I'm watching the Attack of the Show interview of Joss regarding the Angel box set, and Blair Butler asks him what his favorite episode is. This is his answer:

I think I'm gonna go with "Darla," the one that was a companion piece to "Fool for Love" on Buffy. Darla's life as told by Tim Minear. He really...he found some truths about her and about vampires and about what the show was.

So the puzzling thing is, if there isn't any revenue, and the writers are asking for 2.5% of any revenue from new media...then 2.5% of nothing is nothing...so why deny them?

I am Allyson here. Even if there is a subtlety I'm missing, surely a deal can be constructed that pays different percentages of revenue or profits depending on how profitable "new media" becomes.

streaming video gets counted as "promotional" and not as an airing (or whatever) for residual purposes, which means no residuals at all.

If there are ads in the streaming video, then there's revenue, and the writers should be able to share in it. If the show is being streamed with no ads, or click through thingies, then there's no revenue and it makes sense to treat it as promotional.

I'm having trouble seeing why this is so contentious, other than being due to the pure greed of the studios/producers.

If there are ads in the streaming video, then there's revenue, and the writers should be able to share in it.

Yeah, I think that's the point of the writers.

I'm having trouble seeing why this is so contentious, other than being due to the pure greed of the studios/producers.

I think that's it. But isn't that always the dispute between management and labor? Management always wants to pay as little as possible.

Yeah, but with the studios, it seems like the greed is instinctive and overt.

I know a book author who was screwed out of very modest royalties when the TV series based on his novels got picked up by the SciFi Channel, because his agent had gotten a deal that said "broadcast show" not "cable show". Seriously -- the royalties would have been IIRC a modest $2K per episode, which is chump change.

Damn. Bummer for your friend. How long ago was that contract signed?

Management always wants to pay as little as possible.

I fall down on the bit where actors are getting paid in circumstances where writers are not. Yet, actors using lines writers wrote. The logicky parts of my brain sit up and beg for explanation here, and I'd be amused to get "Oh, we fucked up--shouldn't be paying the actors either."

I thought Buffy was supposed to be kind of unlikeable at the end. She felt she wasn't welcome in her own house.

Actually, speaking as one of those that didn't particularly like Buffy -- the character -- to start with, I'd actually found the love by then. (Which is good, cause I'm contrary by nature and it gave me people to argue with!)

But as a clarification, the viewer wasn't supposed to hate Buffy during the later episodes, we were supposed to feel alienated. It's hard to feel alienated from someone if you don't care about them (At that point, it's mostly just "que?" at best and "eh" style disinterest the rest of the time)

I'm not sure what I think about a new Ménage à Joss.

Mostly I think I'm too old to lose my heart to television anymore. Though I've been known to dabble, the occassional flirtation, a couple of part-season stands. So? We shall see. (Lucky I'm not the type to watch and tell :)

And since this seems to be the defacto strike thread --

A list of showrunners advertising their commitment to Pencils down

Awww, Marti's on there!

Marti joined the Facebook group for Dollhouse, which makes me smile.

I have a book writer friend who wrote something which got optioned for a movie years ago to a small company. They sold it on, until it ended up with Warner Bros. It came out last year, and it was a major motion picture. He got nothing for it, almost. Contracts. Literally, a few thousand quid for a worldwide wide release.

The studios themselves aren't helping the thing at the moment. Last week, 20th Century Fox launched it's co-developed (between studios) video streaming site which is designed to rival iTunes. The content is streamed, so the writers are getting absolutely nothing for it, and there's loads of stuff on it -- the complete Buffy The Vampire Slayer etc. If I wrote that, I'd be fucked off.

Huh. I didn't realize that horror movie I've been seeing ads for recently even though I'd never heard of it before, P2, starred Rachel Nichols.