As of this writing, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) has been on strike for just over a week.  Negotiations broke down with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) and while various big names (such as California Governator Schwarzeneggar) have been trying to mend fences between the two parties, it's not happening.  And as happens in these situations, people are getting screwed.  I don't mean us, fellow fans, though our own screwing is on the horizon.  The people who rely on the Holywood machine to earn their daily bread -- the foley guys and the makeup artists and everyone who doesn't have a union backing them up -- are being turned from their jobs due to lack of work.  We at Firefox News are behind these people as much as we are the writers, and so we are holding a fundraiser for the Actor's Fund, a non-profit that serves to help out everyone in the entertainment industry when they need a hand, and as the strike goes on, hands are in big need.

Now, about how we're getting screwed ...

Fanthings of all stripes, lend me your eyeballs.  As you are probably already aware, the strike has begun shutting down production on series we know and love.  Other series like Family Guy are getting it in the tight and uncomfortable, as FOX chose to go forward with making episodes without showrunner Seth MacFarlane (who voices Peter, Brian, and Stewie).  The Office has shut down and laid off everyone involved.  The ripples are headed outwards.  New episodes of favorite series will soon be in short supply, and the response from most viewers seems to be criticizing "greedy writers" for messing up the system.

Here's the problem: that's not what's going on.  Anyone who tells you that's what's going on is lying to you or too dumb to know better.

Like most conflicts in human history, ideologies are well and good and completely irrelevant.  It's about money.

Your money.

Yes, you.  (Stop looking over your shoulder.  It's weird.)

Whenever you slap down your bank card or credit card or however you pay for that DVD you want, the money goes back to the studio and makes a few people very wealthy.  And of every dollar you spend, about a third of a penny goes to the person who wrote the words the actors spoke (and thus, were the brains behind the story).  One third of one penny. 

Why, you ask, is it so little?  Well, that's because twenty-odd years ago, the last time home video options (in the days when VHS was king and Betamax was in its death throes) were on the table, the writers got screwed.  Nowadays, when you can't move for finding DVD boxed sets of every show you ever loved, that past screwing continues to haunt the folks who made it possible, one third of a penny at a time.

Y'see, one of the two giant, greedy, unreasonable demands that the WGA is pounding the streets for while the poor producers huddle helplessly?  Is to get two-thirds of a penny instead.

And of course, you think to yourself, "If a third of a penny is enough to live on, then they're doubling their salaries!"  But the truth is, a third of a penny isn't very damned much, and you know it and so do the producers. 

Well, you ask, howcum the writers need anything at all?  They got paid for their work once.  Why do they have to get paid again and again?

And the answer to that particular question, dear friends, is that the people at the studios who sign the checks are a bunch of cheap bastards who don't intend to pay the full worth of a creative piece up front on account of not knowing if it'll pay down the line.  What the writer does today could be the next Gilligan's Island, destined to rerun for generations, and continue to earn money for the company all that time.  (Ads.  They pay for everything.  You watch a toothpaste ad, and money has exchanged hands.  You watch that ad eery day for thirty years, and that's a lot of tooth fairy quarters.)

So say I write an episode or ten of a show and I want to be paid up front all the advertising money I think the show will generate over the next forty years, because that's exactly what the show will be worth to the company: how many toothpaste ads can they sell in the timeframe?  The studio would laugh at me lots, because there's no way they can cut me a check for millions of dollars just for a couple of episodes of something that might air once and be shelved for the rest of time.

Residuals are the best of all possible worlds for everyone involved.  The studio pays me enough to make it worth my while to show up and write for them.  Then they promise to pay me a few dollars whenever the show runs again (and picks up more advertising money).  If it runs once and is gone, well, they've paid me for my time and they're not out a million dollars.  If it runs for forty years, and my work earns them millions in advertising and licensing agreements, I continue to earn a share from the great thing I helped create.

Residuals make people work harder to create better material, because the better it is. the more popular it will be and the more money it will make for everyone.

  More, residuals are what pays for things like electricity bills and groceries during the times when a writer isn't selling as much.

