Sunday, November 18, 2007
More fallout from the WGA strike
The New York Post is reporting that NBC has fired nearly the entire production staff from “Saturday Night Live”. The people that do all of the behind the scenes work on the show each and every week are now faced with a holiday season without the benefit of a job.
It must suck not being able to provide Christmas presents for your kids. That doesn’t matter though. What’s important is that the writers get their fair share (whatever that is) of all that Internet streaming video money the networks are raking in. It doesn’t matter that the paid advertising doesn’t even cover the bandwidth costs associated with streaming video on the Internet. It doesn’t matter that the networks only stream episodes on the Internet as a way of promoting the show and that they are not streaming them as a revenue source. That’s something for the accountants to figure out. The writers aren’t really good with numbers. They are much better with words.
Speaking of words, The New York Post included the following words in their article about the layoffs:
Despite being scrooged out of their Christmas-season paychecks, the “SNL” crew still has a big heart. Playbill reports that the cast plans to perform a nontelevised show tonight at the New York Upright Citizens Brigade Theater on West 26th Street. Ticket proceeds from the sold-out performance, which was produced by Lorne Michaels, will benefit the Writers Guild’s strike fund.
The proceeds went to benefit the Writers Guild’s strike fund? They could have given the money to the people that now don’t have jobs because of the strike. That actually would have been the decent thing to do. I’m not saying that the Writers Guild doesn’t need money in their strike fund. You don’t expect Julia Louis-Dreyfus to buy her own red WGA strike t-shirt, do you? Now that would just be silly.
It’s a known fact that streaming video on the Internet is worth billions upon billions of dollars. Look at all the people that are now millionaires because of videos they posted on YouTube. I heard that Chocolate Rain guy bought his own island in Dubai and he’s even thinking of adopting a baby from Cambodia. The vast fortunes that can be made from streaming video on the Internet are without limits.
A percentage of this limitless streaming video Internet wealth is clearly worth fighting for no matter who gets harmed in the process.
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Could it be you’re confusing “Chocolate Rain” with “Purple Rain?”
Maybe I am. Which one can give you diabetes?
I’m glad you’re continuing to cover this, Rick. It’s amazing how that newspaper article covered it as if it were NBC that were the big "Scrooge" for firing workers who’ve essentially abandoned any claim to their jobs.
On a related note, I read in my copy of Entertainment Weekly last evening about some of the hardline policing the writer’s guild is doing to its own members during the strike. Here’s an excerpt:
"Workers aren’t allowed to work for targets of the strike. Fair enough, but other rules are more difficult ot enforce. The union has asked members to submit nascent scripts so that it can monitor any unauthorized progress made during the strike. For a writer, this is the equivalent of voluntarily walking into a police station and telling an officer you’re about to drive 80 mph in a 55-mph zone."
I thought this sort of glimpse "behind the curtain" was pretty fascinating…and nowhere near enough of it is being covered.
I cannot fully describe my pleasure at seeing Julia Louis-Dreyfus silent. Is there any way to make that permanent?
“Mark Engblom
I’m glad you’re continuing to cover this, Rick. It’s amazing how that newspaper article covered it as if it were NBC that were the big “Scrooge” for firing workers who’ve essentially abandoned any claim to their jobs. ”
Keep working, bloggers. You’ll blow the lid off this hot news item yet.