seems current of most TV shows are reality, infomercials, three themes of fiction (lawyers, cops, medical), and news-opinion (this being a news story breaks out and they get a few pretty talking heads to discuss implications but there really is no additional info on that breaking news story). There are cable channels for sports (don't really need writers for those) and movies (which they repeat the same movie few times a month). There is reruns of classic TV shows (no writers needed). Then there is PBS which Trump wants to defund.
mfwright@batnet.com
I'm wondering if Netflix and Amazon are itching to license their backlog to the networks if the latter can't fill their timeslots.
The title made sense to me. It didn't seem obfuscated.
Dear Writers, please, Please, PLEASE, for the love of God, PLEASE strike. Permanently. Maybe find shows on Netflix, Prime HBO, or Fox News that need good creative writers.
I got rid of cable TV some time ago. Don't miss it actually. I never realized how much time something like CNN, for example, takes up to tell the same news I can read in about seven minutes on Google news, or other online sources. The endless talking heads, droning on and on and on.
I think it would be quite amusing to watch the whole broadcast model just implode. And a lot of their problems they brought on themselves. Broadcast (even Cable) is so 20th century.
I'm not sure what to make of your subject line.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
This is how the free market should work. If wages are really too low, the strike will cost more than just raising the pay for the writers and the networks will cave. If the writers are overpaid, there are still a lot of unemployed people looking for work, the networks can go find new talent who don't belong to the union (they call it guild, but it is acting as a labor union right now).
Notice that unlike the teachers union, the screen writers guild can't pour in cash to elect their bosses who then kick back raises and benefits, regardless of what is best for the larger organization. This is why all public sector unions need to be banned and why so many Democrats in the past were strongly against public sector unions.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
You mean, apart from saving $1000+ a year, and not willingly subjecting ourselves to IQ squandering nonsense (ie: the typical news), and lowest-common-denominator sitcoms, leaving time free to do more useful things?
When they strike now, what do you think will air in autumn? Stuff has to be written, then shot, edited and then broadcasted. If nothing is written today, then sometime in autumn there is nothing to broadcast anymore and your summer reruns become all year reruns into summer 2018.
It's like breaking an addiction. Or a bad habit. It's like when ex smokers say they never realized how many things they can smell now and how much better food tastes, etc.
It's not pride. It's the revelation of how much better it is to not watch TV any more. The extra time you have. The fact that TV gives you nothing in return. It wasn't even that entertaining actually. Just an effort to find the least objectionable content. And the ads, OMG, the ads, don't get me started.
If you watch some on-demand programming, you can get some better quality entertainment, in less time, and with no commercials. And get up and walk away from the TV because there are also other and better things to do.
Even if I sit in front of the TV and just browse YouTube, it is amazing the great stuff I can find. Videos of presentations from various conferences. Class lectures. There is a guy with a great set of videos Introduction to Higher Math. Various tutorials. It's way better than couch potato cable TV.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
...which would almost make sense if the shows they were going to write next week were scheduled to air this summer, but that is not the timeframe. The writers are smart: they are timing their strike to have the most impact on what the industry knows as the "up fronts," in which networks show off and promote their pending line-up of shows to advertisers. "Now, here's a show we think is going to be HUGE, about a vampire cowboy and his lesbian hacker sister, based on the indie graphic novel... we think it makes sense to charge top-dollar for the ad time..." They can't do that if the writers strike, as they will have nothing to show and/or there will be uncertainty amidst the ad-dollar-spending community over whether a TV ad buy makes as much sense as a placement in some other medium.
Coming in the next few months:
Summers on TV are great now, not like when we were kids.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
It is unclear what effect a writers guild strike would have on Fox News.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
I always took it as hyper bold that tv rots the brain. Then I watched the difference between people who watch tv all the time and those who don't watch much at all. The differences are enough that even though I don't have cable I am not planning on getting it or letting kids watch much of it.
See both liberal and conservatives who watch a lot of tv and its political spins va those who don't.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
yeah, but most of us wouldn't pay to watch their shows cause they write about as good as most Fan Fiction writers
Traditional TV is dead as a door nail. the programs are so sparse and aimed at dullards that anyone with a nickel in their pocket is on cable or satelite with premium channels added. Regular TV programing went into the ditch when too many ads were run making the shows a nightmare to watch. As viewers declined the programming got worse and they ran ever more ads. Greed killed TV and it isn't doing much for theaters either.
