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Will Hollywood Writers Go on Strike? The Tricky Economics of "Peak TV"
Hollywood Reporter ^ | March 21, 2017 | Jonathan Handel

Posted on 03/26/2017 11:58:33 AM PDT by EdnaMode

As the number of scripted series and TV writers surge, shorter orders stall the volume of produced episodes and staff writer earnings, while screenwriters' wages drop 21 percent.

With scripted television booming — 455 series this season, more than double the number six years ago — it ought to be a great time to be a TV writer. And the ongoing Writers Guild negotiations should be a cakewalk, right?

So you'd think, but it's actually not Easy Street at all, because, as previously unpublished data reveals, growth in the labor supply has outstripped growth in demand, while shorter series orders mean writers, who are held under option from season to season, may be working yet making less than before.

That's just one of the issues that WGA and AMPTP studio negotiators are confronting as talks continue into a second week on a new three-year union deal. But it's one of the hardest on the agenda. Yes, screenwriters too are unhappy ­— their inflation-adjusted average wages dropped by 21 percent during the 2010-15 period — but more than twice as many writers now work in TV as in features, leading to a feeling that these negotiations are TV-centric.

(Excerpt) Read more at hollywoodreporter.com ...


TOPICS: TV/Movies
KEYWORDS: hollywood; wga; writers; writersstrike
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To: Dilbert San Diego

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRfuTTd09vo


61 posted on 03/26/2017 5:24:44 PM PDT by Paladin2 (No spellcheck. It's too much work to undo the auto wrong word substitution on mobile devices.)
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To: SkyPilot
I would watch "All Iranian Christian" series if it were actually shown in Iran.

Not holding my breath, though.
Being forced to see a wholesale replacement of the main actors weekly would be depressing.

Actually I would watch All American Muslim religiously (no pun intended) if the actors were "disappeared" weekly.

Every little bit counts.

That reminds me, I need to get to Amazon and give my opinion of a rare event in my bibliophile life: The third book I may be unable to finish, and I am struggling mightily to do so:

62 posted on 03/26/2017 6:21:05 PM PDT by publius911 (I SUPPORT MY PRESIDENT?)
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To: publius911
The third Target, by Joel C. Rosenberg, fiction. The first book that I have read by Rosenberg; highly recommended, but so far disappointing.
The first quarter of the book was plodding and seemingly pointless. I may have to read a second book by the author before giving up, to be fair.
Unfortunate, I have already bought three kindle versions.

The story seems to belong to the alternate universe where the muslim national leaders are activists in the positive sense, reasonable, rational and honest.
Unfortunately, the muslims that matter are the hundreds of millions of mindless killers, both active and unmasked, who make that alternate universe, like our actual one, a most undesirable place; that reality is brushed aside.

It is impossible to comment further without revealing spoilers.

63 posted on 03/26/2017 7:06:43 PM PDT by publius911 (I SUPPORT MY PRESIDENT?)
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To: EdnaMode

Wait...so you mean adding people to the working pool as we did with women and later with illegal aliens may decrease the average wage? Who but an economics major could have guessed that? I thought it was greedy business owners.


64 posted on 03/27/2017 8:51:13 AM PDT by willyd (I for one welcome our NSA overlords)
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To: originalbuckeye

It is on Netflix


65 posted on 03/28/2017 11:03:00 AM PDT by mowowie
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To: Yaelle

“There is some very good writing out there these days. Sure, some series are poorly written, but there are some wonderful gems.”


Totally agree. And eating puke isn’t so bad, if you carefully weed out the “bad” bits.


66 posted on 04/25/2017 9:19:32 AM PDT by ConservativeWarrior (Fall down 7 times, stand up 8. - Japanese proverb)
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