When Writers Strike, Will New Media Win?
It was very strange to be watching the NBC Nightly News last night and to hear Brian Williams utter the words “new media residuals.” I stopped for a moment to be sure I heard him right. A phrase we use all the time has gone main stream.
This should be an interesting strike to watch. The writers realize that more and more money is being made on their work that they are not seeing a dime of. The days of hoping that a show gets syndicated and that is as good as it gets are over. Now a show can live on via online downloads and DVDs. I have friends that skip whole shows because they’d rather wait and watch it on DVD.
The longer this strike goes on the sooner I hope that executives will start looking to the web to find fresh talent. It is ridiculous to me that someone like Cali Lewis is not the tech correspondent on CNN or that Ask a Ninja isn’t doing a weekly sketch for Saturday Night Live. Those are just two examples out of the hundreds of talented people producing solid content. Who couldn’t picture the team from Epic-Fu bringing a little in you face commentary to a show like Entertainment Tonight?
Same goes for the movie studios. Granted they’ve got enough scripts tied up to keep them busy for a while, but wouldn’t it be a great time to buy a script from a Scott Sigler, a J.C. Hutchins or a Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff to breath new life into the stagnant Hollywood system?
I just hope that as this strike drags on and people start to leave television to look for new content that they discover this little world we live in on the new media playground. That they take some time to discover all the great content being produced every day outside of the traditional media machine.
I have been thinking about this for several days. During the last writer’s strike (was it 1988?) there were few alternatives to traditional media. That has certainly changed. I’m not sure I want new media talent sucked into the vortex of prime time. I think I’d much rather have at least some of the viewing public, hungry for new content, migrate our way.
Amen Brother!
The old adage that “luck is where being prepared meets opportunity” is perfectly suited for the writer’s strike - new media situation.
The opportunity is now… is “new media” prepared? Are we ready to talk it up like never before? Are we ready to break out of the fish bowl and brave some (a ton?) rejections as we evangelize on behalf of the New Media Superheroes?
The time is now… the oppportunity is here… are we prepared? Have we sent out the Advance Guard? (heh, you like how I worked that in there!) Are we actively pushing new media?
If we are not prepared to fill the vacuum left by the writer’s strike then all we can do is stit back and lament our “bad luck”.
OK… Now, go create something! (Then go tell someone about it!)
New Media wins, regardless.
The only way they’re going to end this strike is to agree that there is VALUE to online media. Once they determine that there’s value, they have to determine how much value and how to quantify it.
The models that they come up with are going to set the table for the rest of us to be able to explain our fee schedules as well as the ROI to potential advertisers on our sites, video blogs and shows.
I Uttered the same thing last night. Yes, for too long a lot of really ground-breaking work (done by people who do things JUST because they love doing it) has been limited to being viewed only by members of the ‘tech scene’, now partly this is our fault, but I think in the coming days/weeks/months (the last strike lasted five months) there could be a real oppurtunity for us to evangelize new-media to the greater public.
I was going to write a nice blog post this morning, but I feel compelled to respond.
While I’m encouraged about the interest in the Internet, I think that you skirted the bigger issue: The studios and nets know about the Web but they don’t want to pay for it.
We’ve already seen some of the smaller cable channels culling Youtube for video to make into shows. Mainstream Hollywood may recognize talent, but they don’t want to pay for it - or they want to pay the least amount possible. This tension that has always existed between the studios and creative types.
And all the talk about New Media really falls to future distribution methods and how to be fairly compensated for those distributions. Whatever happens in Hollywood, I do think in the short term it will help people who create good content online. When there is nothing on TV but Farmer Chooses a Wife, they’ll look elsewhere for entertainment.
That said, I worry about the future of good quality content on TV. If people go away, will they ever go back? It hasn’t worked out so well for the NHL.
“Chance favors the prepared mind.” - Louis Pasteur
Rob Suarez asks an important question: is new media prepared?
Don’t -hope- that the writer’s strike works out for us.
What is your plan of ACTION to capitalize on it?
Action item: I’m assuming that the news networks have or are planning specials on the writers strike. How do we get these stories to include information on the wealth of new media that’s out there. The defacto standard for these stories is YouTube, which IMHO is a poor representation of new media given the fact that there are very little serialized content on there (and more “kick in the pants” items). NewMediaJim is certainly the first person that comes to mind, but is there another way we can push this topic to these organizations?
What would happen if some new media entity hired a high-profile writer such as Tina Fey during the strike? The press on that one would be huge. Not that anyone could afford it, but it would put an interesting spin on the value of new media.
