I support the Writer's Guild of America

So this may not mean too much to ya'll, but it officially happened yesterday: the WGA is on strike. Writers in entertainment are not writing any material until studios listen to their demands, namely residuals of revenue from new media (internet, iTunes, etc.) showings of the projects that they have written for. This is a big deal, especially for writers in the years to come, when new media is expected to be one of the primary ways that people see the finished product. Writers aren't getting ANY money from this right now, and soon it will affect actors as well. Writers are picketing in front of studios, and have often been joined by television actors, who support them. I've already heard cute stories of TV actors getting their writers coffee and handing out candy bars to the strikers.

The way the studios are acting is just not fair, and it will very soon be affecting the industry. Think of The Office, where we have a few writers who are also actors on the show (Kelly, Ryan, Toby), and they can't work on the show right now (and certainly not in a writing sense). Steve Carrell and Rainn Wilson did not show up for work yesterday in solidarity for the writers. Wonderful, wonderful Joss Whedon has just announced that he has a new show in the works (!), but he can't work on it right now, so who knows when we're going to see it. New shows, such as Pushing Daisies (I already love this show), Journeyman etc. are in a bit of danger, because they will be losing their audience temporarily very early in their runs.

What does this mean for entertainment in the weeks to come? Well, TV is going to become very, very bad. Reruns will replace all new scheduled episodes in a few weeks, because writers are not working on the shows anymore. Movies coming out next year will simply not be very good, because writers cannot do rewrites or give any input for movies that are on a strict timetable. Talk shows will become very bad, because the staff writers will not be there--Ellen Degeneres has already not shown up for work in support of her staff writers.

I fully support this strike, even though it means that reruns will dominate the screen in a couple weeks. Think about the amazing scripts that made The Office or Firefly viewings that we had so much fun. Without good writers, the shows would not be good. That is a fact. Writer's DO deserve their cut of the pie, and if they don't ask for it now, they may never get it.

So that's my two cents. http://community.livejournal.com/wga_supporters/