“As picketing continues outside studio gates, everyone from talent agents to George Clooney has been mentioned or tried their hand at mediating between the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and executives of the TV networks and film production companies. But here’s a name that hasn’t crossed too many minds: Steve Jobs, Apple’s bearded, music-loving chief executive officer,” Ron Grover reports for BusinessWeek.
“Consider this scenario: On Jan. 15, as the writers’ walkout drags into its eighth week, Jobs will take the stage for a keynote at his annual Macworld conference. He’s expected to announce that at least two—and possibly as many as five—studios have signed up to offer their movies for download to Apple’s video iPod and Apple TV products. That will no doubt generate big headlines—everything Jobs announces at Macworld does—and could make the notion of downloading movies from the Web a hot topic after years of false starts,” Grover reports.
“In doing so, Jobs could also put a Hollywood-style klieg light on the major issue separating the writers and movie moguls: how to cut in the unions for a share of the revenue from a new market that the studios have insisted isn’t yet big enough to share,” Grover reports. “‘It could validate everything that we’ve been saying,’ says WGA Assistant Executive Director Charles Slocum. ‘If he also announces that it will be in high-definition and you can order from the TV, it will mean the creation of a whole new market.'”
“During the short-lived negotiations this December before the writers hit the picket lines, the studios offered the same 1.2% for TV shows that are streamed on the Net, though not until after they have already been online for six weeks at a fixed rate of $250,” Grover reports. “The big thing that has kept the two sides from coming together is that studio executives insist there’s no market as yet for new media and they don’t want to get caught up in making expansive deals with the unions until there is one. Indeed, in their first go-round, the studios suggested they conduct a three-year study to determine the size of the market.”
Full article here.
The studios’ are full of it. Who cares what the size of the market is today? The percentage is all that matters. If you make a buck or a billion bucks, how much is the writers’ work worth? Figure out the percentage. The bigger the market grows, they more you all make. This has nothing to do with how big the market is, what size it will be sometime in the future, three-year ruses, and blah, blah, blah. It’s all about the percentage.
Can Steve end the writers’ strike: No.
@Sandy Hum
Jesus! At what point did being paid for a job become being mistreated in this country?!? How is being paid to do a job being treated like garbage?
You get paid what the market will bear. When you are WORTH more, you get PAID more. The greater your skills and talents, the greater your rewards. Your VALUE demands higher compensation.
If there are fewer people who can do what you do, then you make even more money. This is called SUPPLY AND DEMAND. You might have heard of it.
That’s “stone age” thinking to you?
Where do you people get these ideas? Yeesh.
I work in a union environment and have been on strike and found out one thing. You will never make up what you have lost. The point you think you are making will be negotiated away later on. The one sad fact remains. He who owns the “Benjamin’s” makes the rules until a revolution. So until the writers start their own studios……they’re screwed.
People should look at the history of the Three Stooges, they died broke, because they had no rights to much of the work they created. The studios job is to have a recurring revenue stream where the studios get paid from one piece of work for nearly a lifetime. It is only fair that a writer or actor who actually creates these works, shouldn’t die penniless. Money is the main reason behind the crappy reality shows, why?, zero production costs. You pay almost no one, no talented writers, or actors, yet reap high profits. This shows the studios are actually trying to get rid of paying anybody, let alone share profits. Writing movies or music, are industries where you definitely need to get paid for previous works. If Elvis Presley or Ozzie Osbourne wound up broke and homeless due to the same issues, i feel most people would change their negative tune. but it is the same, the rights of someone contributing to a work of art, to be properly compensated over time.
It depends on the copyright agreement in the contract. If writers are happy to do write script for a one off fee, fine, but more fool them.
An original script should surely, like a book, have the copyright staying with the author.
As a photographer, I sell the rights to my pictures for an agreed purpose at an appropriate price. I retain copyright.
If anyone wants to read more on this, John Harrington fights long and hard for pro-photogs not to give up copyright…
http://photobusinessforum.blogspot.com/
So, don’t agree with you Thelonious.
@lurker
Uh, no, I’m not quite retirement age, lol.
Where did all you closet socialists come from. ROFLMAO.
Those old retirement plans I would hope are a thing of the past. Look at the damage they’ve done to the American Automotive Industry. They are ticking time bombs for the likes of Ford, GM, and Chrysler.
And guess who’s going to foot the bill in the long run. You got it, the American tax payer.
Even those retirement plans, as bad as they are, don’t compare to the nuttyness of entertainment royalty systems.
@Macday…
You really don’t get it. You own the copyright to your work. Fine. It’s yours. If I want to use one of your images, I SHOULD pay you.
If I hire you to go out and do a job and part of that contract is that I own the image, I own them. Not you. If you refuse to work under that scenario, then fine. If I think, “But that guy is sooooo good that I’m willing to give up copyright” and I hire you anyway, better for you.
