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Writers Lines Now A Form Of Protest

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By WILLIAM BOOTH and LISA de MORAES, The Washington Post

Published: November 6, 2007

LOS ANGELES - Thousands of writers closed their laptops Monday to march on picket lines in Hollywood and New York, vowing not to pen another joke or script until the film and TV industry offer payment for shows available over the Internet.

The first casualties of the stoppage by the 12,000 members of the Writers Guild of America are the late-night talk shows.

NBC's Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien, CBS's David Letterman and Craig Ferguson and ABC's Jimmy Kimmel decided to air reruns, as did Comedy Central's "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report."

Late-night junkies of the celebrity interview and top-10 lists, the political lampoon and fake news might quickly feel the pangs of withdrawal, because those shows are heavily reliant on writers.

The last strike by writers, in 1988, lasted about five months and reduced Johnny Carson to looking at Ed McMahon's snapshots.

At the NBC studio in Burbank, Leno showed up at the picket line aboard his Harley-Davidson to deliver a box of doughnuts to the striking writers.

After making the obligatory joke about doughy scribblers and their love of pastry products, Leno said: "I've been working with these people for 20 years. Without them, I'm not funny. I'm a dead man without them."

Reality and competition shows, such as ABC's highly rated "Dancing With the Stars," will not be directly affected by the strike, nor will news programs and sports.

Eight of the 10 top-rated shows on prime time are penned by guild writers, however, so any lengthy strike will hurt the bottom lines of the media companies.

"If this goes on, ratings will go down and advertisers will ask where the audiences have gone," said Tom Hertz, a writer and creator of the CBS sitcom "Rules of Engagement."

Hertz, like many of the writers interviewed Monday, was ready to fight for his residuals. "I love writing TV shows, but I'm 111 percent behind the strike. If I have to sell my house and move in to a small apartment, I'll do it."

What is the fight all about?

Mostly money. A three-year contract between producers and writers expired last week without a new deal. The writers wanted to increase their percentage payment for DVDs, which are more profitable for the studios than box-office receipts.

A writer earns about 3 or 4 cents on a typical $20 DVD. Consumers will buy $16.4 billion worth of DVDs this year, according to Adams Media Research.

Originally, the writers wanted to double their DVD take, but took the proposal off the table on Sunday in an attempt, they said, to further the contract negotiations. The talks broke down and no further negotiations have been scheduled.

The writers also want a percentage of the sale of their work as it is downloaded or streamed from the Internet into computers, cellular phones and portable devices such as the MP3 player.

The studios have generated relatively little cash from so-called new media: - $158 million from selling movies online and about $194 million from selling TV shows over the Web.

Most analysts, as well as the striking writers, assume that is where the future lies. The studios argue that it is too early to know how much money they can make from offering their products over the Internet.

"We're just looking for our percent of the pie," said Bill Martin, a writer for the ABC comedy "Cavemen" who picketed the Sony lot. "We're not asking for a flat fee. We're asking for a percentage."

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