WGA going after Jay Leno?
“Tonight Show” host Jay Leno may face discipline from the Writers Guild of America for writing his own monologue. Leno is a member of the WGA. What this discipline may be is unknown. Will they make him do push ups? A couple of months ago he passed out donuts to writers walking the picket line. As fate would have it, there happened to be reporters there who were able to capture the act on video. I’m sure Leno had no idea that reporters would be on the scene and that his good deed would be observed by so many.
Yeah, right.
I thought this strike was stupid two months ago. I haven’t see anything since that makes me think I was wrong. The writers want more money. I get that. The problem is that every day this strike goes on, they are losing money. They will reach a point in this strike where they will have lost more money during the strike then they can ever hope to make with any increase they get as a result of the strike.
That’s assuming they haven’t already reached that point.
Back to Jay Leno. He may face some sort of penalty from the WGA, but his show appears to be winning the late night battle. David Letterman returned to the “Late Show with David Letterman” with his WGA writers. The first night back, Leno’s show got a 5.3 rating and a 12 audience share in the 55 largest U.S. television markets. Letterman’s show scored a 4.3 rating and a 10 share.
Maybe Lettermen would have got better ratings if he went without WGA writers.
Somehow Lettermen was able to secure a private deal with the WGA. Why can’t the other shows do this too? There are only a few shows I actually care about ever seeing again. The rest can go rot as far as I’m concerned.
I’ve getting into English Premiere League football (soccer) and I read that CBS is bringing back Big Brother. Who needs scripted entertainment?
The great Hollywood writers strike of 2007
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.


