Strike out:
I find it interesting that the union is getting more militant just as their bargaining position gets weaker. There's competition from the web, and from DVDs of their old programs; frankly, I haven't watched television since I left the US, and haven't missed it. Yet the union's strategy is to become more militant. My sense is that this is a common pattern--that unions are often the most aggressive right before they expire. But I don't have any rigorous study to back this up. [My emphasis]
From the second paragraph of the very
first result on Google for "screenwriters strike":
One of the two major questions at issue - payments for writers of a proportion of profits from DVD sales of their work - is a matter of degree: the current 3% deal is based on the costs of expensive video cassettes rather than cheap DVDs. But the second issue - payments for internet, podcasting and mobile-phone distribution - is about whether writers (and, by extrapolation, everyone else) should be paid on these platforms at all.
Posts
3 comments:
Yeah, but citing "competition from the web" allows McArdle to imagine herself into the picture, edgy and full of blogginess*, doing her bit to bring down the Socialist writers' union.
*Blogginess, a term of art used to describe McArdle by Andrew Golis, who appears to no longer be trusted with TPM Book Cafe.
Considering she can barely put a picture on her blog, I don't think she's going to be much competition.
Also interesting to note that something like 60% of those polled (a real survey, not some internet bogosity) were in favor of the Guild's position.
Doesn't she have anything to say about the stagehands strike?
"There's competition from the web, and from DVDs of their old programs."
Uh, yeah. No kidding. That's kind of a big deal in regards to the strike. This woman seriously gets *paid* to write this kind of ignorant drivel?
Post a Comment