My Thoughts on The Strike

In general? I'm with the writers. What they want is completely fair, and the studios are being ridiculously stupid in not wanting to share the money with the people who are largely responsible for them making it. Without studios, there will still be a lot of great TV and movies (witness the Internet, short films, etc.). Without writers? The studios produce reality TV and game shows.

So yeah, advantage: Writers. Like, F-15s vs. cavemen type advantage.

But the problem, and a lot of the writers know it even though they have been pushed into an unavoidable corner, is that nobody wins in this situation. The traditional TV/movie models have been slipping for a while, and the strike could cost a lot of the audience. With any luck, the writers will find new ways to make money in newer delivery systems and the studios will find that they just fucked themselves out of cash and new media importance, kind of the way the RIAA is slowly pushing itself into obsolescence. But in the real world, this is going to hurt working writers as well as studio suits.

Or, to take a page from my blog postings about a year ago:

"Dry month for TV, though, and here's the thing... I barely noticed. I still have so many DVDs to watch, videogames to play, comics and books to read, not to mention the diversion that is the Internet, that if TV magically went away tomorrow, I don't know that I'd actually miss it. And I am a diehard fan of the medium. This should scare the shit out of TV executives, who still seem intent on driving off what audience there is with hair-trigger cancellations of serial shows, constant rejiggering of schedules and some of the lowest common denominator programming I've ever seen."

Could the strike be the "TV magically went away tomorrow" I was thinking of? Nah, probably not. But honestly, despite enjoying several shows right now, from an entertainment consumer point of view, I don't really care that much about the strike. I've got *plenty* to occupy my time.