Who cares if any if it ever comes back? So much to see and do in this world the last thing worthy of consideration is whether these glorified advertising vectors air with 20 minutes of "new" content. Listen to podcasts, read a book, watch the thousands and thousands of hours of already released content, play the latest vidya, watch YouTube, go to the park, fly a kite, take a picture every day, play with your kids, tend to a garden, learn something new, volunteer somewhere, go talk to your neighbor, go fishing, go bird watching, lose ten pounds, write the next great app, call your mom, get high, change your own oil, ask your significant other how they feel, go watch the ballet, go protest something in front if city hall, better yet run for mayor, get a penpal, pick up litter, listen to the radio, go geocaching, write a short story, hell write a book, paint a picture, ride a bike, clean your ears, pet you pet, learn origami, shitpost on slashdot. But for the love of God don't worry about television.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
That's an easy one to answer.
The reason the good content has fled for cable and/or the Internet is because of commercial concerns. The first concern is the palette of the masses. You don't want to be too controversial or too radical or you don't get the broadest audience. Or if you go too far in the opposite direction and have too narrow of an audience. Both of those are a problem for the second concern, selling the commercial space. These programs aren't created to be entertaining, they're created to pass the time between swaths of 30-second sale pitches. Now, they can be entertaining and being entertaining helps since in theory that could get the commercials a larger audience, which is the whole point.
Now the twist is that TV execs are figuring out audience statistics better, so a show doesn't necessarily have to have the broadest of audiences to survive. An equally acceptable one is a predictable, identifiable audience. Anything which makes it easy to sell commercial time is the key. So if you have a show which has a fairly narrow but easily identifiable audience you have an easier time targeting your broadcast commercials to them.
For TV execs, the ideal choice is either Friends or Supernatural.
>Maybe we hate to see others waste what little time
"Maybe?" No, that's not it. You couldn't give a shit on how others spend their time being entertained by watching their favorite shows. Unless, of course, its too belittle their enjoyment and pathetically make yourself feel superior.
The big difference is that Netflix and Amazon don't rely on advertisers that expect an established release schedule for new material. If writers go on strike for a month or two, then Netflix and Amazon can postpone production for a month or two and suffer no loss real losses. If ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, etc. don't release new programs for a month or two, they lose revenue from those adverts.
Was there a writer's strike in 2009? I didn't notice.
You didn't notice? The last writers' strike gave us Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. That was a win in my book.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
The ads are absolute cancer. I never realized how bad TV ads were until I would visit the in-laws and sit down to watch whatever was on to pass the evening by. Holy shit. They hit all the right buttons to get my attention or to get me to stare at the screen and I felt stupid after a set of commercials. I don't know what it is but I know I don't want it in my life.
Netflix and Amazon series writers are all the same union as the broadcast nets. So it's more likely the new kids would look to license (more) archive material from the older networks, as the oldsters have a much deeper inventory. If recent Netflix and Amazon original shows make their way to the broadcasters more rapidly, the value of Netflix and Amazon original content to the consumer diminishes greatly.
Probably won't affect Netflix, Amazon, or Hulu. Their contracts are not broadcast contracts like ABC, NBC, CBS, etc have. I would expect they have their own streaming contracts, and Netflix at least is known for offering better deals than Hollywood and the Broadcasters when it comes to making their original content. Joint-Developed content, however, might suffer though.
The irony is that it may prevent them from licensing material to the broadcasters though.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
the Golden Age of TV was in the 1960's & 1970's (before the internet) when most everybody spent their free time in the evening watching their favorite TV shows before bed time, TV is like the Radio now, people mostly ignore it unless they want local news & weather, the internet wont lill TV, like TV did not kill radio, it will just fall back to a secondary source of entertainment and news and information
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
OTA television and radio will always exist because of federal government mandate, and rightly so. They exist so people at any income level can have access to television and radio, because they're information sources. There's even a federal law that says you can't outlaw antennas on people's homes, for the same reason. Your 'belief' is misguided and also technically incorrect.
Like commenting on SlashDot? That aside, it's none of your friggin' business how someone spends their leisure time.
The longer a strike goes, the more people will stream old stuff, watch YouTube, look on Facebook, or maybe even, and I know this strikes fear: go outside or read an actual paper book.
I'm not anti-union, but I'm firmly anti-Hollywood and it's time to poke a few holes in their balloons, this being one of them.
Yeah, go ahead and strike.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Vincent: Pilot? What's a pilot?
Jules: Well, you know the shows on TV?
Vincent: I don't watch TV.
Jules: Yeah, but, you are aware that there's an invention called television, and on this invention they show shows, right?
Vincent: Yeah.
Jules: Well, the way they pick TV shows is, they make one show. That show's called a pilot. Then they show that one show to the people who pick shows, and on the strength of that one show they decide if they want to make more shows. Some get chosen and become television programs. Some don't, become nothing. She starred in one of the ones that became nothing.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Go ahead and strike, we don't really give a shit.
Doctors, firefighters, police, people that build and fix things...if they go on strike, we care. They actually do things that matter.
But a bunch of Hollywood script writers threatening to go on strike? Who gives a fuck?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...