CALIFORNIA BUSINESS MINUTE
Hollywood on Strike
11-07-07
Hi, I am Tim Johnson and welcome to the California Business Minute.
The Writers Guild of America, WGA the union for writers in the entertainment industry
is on strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
The WGA is comprised of 12,000 members. For about 500 members of the Guild, the
profession pays extremely well. A-list writers make more than $5 million a year, $400,000
a week for a rewrite for a film in trouble. However, nearly half of the West Coast members
of the WGA are not working as writers in any given year. Writing jobs are hard to get and
even harder to keep.
At the core of the strike, the WGA and studios cannot agree on the value of content when
placed on the Internet or on DVD. The writers' jobs are unstable and could be months or even
years apart. They want residuals from reruns, DVD sales and the Internet. The Alliances
dilemma is determining proper compensation. Television viewership is declining and revenue
from Internet content is difficult to forecast because ad rates typically are less online plus
there is a societal expectation that everything online should be free.
The last major WGA strike was in 1988, with a 22-week walkout delaying the start of that
year's fall television season that cost the entertainment industry an estimated $500 million.
The following list economic factors at stake in the current labor dispute:
-Economists estimate a strike of the same duration as the 1988 walkout could result in
at least $1 billion in losses
-The U.S. film and television industry employs more than 350,000 people -- from
actors and directors to hairstylists, electricians, truck drivers and clerks
-The motion picture and TV industry generates nearly $20 billion in annual
economic activity in the state and employs over 245,000 Californians
I am Tim Johnson and this has been the California Business Minute.
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