The last time the Hollywood scriptwriters went on strike, said David Carr in The New York Times, there were few alternatives to television. During the five-month strike back in 1988, you couldn’t plug in a movie from Netflix, or hunt for interesting videos on YouTube.com, or busy yourself on blogs or a million sites on the Internet. But when the scriptwriters this week swapped their laptops for placards and started picketing studios in both New York and Los Angeles, they were taking a real gamble. The writers say they had no choice but to strike, since the networks and producers wouldn’t guarantee them a fair share of the revenues that their TV shows and movies generate from new digital media such as DVD collections and direct downloads to people’s computers. But when the strike is finally settled and David Letterman, the soap operas, and drama and comedy series are back, weeks or months from now, the question is: “Will viewers be back?” A lot of them may not be, said Chris Kaltenbach in the Baltimore Sun. After the 1988 strike, the major networks lost 10 percent of their audience, as viewers who were tired of reruns started tuning in to alternatives on cable TV. The losses may be bigger this time. Irritated audiences sure won’t have much sympathy for the striking writers, said Brooks Barnes in The New York Times. The average member of the Writers Guild of America makes about $200,000 a year. Writers get more than $20,000 for creating a single half-hour comedy show, and big-name screenwriters can command $4 million for a screenplay. Still, the writers are the good guys in this dispute, said Jonathan Tasini in TheHuffingtonpost.com. Half of them are out of work at any one time, and most of them struggle to maintain a middle-class lifestyle in an industry that’s utterly without job security. The “Big Media” executives who package and distribute the products the writers create, on the other hand, are currently “raking in obscene astronomical salaries and stock options”—in large part from the opening up of new, electronic marketplaces to sell television shows, movies, and other scripted entertainment. We just want a fair share. Don’t get me wrong, said screenwriter Howard Rodman in the Los Angeles Times. The prospect of a prolonged strike “terrifies me.” But if we don’t take a stand now, new forms of distribution will produce untold billions for the TV and movie industries, while the writers who produce the “content” will have to settle for crumbs.
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