loudhail » WGA

Catching up

loudhail — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 21:31:47 +0000

It’s good to be back in blog-land after the Christmas holidays. Quiet times are over, 2008 is here, and it started off making quite a bit of noise. For those of you who haven’t been following my del.icio.us bookmarks, here is a quick summary of the most important developments I have been tracking:

- No Golden Globes: The WGA Strike, in co-operation with the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) is responisble for this casualty, which ist going to cost LA north of USD. The networks will not be screening the “ceremony”, which is basically going to be a press conference. No parties, no lavish dresses, no nothing. NBC is also going back to the advertisers to possibly give them their money back – and will possibly be losing over USD $10 Million that way. WOW! More evidence in my book that the writers mean business, and that they are getting one leap further to having their demands (or at least a good chunk of them) met.

- Talk Shows are back. Leno, Letterman, Conan O’Brien and The Daily Show have returned, mostly without writers. The ratings were good for the first screenings, but whether or not they can hold their audience remains to be seen…

- Fox Films wants to release their content for rent via iTunes. Finally!

- Remember MC Hammer? He wants to build a YouTube-like platform for dance videos only. Hmmmm… 3 guesses what I am thinking about that. (leave them in the comments).

I also have some very important news of my own, but I will post those at the end of the week. Stay tuned!

Talkshows return – without writers

loudhail — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 22:00:58 +0000

The fabulous “Daily Show“ and “The Colbert Report“ are set to return to the TV screens on 7 January 2008 – but without their writers! This should be interesting: these talkshows live on the topical jokes writers script every day. Though both hosts are WGA members (the WGA disapproves, by the way) and clever, funny guys themselves, it should still be very hard work to keep up the momentum of these formats. Nobody knows if their viewer base will like what they see, and therefore the ratings and the advertising deals are still up in the air… The Daily Show screens with a day delay in New Zealand, I hope they will therefore return on the 8th January. I will report back on how it changed.

WGA strike: the effects so far.

loudhail — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 05:56:53 +0000

The writer’s strike is still in full blast, and I thought it was time for an update. I will not bore you with re-hashing what others have written already, but point you at some ressources. Read them first, and then read my opinion on this subject further down in this post.  Here a nice summary of the course of events when the negotiations broke down last week. It basically states the ridiculousness of the AMPTP’s “offers”, and how they walked out.
This is a post of the AMPTP blaming the WGA for the collapse of negotiations.    Here a good insight into the issues that they are fighting over. This one is another great summary on this subject, including numbers.
But this is all just about what the two parties are fighting about. The effects on the media-universe are becoming quite big:   Read this post about the real danger of networks running out of TV shows (and the devastating financial impact). There is talk that dramas might actually be replaced by more politics on TV (not just the obvious choice of reality TV). The planning and programming is also proving to become quite challenging, with no one knowing how much longer this strike is going to last. And here you can find some details on the falling stock values of entertainment companies in the US.   I have said this before (to some of you in person, most of you know this through my blog) that we are looking at a major paradigm shift in the way that video content is being promoted and distributed. This whole strike is a symptom as well as a catalyst for said shift. I am very passionate and excited about it, because when (not if, in my opinion) the writers get fair compensation for content that is being streamed or sold online it will institutionalize the trend we can see already: that more and more people are watching content online. Content creators should be paid accordingly. After all, the internet is just another medium. Now we are figuring out how to utilize and honour its full potential – all of us: the audience, the creators, and the ones doing both.   What do you think?

Get your money back?

loudhail — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 23:50:38 +0000

So, the WGA has gone back to renegotiate their contracts with the producers yesterday. No word as of yet how that is going. In the meantime, advertisers are getting nervous. I only just mentioned this possibility to a colleague last week: If TV sellers can’t hold their end of the bargain (which is: deliver the target audience they promised, due to cancelled TV programmes), media buyers might actually ask for their money back! Yesterday I found this article in AdAge, talking about just that. Have a look at it for more details on what might happen as early as next quarter, if the strike doesn’t get resolved soon (and more shows have to stop production). I think that advertisers as well as networks are increasingly learning that as eyeballs are migrating to the web, the paradigm on how online content is monetized will have to change. The crisis in TV advertising is nothing new - TIVO has been wreaking havoc with it in the US for years. But the WGA strike, which makes people with access to broadband internet look online for their video-fix, is illustrating just how ripe the time for online video is. The writers know it, the audience knows it, the media moguls know it. Now they just have to start acting on it – and allow a paradigm shift on a large scale. And the new WGA contracts will have a lot to do with the size and speed of this shift.