This assumption that no matter what you should payed continuously is absurd and economically insane though.
Ultimately you do agree with me. You hold on to your copyrights. That’s fine. It’s not the same thing at all.
@maclover
Very sad story about the Three Stooges. It still doesn’t change the fact that they were paid for the work they did.
Work is work. I don’t care if it’s so called “creative” or slapping stucco on a building. Should a construction worker be paid every time a building he worked on gets sold? You probably don’t think so because you seem to think there is something “special” about writing dialog for 24 or something.
It’s a skill like any other. Some people are good at it, most are not. Some people are very talented writers. Most are not.
Based on some of the logic represented here, if I have coronary bypass surgery, I should have to continue to pay the doctor every time I earn a dollar.
Here’s news. BBC iplayer has streamed 3.5 millions shows to 1 million people since christmas day. I know I’m going to get comments on how it can’t download for mac, but this proves that there is a market out there for internet TV.
theloniousMac is spot on. Others that don’t see what he is talking about simply don’t understand the real world.
I agree with MDN on this. If you’re willing to share the profit, it shouldn’t matter if “there’s not that much of a market” for something, but that there is a market for it at all. Smaller market simply means less %-age of profit sharing—or same %-age, less money. Ah well, just another clear example of how greed can really screw stuff up.
If I own a studio, and I pay you to do a job, i.e. write a script, you’ve been paid. Thank you. Get out.
You might want to look into IP law since this is not true. Unless a contract is signed that explicitly states that an employee is creating work for hire before the work is created, the creator owns the copyrights, not the employer. You do clear this up in the comment just above, though.
This assumption that no matter what you should payed continuously is absurd and economically insane though.
This ignores what corporations are doing. Refer to Disney and Mickey Mouse. If it were up to Disney, they would own the rights to Mickey forever, which is wrong. Intellectual Property law, as opposed to most people’s misconception of it, is actually meant to preserve the rights of people to have access to common culture without the need to negotiate rights. The transient creator monopoly is to encourage artists to create and reap the benefits for a while but after a time, the art should be freely available to all.
Based on some of the logic represented here, if I have coronary bypass surgery, I should have to continue to pay the doctor every time I earn a dollar.
Only if you’re a complete idiot.
Oh, wait.
Work is work. I don’t care if it’s so called “creative” or slapping stucco on a building.
If you can’t understand the difference between applying stucco and designing the house, you should shut the fsck up.
@ theloniousMac
I agree completely. I’m in the same sort of situation as you are, except instead of being a programmer I am an a graphic artist.
I am paid by how much time and effort I have in a project (by which I set my own rate). If I were to propose that I get paid my rate AND royalties on how many times its printed, viewed, etc etc, I would be laughed at and the next ad schmuck would get the contract.
I don’t see any difference in the writers situation. You are contracted for your services, you take into account all the factors, you set a rate, you execute the project, the project launches, the client makes money if you did your job well. If they are happy you get asked back to do another project.
End of story.
Oh, gee–we’re all feeding the troll now.
I recognize theloniousMac’s nonsense. I heard it from silly kids in junior high school who thought they knew how everything worked according to their schedule. They hadn’t yet had the opportunity to factor in real life experience and the way the world really operates. They thought that by postulating sensible-sounding arguments they could bend reality to their concept of it.
Most of those kids have since grown up and can function rationally. But not all, obviously.
But the one thing a troll CAN do is generate message traffic. Congratulations.
Steve’s on the board of Disney, and is its largest shareholder, as most everyone knows. Perhaps, a Steve open letter can help in the WGA strike. It can’t hurt.
Last week I painted a sign which advertises a shopping center. I was paid around $2000. I think I should get a dollar from the owner every time someone looks at it. That’d be great.
Some participants here are either ignorant, or pretend to not understand how the system works.
Tom Cruise get $20 million dollars for his creative work on a motion picture. This is an effort of about a few months. In it, he uses his talent, skills and prior experience. Upon completion, he collects his $20M and has no subsequent rights to the work.
Meanwhile, the person who actually wrote the words Tom Cruise is saying in that motion picture is paid about 1-3% of what Tom Cruise is paid. According to his contract, PART of his earnings is paid as an up-front advance. The REST is paid as royalties.
This is how the system works pretty much in EVERY country on this planet. The writer of that script took months and often years to write and re-write it, only to sell it at a fraction of a price only ONE single star receives for showing their face in it.
There are situations where the studio pays a hefty sum upfront, but then buys the creative ownership from the writer. Studios rarely do this for movies. They NEVER do it for TV shows. Why would any studio want to pay FULL price for a script up-front, when there’s a chance that the show will flop? If the show is a success, it can sell overseas and in syndication, therefore, they’ll just pay the royalties as it sells. Either way, writers can only receive their work’s full value after years of receiving royalties for their work.
