Talks between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers ended with the two sides not being able to agree to a new contract, resulting in television and movie writers going on strike. The conflict seems to be over on how to divvy up money generated from DVD sales and the Internet.
Much of the disagreement seems to be over how earnings will be generated in the future using technology or mediums that may not even exist today.
Jay Leno and David Letterman will be in reruns until the strike comes to an end. Evidently they both need their zany wisecracks written out for them before hand. The same applies to The Daily Show and the Colbert Report. No new episodes until the strike is over.
I’ll be perfectly honest and admit that I don’t understand the concept of residuals and perpetual earnings. I’m a simple electronics technician. I repair frequency drives used to power three-phase AC electrical motors. I work for the company that makes these drives. When I repair a drive and ship it back to it’s owner, I don’t continue making money from the profits generated from the drive I repaired.
I don’t understand why somebody that wrote something for Jay Leno to say on TV should be paid more then once. I don’t understand why they should continue getting paid for said writing on a continuous basis. Its hard for me to grasp.
I think the issue is that the writers only get paid for the writing of material, currently, and they don’t get the residuals that actors, directors, etc get.
So when the TV show gets sold as a DVD box set, the writers are getting zilch of that money while the actors, directors, etc. get a portion of the cash.
I think it’s only fair that if actors get residuals and royalties that the writers should be in on that, too. After all, they were (arguably) the most important step in the whole process.