I think that posted youtube link says it about as well as can be.

Why aren't the writers asking for more?

That's a good video. I love that it is being distributed over the internet. Kinda helps make the point.

I'm sorry if my fly-by post caused a kerfuffle, Kat and Fay. I think ita best summed up why they used teachers as a comparison, and Tim best summed up why they shouldn't've.

Without context though, it doesn't mean much. (Because numbers? Are tricksy things which can be bent to the will of any evil doer.) I searched but I couldn't find the article again (Curse my tendanacies to both follow links willy and nilly and to clear my cached history!)

I don't think I've really grasped the general ignorance on display on line before. I guess most of my reading has been fandom based. Or fact based. Or I just haven't cared about the issue at hand. Now that it comes down to debate... Man, the internets are a scary scary place, and people are amazingly selfish beasties (who really, really, don't deserve clever writing on their televisions.)

I can just imagine when The Office returns, the breaking a story meeting for the next episode. Let's call this one Promotional Material..

Actually, I really liked seeing the actor-writer-producers 'out of character'. I keep forgetting that 'Toby' is also a hyphenate. It makes me feel less bad for him when Michael picks on him so much and so unfairly.

My friend Chris Bird has put together a pretty exhaustive overview of the strike, why it matters and what various writers have said about it. The contrary opinion in the comments section is pretty good, too.

That link doesn't work for me, victor.

Tom, when I pasted the link, but then took out the entry specific part of the URL, it took me straight there.

From digg.com comments..

For those who think writers don't deserve to get paid as much as actors:

"Xmen 2" versus "Xmen 3"

"Empire Strikes Back" versus "Return of the Jedi"

"Raiders of the Lost Ark" versus "Temple of Doom"

Cause, you know, true dat.

I am a WGA member and as much as I never wanted it to happen, I fully support this strike. For the folks who don't really understand what the fuss is about, try this (And I must credit fellow member Steve Chivers for this explanation):

The Studios/Networks put tv shows and movies on the internet and don't pay the writers/creators of those tv shows and movies. The companies call this 'promotional use'.

If you download a movie or tv show off the internet and don't pay for it, they call it "Piracy".

Again, true dat.

Right now we're picketing, which I guess is important from a p.r. standpoint (and I got to meet the guy who wrote Beetlejuice, which is cool), but I don't think it's exactly the most effective means of protest in 2007.

My theory about this strike is that the studios are secretly terrified. They're terrified that the Internet is going to render them irrelevant. Tomorrow Josh Whedon could "pitch" a show on Facebook, get five million people to say, "Yeah, I'll watch that," and get enough advertising to pay for it.

I'm wondering if instead of picketing the casts of The Office, Lost, Family Guy, the Daily Show, etc. shouldn't just make videos and upload them to YouTube? They could talk to the fans, read fan emails, sing show tunes, do improv, whatever... Obviously for contractual reasons they can't do versions of their show, but they could entertain people while explaining what the stirke is about, and maybe convince people not to watch TV for the duration of the strike. The studios have unlimited money and the writers don't, so the only way we can win this thing is by showing the networks that we don't need them. Which we don't. It's just that it's still a few years away before we can tell them to fuck off, and in the meantime we still need to eat.

Who is this masked Josh Whedon with all that pulling power, he's talking about?

okay, I'm guessing at this point, I probably just need to ... put the keyboard down. And step away from the internet.