Anyway… One more thing that I’m looking for out of the whole strike is how it resolves. Likely, the writers have in their contracts something to the effect of “X company reserves full rights to use your work via any current or future mediums”. Changing that puts an interesting precedent on the whole intellectual rights debate.
Maybe I’m not up on what everyone in New Media thinks they can get out of a writers’ strike, but I would say this: be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.
I don’t foresee myself ever trying to make a living creating entertainment content, so that colors my thinking. And maybe it’s easy for me to say, “walk away from all that money that the studios and mainstream networks throw around” because my college-tuition and mortgage paying days are behind me, but that money comes with strings attached. I don’t know how many people have worked in union shops of any kind, but there are definite pluses and minuses. Unions exist to protect workers with no individual financial power from those with that financial power. That is a relationship premised on one party having power and control of the channel and it breeds complications and infringements on your creative freedom from both sides, the union and the studio.
I agree with CC that staying out of that machine for as long as you can is the best thing to do. Keep your freedom for as long as you can, or join together with other free artists and producers to forge a wholly new paradigm for creating and distributing entertainment. If you become entangled in the studio/union machine, you will have lost a lot of freedom you now enjoy.
Ed asks, “How do we get these stories to include information on the wealth of new media that’s out there.[sic]”?
Reporters are a funny bunch… they’re creative … and under tight deadlines… most would rather wordsmith a story or angle that fell into their lap than have to struggle through coming up with a new angle all by themselves.
Think of what an “old media” agent would do for their “talent”… they would spend all of their time making sure that their property was in every reporter’s in box, on every producer’s desk, and on every editors lips. In “new media” we need to become our own agents. Look at the “success stories”: Sigler, Hutchins, etc… they work harder than most people realize in order to get their name, brand, and intellectual property in front of the eyes of the people that can make a difference.
How’s about we start a “Bum Rush the Studios” campaign? Anyone prepared?
We’ve all heard the fairy tale of the big game where the quarterback goes down with an injury and there’s nobody to replace him so the coach points to you sitting there in the stands to get in the game and save the day. Yeah, that ain’t gonna happen.
I’ve been mostly holding back my real comments about independent new media’s place in this strike. I think most of you know about my background working in television and that before working full time in new media I was a member of the WGA. I don’t think there’s any way for me to talk realistically about it without looking like (even more of) a dick but here goes.
To understand the position the studios are in you have to understand they have been anticipating the possibility of a strike for over a year and have been stockpiling scripts. This works better for features than TV, where the demands of writing weekly and the tight deadlines make it less likely you can write more than X number of scripts during the period you would normally write only X number of scripts. Most shows have tried (not so much to appease the studios but to get their writers paid as story+completed draft for an episode of a 1 hr show is worth about $30k) and I think the results have been obvious. My theory is that’s why a lot of shows this year have sucked, even the ones that were good last year.
So with features, studios have been cutting deals left and right to have films in the pipeline and scripts stockpiled and ready to shoot. The problem is that EVERY film has a writer on set to make changes (most directors are WGA members as well) but with the strike, none of those changes, no matter how small can be made (by anybody other than a WGA member). One writer/director I heard of rushed to complete three different drafts of the feature he’s prepping so that he could make changes in the story during production without lifting a pencil and breaking the strike. As far as features go, the studios are probably a year away from running out of content.
You also have to understand that all the big studios are guild signatories, meaning that if they were to buy a script by a non-guild member, that person would have to join the guild by virtue of the deal… so you can see the problem. They can’t just go out and pick up scripts by non guild writers without major complications. They can of course pick up finished indie films for distribution but unless you’ve got one of those, this doesn’t apply to you.
Plus any non-guild writer who worked in a guild jurisdiction (as a scab) would risk being blackballed by the WGA, which most writers will tell you would hurt your chances of having a career once the strike settles (and it will eventually…)
Also, new media couldn’t hire Tina Fey. As a WGA member she can’t work for a company that is not a guild signatory. Also, yes, you couldn’t afford her. As a showrunner, she probably commands upwards of $70K per episode of her own show just as writer/producer (though she has a term deal with NBC so she probably makes a guaranteed seven figure salary that encompasses all of her responsibilities to her projects.
Also you would never see studios swooping in and grabbing new media writers to replace WGA writers because new media writers just don’t have the experience. Studios would never trust multi-million dollar (and billion dollar) franchises to newbies. Besides, most of the fall shows have been doing horribly and it appears that studios are not all that unhappy with getting what essentially amounts to a “do-over”.
