Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2007: strike day 16

Employees at CBS News Vote to Authorize a Strike (New York Times)

Several hundred CBS News employees represented by the Writers Guild of America have voted to authorize a strike against the company, union officials said yesterday.

The vote enables the guild to call a strike at any time, although a walkout is not imminent. A strike could affect CBS television and radio newscasts, both nationally and in four local markets.

...Approximately 500 CBS News writers, producers, editors, artists and assistants are represented by the guild; 81 percent of the nearly 300 who voted last week supported a strike. The contract with CBS expired in April 2005, and the president of the guild said he hoped the vote will bring both sides back to the negotiation table for the first time since January.

“This is a wake-up call to CBS News management. We’re saying that we are really at the end of our rope,” said Michael Winship, president of the Writers Guild of America, East.

In a statement, CBS called the vote unfortunate and said the company’s contract offer remained on the table. The network said it had proposed a 3 percent salary increase for television and network radio employees and a 2 percent increase for their local radio counterparts in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington.

Two Americas, Two Hollywoods (Weekly Standard via Yahoo! News)

Why such tepid support for the most significant union action likely before November 2008? The answer is that the writers' strike puts Democrats in a tight spot. (So tight that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office will only say that she has no plans to say anything whatsoever about the strike.)

On the one hand, you would expect Democrats to rally to the side of any union, particularly a Hollywood union--particularly a Hollywood union with a legitimate gripe against giant corporate media conglomerates. On the other hand, the management in Hollywood has given Clinton, Obama, and to a lesser extent, Edwards, barrels of money.

Who wants to be a millionaire -- on strike? (Salon)

ABC and the show's producers will make a lot of money for a long time from the work I did alongside my fellow writers at "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." The same holds true across the industry. Whether they produce new shows or dig deep into their libraries, there is no show that networks, studios and production companies won't be able to monetize in the form of webisodes, online games, cellphone ringtones, downloads and other digital media. I've read "The Long Tail." One day that million-dollar question I wrote or the joke I put in Regis' mouth will be streamed online, preceded by a 30-second ad that will generate money for someone. Just not me.

The Forgotten Writers' Strike of '06 (LA Times)

The last week of September, we all received letters notifying us that our jobs had been eliminated, the entire story department abolished. The guild had vanished from our cause, and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which represents the video editors, swooped in to unionize the show, freezing the WGA out of "Top Model" for good.

There were 12 of us, not 12,000. And so the strike against "America's Next Top Model" has become a footnote in the long struggle for writers to assert power in an industry that seeks to keep us powerless.

I want the WGA to prevail in the current standoff, and I believe the writers deserve everything they are asking for. But if the negotiations starting next Monday yield nothing, I fear that the strike may drag on for months, and the writers may come to understand the importance of the Forgotten Strike a year and a half too late.