NBC fires all of the production crew from "The Office"

[mikej007]

Originally posted by: Pantoot
The studios should get a lion's share of the profit because they shoulder all of the risks.

I'd hardly consider a show like The Office to be a risk anymore. So once a show is established as a "success" does that "risk" premium still apply?

 

[Linflas]

Originally posted by: mikej007
What I don't get is when everyone screams about the "greedy" writers and not the real culprit here, the studios. They're the ones hogging all the money. Writers may make a decent salary if they're good and work on a successful show, but it's not proportional to the money the studios/executives are raking in. You have to be really lucky and talented to make a successful TV show that millions of people tune in to watch every week. Those people have earned their money. Talentless hacks associated with "reality" TV are not in the same class and should not even be dragged into this discussion. Reality TV is dogshit.

Regarding the proportional $$ distribution in the entertainment industry, look at it this way... say you're a lawyer, and you make a pretty decent salary. But yet every time you get the big settlement from that negligence/accident case that you worked your ass off for, staying up late researching, reading, etc, you still get your flat salary (which may be pretty good by all accounts) but the partners at your firm take 99% of the settlement commission leaving you with (relatively) little. That's similar to how this situation with the WGA is. Why should the people who are producing (creating) the shows get stiffed and the big studios make the lion share of the profits selling/distributing someone else's work? It only stands to reason that the creator of something should get paid for it each time it is sold to the consumer, regardless of the method of delivery. How would you feel if the product you created with your own imagination/creativity/effort/etc was being distributed in a fairly new-fangled way and you weren't getting paid for it? I'm sure you'd be pissed like the WGA members are.

Funny too how people also are saying "if you get paid so little, why are you a writer?" Well, doesn't someone have to create the shows everyone watches? And why do people get pissed at the writers, acting like they are asking for more money out of the pockets of the consumer? They're after the money in the studio coffers, not the buying public. It won't cost a dime to the average joe, since the studio is the one that should be giving up the loot.

It's odd how people also are saying things like "time to watch the old DVDs" and "I hope the strike lasts forever". What would happen if the 1% of TV shows that you actually liked never came back (unlikely, but okay, say it's a long hiatus)? You'd be pissed because watching the same old crap gets boring after a while. There's only two shows I actually care about (Lost and The Office) so watching old episodes of them gets really tired, really fast. Especially Lost since I've been waiting forever to see that fucking show again...

Considering that network TV has been hemorrhaging viewers for years now this hardly seems to be the time for this strike. It is not just DVD's they are competing for time with, it is XBox360's, PC's and the internet, cable and satellite movie channels, the list is huge and growing all the time.

 

[Jschmuck2]

Ugh - I'm retiring from this thread.

Enjoy your TPS reports.

 

[Pantoot]

Originally posted by: Jschmuck2
Ugh - I'm retiring from this thread.

Enjoy your TPS reports.

Thats a shame, I wanted to understand the other side of the story.