And in this case, earning an extra one-third of a penny doesn't sound so expensive all of a sudden, does it?

Now, I said the DVD issue was one of the two big issues.  Can anyone tell me what the real issue is dividing people?

Right.  You're looking straight at it.  The Internet.

It has been said by, okay me, that there is nothing quite like getting to watch one's favorite shows on this happy box sitting on one's desk or lap.  Downloading, legal and otherwise, is here to stay, and has been embraced lovingly by the entertainment industry at large.  Primetime shows are available for streaming FREE at the big network sites.  Catch up on your shows, find new ones, even enjoy some multimedia goodies and webisodes.  I hooked my best friend on Eureka thanks to the SciFi.com website.  Another pal has been evangelizing Jericho via the CBS site.

The writers?  Those folks striking right now?  Love the Internet.  Chatrooms, bulletin boards, it's a great way to interact with viewers in real-time, see what works, see what didn't, even argue with them now and then.  For viewers, it's a window into the minds of the people who create and move our most beloved characters around.  It's a good place.

There are times I love the Internet more than I do my husband.  (And if you're reading this, honey, um, well, we'll talk later.)

But here's the problem, the sticking point, the place where we all don't quite meet.  Those episodes of Eureka and Jericho?  Those eps of Blood Ties you bought from iTunes last week?  All that?  Isn't paying the writers.  At all.  Not even a tenth of a penny.  Those ads you have to view in order to stream video?  That $1.99 you paid?  All of that is going to make the studio executives very very very rich.  And they'd like to keep that money.  They're calling the online material "promotional" (don't even think you'd be able to use that in your defense if you ever went to court over a Kazaa download of the same material).  Meanwhile, according to The Office showrunner Greg Daniels, they're charging twice as much for ad space in online material because it can't be fast-forwarded through.

So instead of acknowledging that the world is changing, that everyone over the age of six is watching shows online, and that the age of televised media as we know it is at a watershed moment, the AMPTP would like three years to study the downloading phenomenon before they let anyone else see a penny (or even two-thrids of one).

How many shows have you downloaded in the past three years?  How many have you watched online in streaming video just this year?

And the worst and silliest part of it all is tha this is no different from the other residual issues.  The producers want to know if the internet will make them money -- ENOUGH money -- before they say whether or not the writers can have any.  The writers are saying -- loudly and angrily because they're not frakking stupid -- that no matter how much money it does or doesn't make, that a percentage, even a small one, is the fairest way to handle it.  Everyone shares the risk, and everyone wins or loses at the same time.

If the Internet market goes belly-up, the writers won't see any money and the producers aren't out anything.  If the Internet boom continues and indeed the new wave of media is the online-distributed content, then it's only fair that the people who make the content get a share in the windfall.

That goes for the actors and directors and everybody else, too.  We are viewers and we are fans and we like our entertainment streamed into our homes and we appreciate the people who provide it.  We don't object to the obscene amounts of money it takes to make a movie or a series nowadays because we think the money's worth it.  But we also think fair's fair.

The next time someone tells you that the strike is about media fatcats trying to get richer, tell them the AMPTP needs to get over its collective Scrooge act already.

And since no one says it as well as The Man himself, Joss Whedon on the coming days:

"[W]e expect this to take a long time. We want to make an impression NOW, but we also want to keep thinking of ways to spread awareness and keep you all engaged and, frankly, entertained. Because the second point is that there was no one in that room who didn’t understand that they were there BECAUSE OF YOU, because you guys have already proven yourselves not just dedicated fans but an active, forceful community. Take a moment to be all up in yourself. Now get over yourself. Now doubt yourself. Now hug yourself. Now touch your knee – Hah! Didn’t say “Simon says”. Like, ever. FOOLS! It’s you unauthorized-knee-touching fools who are proving that the internet is indeed the line in the sand (“…must be drawn Heah! This fah! No fuhther!”), for it’s the one medium the congloms don’t control. Televised news is largely ignoring us, the print media is eating Nick Counter’s astonishing lies like candy they get paid to eat, but you upon the ether… you haven’t been silent and you can’t be silenced. Go ahead. Touch that knee. Simon be damned."