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.
Hollywood does have a bunch of rich power players, but personally I believe people are smart enough to know that doesn't apply to either everybody or most of them.
personally I believe people are smart enough to know that doesn't apply to either everybody or most of them.
In my experience, not that much.
In this country there are a LOT of people who will angrily berate television stars for things their characters have done in scripted television shows, as if they're actually those characters in real life. Rational understanding of how the industry works behind the scenes probably isn't a feature of the baseline average.
Yeah, but people work in the real world. Most industries have a topology where people at the top are paid extremely well, and people towards the bottom, not so much. This isn't like the strike lines are 2500 people they recognise from TV and movies.
I could be wrong, obviously. The latest polls tend to show good support for the WGA from the public, but I think two things will change that: talk of people getting laid off, and (critically) shows going off the air. People can be very selfish when something they love is taken away from them.
Seriously, the most disenfranchised group in all of this is the crew, and if anything it appears to be that the WGA management is either ignoring them, or telling them to shut the fuck up.
