I think the reason that people were upset with Leno was that he had promised his workers that they would be taken care of, then this happened. Apparently he thought they would go back to work with either guest hosts or without scripts (no opening monologue/skits, more musician acts) but that didn't pan out.
Exactly. A lot of the crew were saying that, when 'the most powerful person in television' tells you to relax, you relax. And they paid for that. Which on the one hand, says a lot about Leno's clout these days.
But it also says a bit about the AMPTP, and how they don't seem to have the situation as in control as they originally seemed to. NBC was touting the idea of going in with guest hosts, et al. They seemed supremely confident it was going to happen. That they've turned around and laid off their staff is a sign they're panicking a bit.
Much earlier, Tim (and he's hardly alone in this idea) said he believed the AMPTP had allowed the strike to happen because they had done the math and thought the numbers were in their favor to do so. (Wildly paraphrasing). I agree that's what they did, but I'm thinking things didn't work out exactly as they expected, either. I'm beginning to suspect this strike is costing more than they expected.
May I also suggest Brassed Off which is a non-traditional brass-band-based musical?
Ooh! Yes! Based on the true story of the Grimethorpe Colliery Brass Band (who play all the
actual
music that the actors are pretending to play) from my home town! Which was utterly crippled by the miners' strike for about a decade, of course.
God, I heart brass band music. Northern working men playing their hearts out...gah!
(The Full Monty,
does that count? Probably not? That's set down the road in Sheffield, home of Sean Bean.)
Yeah, but Matewan and Norma Rae aren't musicals.
There is some music in Matewan as well as future prominent musician Will Oldham.
A lot of the crew were saying that, when 'the most powerful person in television' tells you to relax, you relax.
Leno? really?
ION, I met Norman Lear last night. He's very sprightly for 85. I wanted to ask him what he thought about the strike, but I thought it might be tacky, so I didn't.
I wanted to ask him what he thought about the strike, but I thought it might be tacky, so I didn't.
You could have said, "What do you inkthay about the ikestray?"
Leno? really?
I was paraphrasing the quote, but yeah. That's what the quote said. Methinks Mr. Leno's power has been exaggerated.
I don't think the WGA is helping itself a whole lot in the PR battle, though. They've not done enough publicly to embrace IASTE, and show support for crew.
It's all stupidgreedycorporations! They've done little to combat the image of stupidgreedywriters.
It doesn't seem like it should be difficult to combat that image, and to embrace the crew. The NFL does a better job with player image, and AFAIK, JJ Abrams et al haven't been caught in dogfighting rings or spousal abuse accusations.
Sports entertainment tends to be much more transparent with the pay, and the media that lives off it tends to be supportive of the enormous salaries earned by marquee players, since they're the money-makers bringing the crowds into the stadiums wearing Offical Merchandise.
The argument is that there are few humans able to do what they do, athetically, and therefore they are being paid in good old supply and demand terms.
There are few people who can do what Tim, Joss, at al can do, and they're to be paid accordingly.
Still, it's difficult to argue from an exploitation viewpoint (which is what the WGA is doing) when the public faces of their campaigns have things like 20 million dollar development deals.
I don't know how to solve that disconnect in a soundbite. Any ideas?
Something like "It's not what Beckham is making, it's what [fill in name of second string soccer starter] is making"?
“Based on what we’re paying for spots across the four networks, we estimate this market to be worth more than $120m,” said Tracey Scheppach, senior vice-president and video innovation director for Starcom, a leading media buying agency.
The total online video advertising market will be worth close to $1.3bn this year after doubling in size in 2006, according to Accustream, the digital media research company."
"Media buyers expect streaming revenues to increase because online video commercials have better recall rates than traditional TV advertising.
“You get 85 per cent recall [with web streaming] versus single-digit recall for TV,” Ms Scheppach said. Syndication of online video commercials across social networking sites will also fuel future revenues, she added.
I don't really think a lot of the public knows there's showrunners with $20m development deals. But I definitely think they've done a poor job PR wise of addressing the crew (etc) situation. I posted something about that on Fans4Writers and got shouted down, until one of the showrunners wives came on and went 'Er, yeah - he has a point'.
I don't really think a lot of the public knows there's showrunners with $20m development deals.
No, there's definitely a perception that Hollywood is full of a bunch of rich power players. People in Middle America don't stop and think about the journeyman TV writer who may wait a season or so in between work. They just see one group of "Hollywood" folks picketing against another group.
And I still have issues with how both the pencils campaign and ME Day have been presented.
