Monday, Nov. 26, 2007: strike day 22

International Day of Support for the Writers Guild of America: Ireland (Irish Playwrights & Screenwriters Guild Newsletter)

When your kids want to know "Where were you in the great Writers Strike of 2007?" you'll be able to say that you walked the line with writers from all over the world in support of the principle that, if they use our work, we get paid for it and that, however modest, you contributed to the victory that's coming for our fellow writers in the Writers' Guild of America.

...Irish writers can demonstrate their solidarity with the WGA by arriving at the Guild office at Art House, Curved Street, Temple Bar in Dublin on Wednesday 28th November at 3.00 pm.

We'll have t-shirts, placards, a photographer, and a videographer, and with colleagues in Sydney, Auckland, Paris, Mexico City, London, Brussels, Berlin, Toronto, Montreal, we will demonstrating world-wide support for the writers' strike in the USA.

(Info on other support demonstrations in London, Toronto, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and elsewhere is here, courtesy of the "Fans for the WGA" LiveJournal community.)

Hollywood Studios Resume Talks With Writers Amid Program Delays (Bloomberg)

"A lot of the spin on the management side, that they had stockpiled scripts and wouldn't be affected by a strike, is coming undone," Jonathan Handel, an entertainment attorney at TroyGould in Los Angeles, said in an interview. "We're seeing television shows go dark much faster than we were told. We're seeing movies canceled much faster than we were told."

Let The Real Bargaining Begin (LA Times>

The wannabes especially worry whether the big companies will try to squeeze them out of their just returns from the Web. The guild has made its case forcefully on this issue, but management has not.

"The industry has already paid millions of dollars in residuals for permanent and pay-for-view downloads," the companies have declared, but they have not offered a coherent formula to assure continued and expanded payments. The dilemma faced by the Time Warners and Disneys of the world is that they have to assure investors that their new media ventures will become hugely profitable even as they tell writers that they will not.

In view of all this, it's reasonable to ask, why hasn't an accommodation been reached? After all, this is all about numbers. No one is closing the coal mines or moving away the only factory in town.

Talk to the small group of professional arbiters -- those gurus who have helped resolve Hollywood's major disputes over the years -- and you get a common answer: Both sides have displayed equal clumsiness and heavy-handedness that has left the community both baffled and divided.

Showrunners are running the show (Baltimore Sun)

Which leaves us with the show runners, the one force in town whose power is unquestionably on the ascendancy. Why is that? Because show runners make - and often create - the shows, and shows are the only things that matter. Viewers don't watch networks. They watch shows. And they don't care how they get them.

That takes a lot of power from the networks and hands it to show runners. True, the studios still own the shows. But in the new economy, show runners have extra leverage.

Ninety percent of guild members may have authorized this strike, but you can be sure it never would have started without at least a wink and nudge from the few dozen show runners who matter.