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We put out our first web video today at ShameOnElaine.org, a site about which I have not written here yet. Check it out:
Needed Facebook App: Union Membership
I want to briefly write up an idea for a Facebook application that I would love to see: The Union Member app. Think of it like the “My Neighborhood” application, but instead lets users select their union. It would give a central organizing mechanism for locals to communicate with each other, but by tapping into the other Facebook data, could allow union members in the same geographic region to connect outside of their actual unions.
The app could take into account the multiple associations / hierarchies of unions in order to connect and accommodate as many union members as possible. But in its most basic state, it could pull from the listings of locals on various union websites and provide organizing spaces for those members.
This is rough, not thought out, and from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing. But I wanted to get it out of my head, so there it is.
DGA in "shouting distance" of a deal; writers with the big mo
It seems as though the AMPTP finally woke up to reality and realized they’re going to have to give ground on new media. This weekend’s serious negotiations about new media revenues with the directors’ guild (DGA) suggest that the moguls’ spa getaway did them some good to clear their heads.
United Hollywood has the scoop and perspective for what it all means:
The WGA’s sister guild the DGA began formal negotiations over the weekend and announced it was within “shouting distance” of a deal. That being the case, many writers believe it is important to let the DGA negotiate in an atmosphere of utmost seriousness backed up by large, forceful pickets from the WGA.[...]Essentially, the DGA is the debate team, and they have an important away meet. Everyone hopes the debate team brings home the big trophy, and we can celebrate together in the next few weeks. Until that happens, come out and support the writers by wearing your school colors of red, white and black. Go team!
Meanwhile, the writers are showing some good momentum in their quest to break the AMPTP by negotiating for and receiving their same demands with small to medium sized production studios – in addition to David Letterman’s Worldwide Pants, the Weinstein company, and United Artists, today the WGA announced a deal with Media Rights Capital, an independent studio with significant corporate financial backing. It’s good news for writers that can go back to work, but it’s also good news to see yet another defection from the AMPTP conglomerate.
The deals have been announced in rapid succession over the last couple of weeks, and the writers are picking up some good momentum. This latest news about the DGA negotiations progressing is promising – but it is just the first of several battles to be fought over the next weeks and months.
The moguls still have yet to fully emerge from the steam of the saunas – with any luck, they’ll be struggling to keep their towels on when they finally realize everyone is serious about new media.
As Late Night Returns, Who Will Stand with the Writers?
I have my first post up on FireDogLake, where I’ll be writing about the ongoing WGA strike. -MW
After seven weeks of silence, late night talk hosts return to the air tonight – but without their writers, who promise to picket outside the shows until the strike is resolved. While David Letterman negotiated a deal for writers to return to his and Craig Ferguson’s shows, Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert must improvise monologues and sketches to fill air time without their writers.
Letterman likely took the lead from Johnny Carson’s efforts during the 1988 strike, in which Carson eventually negotiated a deal for his writers to return while the strike continued. While Carson briefly mentioned the strike in his return to the air, he did not use the strike for material for his show, instead filling time with musical performances and skits.
Letterman took a different route in 1988 – one that he will hopefully resurrect tonight.
“The producers happen to be, in my opinion, money-grabbing scum,” he said in one of a number of skewering references to the studios. “I want to make sure people understand I’m in favor of the writers guild.”
Change to Win's "Smack the CEO" Facebook app is pretty cool
Earlier this week, the union affiliation Change to Win released what I believe to be the labor movement’s first Facebook application, called Smack the CEO.
When you add the application, you can friends to join your own “Smack the CEO network,” and everyone enters a number for their annual salary. The goal is to show how many of your friends’ salaries it would take to match the massive windfalls of these anti-union CEOs. Its design allows for pretty nice viral opportunities, and it’s an ongoing project you can leave in your Facebook profile.
So go ahead, add the app and smack some ceo’s!
Jason Lefkowitz built the app – congrats Jason!
Silly Writers - There's No Money on the Internet
Also posted at OpenLeft
Poor studio executives. Even before the writers guild went on strike, the penny-pinching producers were couch diving for loose change to prop up their studios. For more than two weeks, 12,000 entertainment writers have been out of the streets, clamoring for a cut of money the producers supposedly make from “promotional” videos published to the Internet. They’re considered “promotional” because they’re not like the real thing shown on TV (even if there is original writing, like the mini-webisodes of The Office produced last year).
On TV you can sell advertisements in the middle of shows, and that’s how the studios make their money. But everyone knows you can’t make money on the Internet. It is a completely unexplored revenue stream.
Two brave studios are taking a plunge into the unknown depths of the Internet – NBC and Fox created a joint video venture called Hulu that functions like a closed-YouTube for promotional video clips from both studios. The website just started releasing beta invites for people to start exploring the site, and as you can clearly see from this screenshot evidence below, there is absolutely no money to be made from showing videos on the Internet.
