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Printer-Friendly ModeWriters' reasons for strike are unjustified
December 3, 2007 —
This just in, due to the Writers Guild of America strike in Hollywood, all script writing jobs will be outsourced overseas to English-speaking writers who are willing to work for lower wages.
The possibility of this actually happening? Not likely, but I find it to be an amusing joke for a current event I view to be pointless.
On Nov. 5, 12,000 film and TV writers went on strike. The basis of the strike? Money.
The WGA believes that its writers should receive compensation when the episodes they write are downloaded from the Internet, such as when an episode is bought through iTunes or viewed on a network's Web site.
Greed is a bad thing, and is why outsourcing is happening with so many American jobs; going overseas is cheaper. Are the writers really suffering financially? I strongly doubt it.
Personally, I think that demanding money for when people view or download their work online is stupid. If I miss an episode of ABC's Private Practice, it is nice to have the option to go to ABC online and watch it for free with limited commercial interruption.
I also like having the option to download my favorite episodes onto my iPod for only $1.99. It seems that if the writers get their way, iTunes episodes will have to cost more.
The reality of regulating internet viewing of shows seems out of reach. In addition to iTunes and network websites, there is YouTube and other Web sites that illegally allow people to view episodes for free without the network's permission.
There is also the use of TiVo, DVRs, and even VCRs to consider. What if someone recorded an episode of ABC's Grey's Anatomy, watched it, and then lent it to a friend to watch?
How do the writers expect to get paid for that? They can't, because there is no way to find out how many people are recording episodes to watch later.
I always look forward to Tuesday nights. Even though I am usually in class from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., my VCR is recording my favorite show, Fox's Bones, from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m.
For those of you who aren't familiar with Bones, it's a show about a forensic anthropologist, Dr. Temperance Brennan (played by Emily Deschanel), her FBI partner Agent Seeley Booth (played by David Boreanaz), and the Brennan's colleagues at the Jeffersonian's Medico-Legal Lab (a fictional place located in Washington D.C.). Bones is inspired by real-life forensic anthropologist and novelist Kathy Reichs.
I find watching Bones and other prime-time television as a way to unwind from the stress that comes with taking college courses. I believe that other people feel the same way. For example, I know that my roommates look forward to watching a new episode of Grey's Anatomy every week.
Watching the drama unfold between fictional characters for 60 minutes allows viewers to temporarily escape the drama that occurs in their real lives.
But thanks to the WGA strike, the joy of watching new episodes of mine and other's favorite TV shows may be temporarily suspended.
The writers strike isn't just affecting viewers of shows who want to find out what happens to the characters they enjoy and love, but it also affects other people who work on the show.
The film crew, makeup artists, and even the actors are currently without work because if the writers refuse to write, there is no Hollywood magic to create.
So, not only are the writers not getting paid, other hard working people aren't getting paid. What happens to their lives? No one can really survive long with no income.
The writers must be suffering also without their paychecks, so why don't they just go back to work so that they can get paid and so that the other workers who aren't protesting can get paid.
I hope that this strike comes to a conclusion soon. Writers need to get over their greed. No one told them they had to go to Hollywood to write scripts. According to an MSNBC article, the average salary for entertainment industry employees is $73,000 a year.
According to an blog entry by a grip on NBC's The Office, which is among the shows that will not broadcast any new episodes during the strike, the lowest paid writer in television makes roughly twice the salary than the below-the-line crewmaker makes.
It sounds like if anyone should be striking, it should be the poorly paid set hands instead of the middle-class writers.
Writers need to stop their whining and get back to writing.