god that sucks

t tangent

Oddly enough, 'awesome' has just recently decided to become a major part of my vocabulary, in its common USA-ian usage.

I cannot quite explain whence came the word - one minute I was calling things 'fanTAStic' and 'brilliant' and 'FABulous', and now everything is 'awesome'.

I suppose it might be a subconscious response to having one of my students called Awe. Possibly. Although that seems very tenous. Hmm.

t /tangent

Anyhoo - awesome news about the goody bags, folks, and the money-to-help-the-collateral-damage people also.

"The man" really does suck donkey cock, doesn't he? This whole thing is just such a nasty, venal, avaricious and selfish kerfuffle, as far as I can see: it's the fat cats trying to weasel out of paying people for their work. Not the fat cats being asked to LOSE anything themselves, mind - just being told that actually screwing that extra profit out of other people is really bad form.

...Jesus. It's like A Christmas Carol. We need the Phantom Dennis and Caspar the Friendly Ghost and an assortment of revanants that have thus far managed to escape the Winchesters' tender mercies to go visit these studio guys and scare the living crap out of them, stat.

Doris Egan (currently a writer/producer on House, previously wrote for Smallville and Numbers), on the strike:

[link]

Cried at the last sentence.

Actually, this is a golden opportunity for the some of the internet companies to break the media companies hold on entertainment content. Why pay someone else for the content when you can control the whole thing?

The downside of this, of course, that there are no unions in the realm of the internet companies, so why should these companies start now?

Actually, this is a golden opportunity for the some of the internet companies to break the media companies hold on entertainment content. Why pay someone else for the content when you can control the whole thing?

Cost, and risk of failure, are high on the list of things I'd be concerned about. The average US TV show which fails in it's first year costs the network around about $20m, give or take. If you're an internet company, you'd have to drastically reduce the budget to suit your audience figures (you're not going to get 6 million viewers first week). And if your budget is crappy, you look like a BBC show.

The US entertainment industry is so incredibly controlled, any company looking to take it on would need massive resources, and to be independent of those companies.

That said, Google....

Yeah, and Apple has this whole distribution channel in place, and about $4 Billion in cash in the bank.

Don't knock the BBC. I think people are willing to forgive a lot, as long as they believe in the characters and the story (creations of the writers and the actors). As long as the background tech is not so bad to be jarring and pushes you out of the story (no cardboard backgrounds, unless you make the cardboard backgrounds a believable part of the story)

I'm not knocking the BBC, CaBil, I'm just saying the production values are radically different to US TV, and US TV viewers are preconditioned to expect a lot. Also, the pay? Fucking awful in comparison.

Tom, good point. I'm just not sure companies see it as a potential source of income - yet. There's certainly a few companies trying it (eg that pilot produced with Amanda Tapping). I hope it works out for them.

Why We Strike