Lastly, and I say this will all due respect (and fear I’m writing a book here) traditional media still views indie new media as a joke…. just a bunch of hobbyists sitting in their basements talking to a handful of people. Even if you have 50K people who listen or watch your every show that’s nothing to the studios. If they were really impressed by what they were seeing, you would have seen a rash of deals being made with new media talent, which has happened only a scant few times.
One thing that really made an impact on the way the studios view new media and the internet was “Snakes on a Plane”. From the buzz across the net you would have thought SoaP was going to be massive. It wasn’t. A number of other projects culled from the internet have not lived up to expectations. Several “viral video” shows were developed for TV but none survived. What does this tell you about the way the outside world (studios, audiences) view new media?
We in new media are building an audience base that is apart from what studios do and sure we are being found by people who are looking for an entertainment alternative but honestly, do not expect a windfall of new ears and eyeballs because there is a strike. Sure there will be those who do venture to the internet out of boredom and I hope like hell whatever shows they find are engaging enough for them to come back. Remember we’re talking about people who would rather be watching TV–professionally created programming with production values beyond the scope of what any of us can achieve on our own. So yes, expect a trickle and you better wow those people with your A-game or don’t be surprised if they don’t stick around. And unless you’re doing something that somewhat mirrors the kind of entertainment they’d normally be watching, you’re probably not even going to get more than a passing glance.
Honestly, I believe the WGA strike is not a tremendous opportunity for new media no matter what we’d like to think, at least not yet. If it lasts for more than 6 months then we’ll see. And please, please, please… I would love to be wrong on all of the above. I really would.
And here we all wondered if there was any real money in all this. Certainly, the economic validation of new media will be an important outcome of this. But we still face the same old problem. There is a wealth of great new media content to be had, but most people don’t know about it. iTunes should be a help because there are so many iPods and iTunes had podcast support, but Apple just won’t push the new media hard enough.
Maybe we have to keep it simple and do this very grass roots. If you see someone with an iPod, ask them if they listen to podcasts and if not, hand them a business card that you have printed the urls of some of your favorite podcasts on.
I think MDY laid down the facts pretty well, especially regarding the constraints the studios and unions have made for themselves and thus for anyone else who wants to play in that ballpark. It wouldn’t be good for anyone if the studios went to non-union writers.
But as I said, the current OldMedia world is based on a premise that distribution is not open, that is controlled by a few powerful entities. This is not the case for the Internet, so why operate as if it is? Make your own rules, create your own distribution models. No, it’s not going to happen overnight, but it WILL happen. Already, JetSetShow gets a million hits on its episodes. That’s individual creators’ power!
Great discussion points all around and some very thought out responses. MYN, you win for the longest blog comment ever
The longer this goes on the itchier the studios will get for content, but it has to go on for a long time for that to happen. There is enough backed up to keep them afloat for a while.
It is going to be interesting to watch this all play out. If anyone has a positive happening out of all this be sure to share.
[…] friend CC Chapman weighed in and mused about what the strike means for new media. He has two points, one good and one heart-rendingly bad. If the strike is protracted and this […]
The ironic thing for me… I didn’t even know a strike was coming or even happening until I caught a snippet in the newspaper I was reading at work. Why? Because my filters are STRONG. I just don’t notice things that don’t mean that much to me.
This strike doesn’t “affect” me at all as a consumer. I don’t care if they are or are not writing for television, because I don’t really ever watch it. The shows I do watch are “take it or leave it” in my lifestyle. If they are there, fine. If they are not… fine. And… if this is in the movie industry, too, I guess it doesn’t matter that much to me. I love movies, but I don’t go to them often. I’ve been to the theater perhaps twice since the beginning of the year.
Now, knowing that I’m not a “typical” boob-tube junkie/addict/sheep isn’t enough for me to disregard the fact that I’m potentially effected by this as a new media producer. I am in some way, I’m certain. I understand the potential for finding new listeners for my show. But I’m realistic, also. My show is one of THOUSANDS of music podcasts. People can still turn on the radio (aack…) or set their mp3 players (notice I didn’t throw a generic iProduct reference there?) to shuffle. So, if I would believe that a writer’s strike will draw tons of people to listen to Audio Gumshoe… I’d be foolish.
However, as CC pointed out, there are some very talented and productive writers/producers that are a step ahead of most of us. They are essentially the “mainstream” of our industry (can we call this an industry, yet?) and should certainly be looking at the potential for further development of their talents and their marketability.
They should NOT do it for free, ever. There is too much valuable product coming from them to be given pro-bono. Will the writer’s strike do IT for them? I dunno. I doubt it. But it does give us all some great fodder for turning our mental gear-works. I believe they should be working toward a definitive goal regardless of a strike by entertainment writers. They should have been doing it already.