Oh, that ad? That’s, uh, ... that’s a … LOOK OVER THERE!
Ahem. Let me repeat myself. There is no money to be made from the Internet. The writers are greedy – they already make an outrageous four cents for every $20 DVD sold, and now they want the same formula applied to Internet videos. Four cents? How can these impoverished studios afford that? Let’s ask the executives themselves:
So you hear that, writers? Get off the picket lines and get back to work — the producers have money to make on the Internet not on the Internet.
(Thanks to Matt Ortega for the screenshot.)
What the Writers Strike Teaches about New Media
The American Prospect sat down with the presidents of the Writers Guild of America, which is now wrapping up its second full week of a strike, and the Screen Actors Guild.
The dispute that led to the strike is at its core about giving writers a cut of the money studios bring in from publishing shows on the Internet, so it’s to be expected that new media would be involved anyway.
TAP: A lot of the organizing around this is going on through new media, through blogs, Facebook – the very new media that you’re working to get a piece of.Patric Valone [WGA-West]: [Writers and actors] can get together and actually do media without these guys and get it delivered. It goes back to this quote from Frances Coppola about 12 years ago, where he said that he wasn’t going to make the next Godfather, it was going to be some 7-year-old girl with a digital camera. But how was she going to distribute it? Well, now we have the answer. We now have this distribution model that really seriously impacts the ability of the conglomerates to control production and distribution. What can help them survive in that brave new world is collaboration with the content providers, and yet it seems as though a routine has developed where they would rather try to find the cheaper way or the non-union way, or an approach that cuts us out.
This strike also shows the new face of unionism and collective bargaining in the 21st Century. The writers guild uses its blog to organize updates and informations for members, as well as post videos from the picket lines. Thanks to the tremendous talent and solidarity of writers and actors, guild members are producing dozens of hilarious videos that quickly go viral.
Harold Meyerson in an article accompanying the interview explains what’s at stake:
Last year, however, NBC-Universal asked the writers of “The Office” to create two-to-three-minute “webisodes” of the series for the Internet. Though the webisodes drove up the show’s ratings, the studio paid the writers nothing for their work. The writers, not surprisingly, ceased their webisode writing; the guild sought to negotiate for them with NBC-Universal and got nowhere fast; and the issue of the writers’ right to bargain collectively for Internet work became the crux of the writers’ conflict with the studios.The day before the strike began, the studios offered the guild jurisdiction over writing on the Internet that is related to existing scripted dramas. Their offer wouldn’t cover the streaming of Letterman’s Top Ten list. It wouldn’t cover any material originally written for Internet delivery, a category that in a few years may encompass all new shows.
Segall acknowledges that devising a contract for new media is conceptually challenging. Since nobody knows how much revenue will initially be produced by entertainment delivered by the Internet, the guild’s position is that the contract should stipulate a percentage of Internet-show revenue, rather than a flat fee, for writers.
The guild’s message is: “If they [the studios] get paid, we must get paid.”
It’s a flexible formula, but the studios are thus far holding out for a contract that will cripple the guild’s ability to bargain for flexible, rigid or any formulas at all.
Nations with more high-tech economies than our own, such as the Scandinavian states, have upgraded technology and increased productivity in ways that have enhanced, rather than diminished, the bargaining power and lives of their workers. In the United States, by contrast, our corporate elites, sometimes using technological innovation as a pretext for their power grabs, have destroyed workers’ bargaining power and kept for themselves almost all the revenue from technologically driven productivity increases. The picketers at Paramount and Disney may look to be a chorus line of wise-asses, but their struggle is a deadly serious test of whether any American workers retain the clout to strike a deal with the unchecked greed that is the modern American corporation.
The best writers strike video yet.
It obviously comes from the Colbert Report writers:
You can go over here to send a message to the studio execs in support of the writers.
Hillary Endorsed by Fuckin' AFSCME
I will take any excuse to post this video. Today, it’s AFSCME’s endorsement of Hillary earlier this week.
The amalgamated federation…ah, I don’t know what the fuck it means.
Utah mine owner's sketchy ties to the Department of Labor
The collapse of the Genwal mine in Utah was an easily prevented tragedy. From the first hours after yesterday’s cave-in, Robert Murrary, the owner of the mine, has been out in front, speaking to the press and throwing maps of the mine tunnels against the wall to show their exact plan to find the miners, as Murray puts, it “dead or alive.”
Unfortunately, the outspoken Murray hasn’t been such a fan of mine safety in the past. Buried in the CNN article is this revealing reality:
Aug 7, 07:37 PM / Comment [3]
Video: Dennis Kucinich makes a valid point about the Employee Free Choice act, the power of collective bargaining, and how executive orders can be used to make public policy.
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