In a way, people who’s work is creative are probably the only ones that don’t get paid up-front (or soon after delivery) for their work. Some of them receive their rightful fee over the period of 20 to 30 years. They would love to be able to collect an up-front fee (like our Thelonius Mac) and sell the ownership of their work to the studio. Unfortunately, no studio is prepared to do this. Therefore, they get a token fee, followed by months (and years) of small installments.
Anyone else here not clear about this?
Poor theloniousMac got himself stuck in the corner and frothing at the mouth.
The marketplace strongly disagrees with theloniousMac. It needs the writers, the writers formed a bargaining group, and the two forces continue this arrangement for their own well being. They are the market forces, not fucktards like theloniousMac who are not involved and are severely distorted.
When theloniousMac talks about the marketplace, and then says the existing situation is “all screwed up”, he severely contradicts himself since the marketplace is upholding the relationship. The marketplace already pays residuals for creative work, so again it disagrees with theloniousMac and the other retards that are not involved and have no mind in this matter.
The marketplace also needs the other actor, director, producer, cinematographer, and editor unions, and has to soon negotiate with them, too. Which is the main holdup here, since the writers were first.
Again, trolls, the market obvious disagrees with you since the status quo is far different than your bleary-eyed view of it.
Well put Predrag, I think that clears it up.
The question is why have the writers allowed themselves to be pushed around by the studios? Is it the starving artist with bad business sense scenario? “I’ll take the shaft to get my name out there (just so I can get the shaft even more if I make it)”.
Ad Agencies sure don’t let their clients pay “only if the campaign works”. Clients pay ad agencies a handsome sum up front and in some cases pay a retainer to keep the ad agency.
The reality is that there are no guarantees. There are only educated guesses backed by market research. Its crazy for the studios to want more than that.
@theloniusMac
Even Ayn Rand would disagree with you, hell- cut you a new one.
Listen: The Fountainhead, have you heard of it? Howard Roark signs a contract to design a building, in which he stipulates that the building is to built exactly as he designs it. When the OWNERS of that building change his design to conform with “the popular taste”, he blows it up, and goes to court saying that it was his right to do so since the OWNERS had broken the contract. The jury agrees with him, he is released from custody, and the building is rebuilt to his plans. { A rather extreme way to resolve a contractual dispute, lawyers are usually more effective than dynamite, but this is her fantasy, not mine}
The writers and other creatives have formed an organization to pursue a freely signed contract for payment of a base payment + commission etc as Danno Bonano and the rest have pointed out. It’s contract between free people, nitwit. If the studios want to pay serfs like yourself a flat rate, they are free to do so in the hope that the work those serfs will produce a product that people will pay for. Or they can agree to the terms that these creative people have come up with that include terms beyond a flat rate.
Have you noticed that businesses have a habit of including conditions of sale, beyond payment of cash? Does your limited world view allow for this?
Your employers must love you, when they see you coming, they cry out, “Hey Rube!”
Yeah, Steve will enter negotiations with the two disagreeing parties with the RDF at full throttle. Result: both the studios and the writers give 30 % of their negotiated income to Apple. Booyah!
@ theloniousMac: “closeted socialists”? “Your analogy of writing to sales is at best illogical”?
Dude, a sales rep lands an account, gets paid a percentage of the sale AND a percentage of all future sales generated by that account. I might make a couple bucks with that initial sale, but the real money comes with the repeat orders.
Same for TV and movies. Maybe a writer gets $40k for one movie script, but then he (or she) spends the next 18-24 months trying to sell another script to a studio and has no big paydays coming in. But thanks to the residuals that they do get for their past projects they get a coupe hundred buck each time the movie they wrote is repeated on a cable network (or 4¢ for each DVD sold). It is only fair that they get similar residuals for downloads.
Man, this is not that complicated.
When your builder or plumber does some work for you, you rarely have a chance to turn around and make several billion dollars off that same work.
However, a good script can generate billions in income for a studio.
The writers are simply asking for a “fair” fee, the problem in the creative/entertainment field is that is it very difficult going into a project to figure out what “fair” really is. A studio might spend millions on one project that totally bombs—in spite of high-priced stars, production, sets, location filming, etc. and lose everything whereas another cheap project generates billions.
Clearly, the studios do not want to take the risk of offering the writers millions of dollars up front, so why not give them a small cut of the pie on the back end and everybody can win or lose together.
I think the studios are cutting off their noses to spite their own faces. The longer the strike drags on, the less people will return to TV when it’s over. Remember, content is king. I don’t think a gaffer’s strike would have brought the TV studios to their knees.